Your Life Under Rome
Your Life Under RomeS · P · Q · R
A probabilistic portrait of who you would have been, had you been born somewhere in the Roman world between 100 BC and 420 AD.
Sortes · Cast the Lots
Cast the Dice
A throw of 1 to 1000 — where would fortune have placed you?
Cast the dice
Incipit · How to read this
How to read the probability weights: Each profile is assigned a range out of 1,000. If you rolled a random number from 1 to 1,000, these ranges reflect roughly how likely you'd land in each life — based on demographics, social structure, and what historians estimate about population composition across the empire's lifespan. The ten profiles together account for about 940 of 1,000 possible lives. The remaining ~60 represent categories not profiled here: gladiators, priests, prostitutes, bandits, nomadic pastoralists on the frontier, miners, imperial bureaucrats, and the many children who died before age five and never lived long enough to have a "story" in the adult sense.
The Roll of a Thousand Lives
IIIIIIIVVIIVIIIX<br>I. Titus Caecilius (185)II. Kalasiris (140)III. Helene (175)IV. Petronia Iusta (90)V. Gaius Vibius Celer (30)VI. Publius Valerius Messalla (3)VII. Successus (55)VIII. Boudiga (130)IX. Aurelius Diza (25)X. Flavius Marcellinus (72)Unrepresented (95)
The Ten Lives
Caput ITitus Caecilius<br>Peasant Smallholder<br>Central Italy · Late Republic · 105–42 BC
Roll 1–185 · 185 / 1000
Caput IIKalasiris<br>Agricultural Slave<br>Sicily · Late Republic · 135–86 BC
Roll 186–325 · 140 / 1000
Caput IIIHelene<br>Provincial Woman<br>Roman Egypt · Antonine era · 148–198 AD
Roll 326–500 · 175 / 1000
Caput IVPetronia Iusta<br>Urban Plebeian Woman<br>Rome · Flavian–Trajanic · 55–112 AD
Roll 501–590 · 90 / 1000
Caput VGaius Vibius Celer<br>Legionary<br>Rhine frontier · Augustan–Tiberian · 12 BC–31 AD
Roll 591–620 · 30 / 1000
Caput VIPublius Valerius Messalla<br>Senator<br>Rome · Augustan–Claudian · 20 BC–54 AD
Roll 621–623 · 3 / 1000
Caput VIISuccessus<br>Freedman and Tavern Keeper<br>Pompeii · Early Empire · 32–79 AD
Roll 624–678 · 55 / 1000
Caput VIIIBoudiga<br>Rural Provincial Woman<br>Roman Britain · Claudian–Trajanic · 42–103 AD
Roll 679–808 · 130 / 1000
Caput IXAurelius Diza<br>Auxiliary Cavalry Trooper<br>Danube frontier · Crisis of the 3rd c. · 233–268 AD
Roll 809–833 · 25 / 1000
Caput XFlavius Marcellinus<br>Minor Bureaucrat<br>Constantinople · Late Empire · 375–421 AD
Roll 834–905 · 72 / 1000
The remaining 95 of 1000 — Priests, gladiators, prostitutes, bandits, miners, nomadic pastoralists, imperial bureaucrats — and the many children who died before age five and never lived long enough to have a story in the adult sense.