A conversation with Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) about her recent book, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent (Princeton University Press 2025), which presents a brilliant new model of the Roman imperial economy, specifically for how the majority of the population experienced it. We talk about the skeletal evidence, monetization, affluence and precariousness, and levels of consumption. This is only a taste of the many exciting new arguments made in the book, which all of you should go read.