A Roman street looked like one crowd. It was four or five different worlds standing next to each other, and you couldn't tell them apart by looking.
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Students should be able to name the layers of Roman society, explain that slavery in Rome was not based on race, and describe how a person could move from one layer to another.
The lesson is built around one question asked twice: who in that crowd was actually free? Keep asking it out loud while he reads.
The hardest idea here is that a slave could be the best educated person in the house. It breaks the picture most students arrive with, and it is the door into everything else the lesson says.
The second hardest is that Roman slavery was not race-based. Say it plainly. A student who maps Rome onto the American South will misread both.
The mines and the crucifixions along the Appian Way are in the lesson on purpose. Rome was not gentle and the reading does not pretend otherwise.
If he is troubled by it, that is the correct response and it is worth sitting with rather than talking him out of.
Judea Under Rome and the lessons after it assume he knows what a Roman city was like from street level, and who was standing in it.
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Before You Start
The words this lesson uses. Tap a card to see what it means, then come back to them whenever a question uses one.
Part One
Questions about the story you just read. Pick your answer straight off, or press Find it in the story if you would rather hunt for the sentence first.
Part Two
The word cards are at the top of this page. Look back at them as often as you need, then answer.