The Past Is a Different Country

[stoutfellow]

Every so often, while reading one of the classics of antiquity, I get suddenly clubbed by the radical differences in attitude between now and then. In Arrian's book on Alexander, it was the repetition of "We came to a village, and asked them to give us all their gold. They refused, so we killed them all and took the gold anyway." (Not that that attitude isn't present today, but most people wouldn't say it so bluntly.)

I'm reading Polybius' history - just getting to the point where the various ongoing wars more or less coalesced - and ran across a reference to "the first necessaries of existence, cattle and slaves"....

Comments

[jsburbidge]

Um, yes?

To expand: this is both why so many historical novels are so bad - they are populated with modern characters who stretch my WSOD to the breaking point and fail to give a real sense of their subjects - and precisely why the study of history is so important, in that it tells us how very variable humans and human society can be.

[stoutfellow]

Thank you for the clarification. I was mulling over three different interpretations of your original comment, none of which was correct.

That said: your point? I agree with the statements you make, and I thought pointing out specific examples might be of interest, especially to those who do not read much history.

[jsburbidge]

I think it's more or less that it's one of the things that I live with such that the point is always on the edge of consciousness.

The differences run deeper than that, of course - almost anybody (except a few Epicureans) living before the year dot had a worldview where just about everything around them was infused by minor divinities who made everything happen. By comparison, the attitude towards slavery or cobquest is almost incidental.