The voices that have endured from the Classical period describe what life was like in ancient Rome for their authors, who were literate and educated elites. But what about everyone else? One way to learn about life outside the privileged classes is to examine how people engaged with laws and politics, particularly voting. Finding the evidence however, might take you on a journey.  

“The late Roman Republic (say, 133 BC–44 BC) is our best documented period of Mediterranean antiquity, in large part because we have so much literature written by contemporaries reflecting on the troubled and confusing events of their own time,” said Chris Erdman, a doctoral student in classics at UC Santa Barbara.