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 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.