This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with Emma Southern, a Rome of one's own, the forgotten women of the Roman Empire.

The women who were not royal, who were not part of the coups and backstabbings

and famous, ambitious tellings of histories to please Augustus, or in

Cassius' case, to please himself.

We go now to Julia Felix, whom we know of because of Vesuvius.

Remember the ash rained down on Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the excavation since the 18th century are telling a story that nowhere else is written.

The lives of ordinary Romans and the spectacular Julia Felix.

Sometime around 60 CE, 62 CE, she has a better idea to build an establishment on her own, owning on her own,

and what's striking here is that women in the Roman telling do not have the power of owning things.

They must own it through their fathers or brothers or husbands.

But Julia Felix, who might even be illegitimate, is a powerful imagination.

And if you see the pictures of her place that has been excavated, it's vast, it's

attractive, it had worked today.

Emma, it's impossible not to love Julia Felix.

And her fate may be with Vesuvius, but what have we learned so far about how she conducted her selves?

Was this commonplace for women, or is Julia Felix standing all by herself as a woman of property?

I think it's more commonplace than the written sources would allow you to believe.

When you look at archaeology, you find women running all kinds of businesses being involved in life in their own right, in public life, in their own right, all over.

And Pompeii is one of these places where we can see what kind of small businesses

looks like. Julia Felix runs this entertainment complex. Basically, it has a baths that people

can visit, which she says are fitted for the well to do. So they're kind of boozy baths.

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