It seems scary how wrong our understanding sometimes goes. We can get many details right and yet totally miss the essence. Roman and ancient Greek buildings hav

It seems scary how wrong our understanding sometimes goes. We can get many details right and yet totally miss the essence. Roman and ancient Greek buildings have all been bleached by the wind over time. Which makes us think they were white because they used pretty white concrete. That's what they look now. In fact they were very colorful, with drawings everywhere. Same thing with their texts. The surviving texts have been selected. First by Romans themselves, then by medieval religious people. And while at least Christians were very good about copying letter by letter (thus preserving the less Christian aspects of the texts, with tidbits like celebrating Sentors' birthdays with "no more than 3 prostitutes per senator, and 2 per guest", along with the medical knowledge that that attitude preserved as well), they're still selected works. Over the past 3-4 decades it's become clear that Romans, at least in the center of the Empire, were vulgar (constant cursing, prostitution at a scale you wouldn't believe, orgies, parties, wine and alcohol everywhere and for every last occassion. They had advertisements (which were fun, because most people in Rome couldn't read. There was thus no point in making a commercial message like "best doctor ever" or "pools improved again", "now cheaper" ... no point, they'd just paint an emblem on essentially any wall) People would graffiti down contact info for people's wives, children, slaves, or just the people themselves, insulting them by listing what sex acts they're (one presumes allegedly) good at. Or just questioning their legal status or the like. That's the sort of society that existed in the center of the ancient world. This cold, stoic, organized, rigid society you see in every movie and quite a few books probably never existed.