Massenet first saw Alexandre Parodi's play, Rome vaincu (Rome conquered) in the late 1870s, reread it in 1902, and then set Posthumia's great scene before even obtaining a libretto for the rest of the story.

Even though the plot of Roma centers on the same plot line as Spontini's La Vestale and Bellini's Norma, a priestess who betrays her vows of chastity for love, Massenet, the quintessential sentimental and Romantic composer, made the love story secondary.

While the love story provides the necessary complications, the individual characters are de-emphasized in favor of the idea of Rome itself, following the dictates of the title. (It is Massenet's only opera not named after a character.) The hero and heroine have only one short scene together, and even separately, they are only secondary figures in the first two acts. In this, while Massenet broke away from his personal composition style, he was faithful to his habit of experimentation and innovation.

Hints of his other operas pervade the music, nonetheless. Elements of Le Roi de Lahore, in particular, appear in the first act, most notably in the stormy choral first scene and the candid purity of Junia's confession. The Pontifex Maximus' music is strongly reminiscent of Don Quichotte's graver moments, and there are hints of La Navarraise and Therese, his verismo operas, in the abrupt ending to the second act. The music for the ritual that opens the third act has the limpidity of the Meditation from Thais, and the military music suggests both Cleopatre and Herodiade. Herodiade is evoked again in Lentulus' and Fausta's scene together when they decide to die together, both dramatically and musically reminiscent of the prison scene, in its desperate raptures. There are also elements of other composers' works; for example, the occasional moments of classical austerity in the interchanges between Fausta and Fabius in the judgment scene seem a tribute to Gluck.

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