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by vjvjvjvjghv 25 days ago
“ Most other stuff about Rome/Romans follows leaders, generals, aristocrats, etc. so it was refreshing to see regular people”

A lot of history focuses too much on leaders and elites. I would like to see much more information about how regular people lived. Or for example, when a some king “built” something, maybe we should know how life was for the workers there.

3 comments

It's not as widely promoted, but if you're genuinely interested, there are more of those histories written then you'll ever have time to read yourself.

There's a classic five volume series "A History of Private Life" that works through a breadth-first survey over time. It can make for a great starting point, and is a bit like an encylopedia in the way you can engage with it as essays on certain times and topics instead of being expected to read it through serially.

You might enjoy Patrick Wyman's (Fall of Rome, Tides of History) new podcast "Past Lives":

https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/new-history-podcast-past...

That is what the source material is. We have to read between the lines to figure anything else out. That means we often have to guess.