Gregory Aldrete: recommendation

Transcript context

…I love the idea of assembling the big picture from the details and the little pieces, because that is the thing that makes up life. The big picture is nothing without the details. Yep, yep, and those details would bring it to life. I mean, it’s not the grand sweep of things. It’s seeing those little hopes and fears. Another thing that I think is a huge difference between the modern world and the ancient is just basically everybody’s a farmer. Everybody’s a small family farmer, and we forget this. I was just writing a lecture for my next Great Courses course, and I was writing about farming in the ancient world. I was really thinking if we were to write a realistic textbook of let’s say the Roman Empire, nine out of 10 chapters should be details of what it was like to be a small-time family farmer, because that’s what 90% of the people in the ancient world did. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t priests, they weren’t kings, they weren’t authors, they weren’t artists. They were small-town family farmers, and they lived in a little village. They never traveled 20 miles from that village. They were born there. They married somebody from there. They raised kids. They mucked around in the dirt for a couple decades and they died. They never saw a battle. They never saw a work of art. They never saw a philosopher. They never took part in any of the things we define as being history. So that’s what life should be, and that’s representative. Nevertheless, it is the emperors and the philosophers and the artists and the warriors who carve history.…

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