There is a tendency amongst scholars to ‘hear’ everyone in the old Empires of Greece and Rome, and even Egypt, speaking in pentameters or making lofty Ciceronian comments on the malaise of the times. A little akin to expecting our present day leaders to all sound like Shakespeare’s Henry Fifth.
Many years ago in Egypt amongst the usual mummified household pets they uncovered a crocodile inside of which had been purposely placed dozens of documents. The one that stands out for me was a letter written by a fifteen year old boy in Rome to his father or Uncle stationed in Egypt. The letter was filled with the enthusiasm of a teenager looking forward to travelling across the Mediterranean sea to see his relative and the fun time he was going to have looking at the sights.
It is wrong to imbue past generations with any greater depth of wisdom, any broader grasp of reason or any wider understanding of the ‘human condition’ and it is a mistake to think they were ‘less’ normal than we are today. Moods and emotions have never changed and we understand more of the past by understanding ourselves than we do simply from reading about events.
To be able to visualise ourselves sitting in the open toilet on the Pompeii Street whilst the towns population walked or ran or simply hurried by on their way to work, would make you a better historian than to know the date they all died.