> We get history that understandably is written by the more educated from those times. I really don't know that we know what the local rando citizens thought or

> We get history that understandably is written by the more educated from those times. I really don't know that we know what the local rando citizens thought or were thinking. One of my favourite history series was HBO's Rome because it tackled this directly. Sure, you have all the important aristocratic characters, but you also have all the no-name soldiers, slaves, and Roman citizens. At one point, a legionnaire gets into a bar fight with some Romans. The next day, that same legionnaire is escorting Marc Anthony and they get attacked by an angry mob. Marc Anthony interprets it as an attack on himself, but the mob was actually just pissed at the one legionnaire from the bar fight the night before and forces the group to retreat. The whole thing is interpreted by the aristocrats as an attack by the Pompeiian mobs on tribune Marc Anthony. This in turn, prevented Marc Anthony from exercising his office, and the whole thing snow balls into Caesar being forced to cross the Rubicon. Entire history potentially made, because a legionnaire got into a bar fight. Now this is fiction, but it's incredible to think how many stories like this must exist outside of our records.