Right, I am not talking about the peasants of the time. 'We', as in the masses, more readily associate with the peasants than the aristocracy but in reality the

Right, I am not talking about the peasants of the time. 'We', as in the masses, more readily associate with the peasants than the aristocracy but in reality the average person today lives a life that's certainly more luxurious, in terms of things, than the aristocracy of the time. In terms of objective luxuries, people today have vastly more: reliable indoor plumbing, easy and rapid transportation, consistent and practically unlimited running water, air conditioning, practically unlimited access to whatever sorts of food (even exotic) you care to purchase, and much more. So entitled have we become that it feels kind of silly to call those things luxuries! The life of the luxurious Ancient Greek would have likely been more interesting due to power and prestige, but they did not have objectively better lives in terms of 'things' than even an average individual today. And now a days I think it goes without saying that the average person exerts substantially less energy per day than even our luxurious Ancient Greeks did. Lives are much easier. Another interesting thing is also not all of the Ancient Greeks you know were living lives of luxury, even by standards of their time. Socrates was born to a stonemason, served in the military, and lived his later life in voluntary poverty - offering up 100 drachmae as a punishment for the allegations that would lead to his execution. 100 drachmae was 1/5th of his entire life's wealth. For some scale, an unskilled worker would earn around 1 drachma a day, a skilled worker would earn around 5 drachma a day. He was executed at age 71, still in extremely good health. --- And yeah, on the boiling - I was stating that they did on occasion genuinely purify their water. However, the sniff/taste test was the norm with boiling the occasional exception.