Pax Romana life

In 27 BCE, Octavian took the name Augustus and became Rome's first emperor, beginning the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"), roughly two centuries (27 BCE-180 CE) of relative internal stability across the empire, even though Augustus held total power behind a careful facade of restored Republican titles. At its height under the emperor Trajan (98-117 CE), the empire stretched from Britain to the Persian Gulf and held an estimated 60 to 70 million people, connected by over 50,000 miles of Roman roads, a shared currency, and a common legal system -- the source of the old saying "all roads lead to Rome."

Daily life varied enormously by class. Wealthy patricians lived in spacious townhouses called domus, while most of the urban poor crowded into multi-story apartment buildings called insulae, which carried real risks of fire and collapse. Public entertainment, including gladiator games at the Colosseum and chariot racing at the Circus Maximus, was so central to keeping the population content that Romans themselves coined the phrase "bread and circuses" for the strategy. Public baths served as everyday social centers open to many classes. Slavery, meanwhile, was widespread and economically essential throughout Roman society, typically tied to conquest rather than to one ethnic group -- an uncomfortable but historically important fact about how the empire actually functioned.