Herodotus Liked his Meat Dry

In my study of antiquity, humans are categorized. There are slaves and there are masters, haves and have-nots, the military elite and the child rearing woman. The bards, the artisans and the whores. And I wonder, at what point does a small isolated party of like minded people become stamped in time as a record of something. A record of something bigger than them and yet still a brief image of a life they were a part of. Is it more important to note the patterns shared by a group of potters and the development of their craft, is that really the summation of their life? Or is history actually told in the conversations that were had between the time in which each pot dried, and the quiet and exhausted sighs that were released when the time came to close the shop at night. I wonder then where a small but pleasant weekend in our contemporary world would fit. I wonder how the small joys extracted from playing a board game around a wooden table after consuming a warm meal and being simmered down by wine will ever make its way into a history. An enquiry about what it means to be human today in all its fleeting glory. If the feeling of heavy bedsheets and how hot the teapot feels at the start against my palm will wind up being of any importance, because is it not that which makes us who we are? The smallest sensations surrounding the movement of our hands, reaching for another's fingers. The careful and precise way in which you cut onions and look away ever so slightly to attempt to not cry. The smell of coriander against the tip of a knife and how you stop, inhale generously and keep cutting. How graciously we all enjoy each others companies and let the deep and rumbling sound of laughter escape our throats without stopping to wonder if this is what it means to be human today. And for a second in time I am transfixed, because I don't rememer reading about a Mycenaean bard with a penchant for comedy and a particular dislike of grapeseed oil, but for some reason that is all I see. I don't remember when the brown haired soldier in the phalanx turned to his shorter but more refined comrade and quietly whispered a jest, but all at once, in a consuming and terrifying emotion that is not my own I try so hard to remember this. For their sake and for mine. I try at that moment to remember a thousand human histories, and fill in the gaps of my books with these conversations. I wonder if, when all things are quiet and we are an ancient and recorded history ourselves, someone else will remember a small weekend in this place. A very simple record of a simple time.