[rsynnott]

Depends what you mean by consistent. You don't have to go back too far before things get, well, different enough that they can be confusing to the modern observer. Obvious example: early 19th century dandies. These tend to get read today as kind of effeminate, unmasculine, because that's kind of the _modern_ view of a man who's obsessed with fashion, grooming, etc (or, at least, it was the late 20th century view; this one's actually beginning to swing again), but they _absolutely_ were not seen that way at the time.

[DarkNova6]

To be fair I should have been more precise. I was implicitly referring to myths, legends and epics which are way older than just 2 or 3 hundred years.

Particularly the Epic of Gilgamesh is a fascinating view into a society that could not be further away from modern times and yet is perfectly recognizable. Perhaps it is when humanity is the most stripped down and naked that fundamental motives become most clear.

[rsynnott]

> I was implicitly referring to myths, legends and epics which are way older than just 2 or 3 hundred years

I think this only works, if at all, if you stick to surface detail. Maybe not even then. Zeus, say, was quite keen on shagging men (and women). This would definitely have been coded as very non-masculine, say, 50 years ago, and still is today, though to a lesser extent, but the Greeks wouldn't have seen it that way.

Also, there's a bit of a filter here. To some extent, the ancient stories that you're likely to be exposed to are the ones which are most comprehensible to a modern reader; if a story requires a deep understanding of an alien society to make sense to the reader, then it's not a _good_ story for a general audience, and you're unlikely to be exposed to it unless you go looking.

Even taking something as simple as this: https://lettersofnote.com/2016/07/22/what-do-you-take-me-for...

The world's oldest known letter of complaint. On the surface, it's kind of relatable, but if you read it in full, there are some pretty weird details which don't make that much sense without further context.

[ctrw]

To quote a Canticle for Liebolitz:

To survive the Church's slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then– when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and mutters, "Some of this garbage has got to go." The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.