Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy by Seth Bernard (2018; ISBN 9780190878788) Intermediate Economic – Seth Bernard excels in illuminating how ancient economies cannot be studied just as numbers and markets, but in their complex social and cultural contexts. Bernard studies here the development of early Roman urbanism from 396 to 168 BCE, and his study covers slavery, conquest, public construction, market exchange, the adoption of coinage, demography, elite values and many other factors that brought forth the birth of Roman cities. The book handles confidently abundant literary, archaeological, and epigraphic material.