Ostia, the Roman settlement founded at the mouth of the river Tiber, was the port of the imperial capital and one of the most important urban centres in the Mediterranean world during the last decades of the Roman Republic and the Early and High Empires. Christer Bruun, an internationally recognized authority on Ostian society and culture, uses his mastery of contemporary scholarship and ancient sources to present a novel and often surprising analysis of what these testimonies can tell us about the people who lived there, or merely visited, or those whose ships anchored in one of Ostia's harbors.