Not Built in a Day How Slavery Made the Roman Empire

By: Emma Southon

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2026-06-30

From acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and historian Emma Southon, a groundbreaking history of Ancient Rome that explores how the empire was built, fueled, and shaped by its enslaved people.

When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman empire: Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy. Without the millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or born into it as “home bred slaves”, the Roman empire’s great aqueducts and temples could never have been built. There would be no coins or tiles to find in fields, no limitless manpower for the army and navy that conquered the Mediterranean, no marble palaces or underfloor heating, and certainly no life of unimaginable luxury for the one percent who didn’t even tie their own shoes. For the first time, Not Built in a Day tells their stories.

Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses; from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. It traces how people entered, experienced, and left slavery, covering the little known story of slave revolts and the complex realities of enslaved people who themselves owned enslaved people. Not Built in a Day also explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies.

With humor, wit, and expertise, Emma Southon invites us into the absurdity of Roman life and completely upends our idea of the Roman empire.