(July 20, 2016 at 4:36 am)Alex K Wrote: I'd take a kitchen list, too. In a way, I find these documents of ordinary daily life more fascinating than official documents or writings, because they let these long gone times appear much more real - some guy writing a shopping list 2000 years ago gives me a direct connection to real human beings and their concerns. For example, one of the things that left the biggest impression on me in the Forum Romanum was not the monumental architecture, but the marble game that had been etched into the stairs of the Basilica Iulia. Someone did that - who knows who he or she was - bored and in need of a board game.
That's what I love about reading about history and war. I'm not in any way interested in what battalion did what or what the generals were up to. I'm interested in personal accounts from ordinary people forced into extraordinary situations. People who could otherwise be friends in another time and place end up killing and maiming each other on the orders of someone high up in command. I'm interested in how a society full of ordinary human beings can be manipulated into placing themselves in such situations.
