Orgy Planner Wanted: Odd Jobs and Curious Callings in the Ancient World - Hardcover

Two thousand years ago, the denizens of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds performed an amazingly diverse and challenging array of tasks to earn their daily bread. Personal entrail-reader to the emperor; war-elephant troop commander; mopper-up of dead gladiators; armpit-hair plucker; stage actor; orgy planner: these are just a few of the career opportunities that beckoned for our ancient Mediterranean ancestors. In Orgy Planner Wanted author Vicki León describes - in uniquely vivid and energetic style - 144 ancient career options, from the glittering to the gory, and from the strangely familiar to the entirely strange and entirely unfamiliar. Each of the book's ten chapters focuses on a particular professional area - from sex to showbiz, from cookery to slavery and from divination to hairdressing - looking in detail at specific jobs in each category. Sidebar profiles tell the stories of some 30 named jobholders - the likes of Spurrina Vestricius (personal entrail-reader to Julius Caesar), Publius and Lucius Sestius (traders in garum - a pungent fish-based forerunner of Worcestershire sauce), and Paris (a celebrated actor-dancer whose abortive attempts to teach the Emperor Nero to dance would ultimately lead to his demise). Orgy Planner Wanted offers a unique perspective on the world as it was 2000 years ago, and looks certain to be one of the most intriguing and unputdownable popular history titles of 2007.

Vicki León is a travel writer, publisher, historian and author of the successful Uppity Women in History series. She has nurtured a lifelong passion for the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, and when she is not on the road researching new books, she divides her time between Washington and California, USA.