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There have been many such books, from Ammianus Marcellinus’s “Res Gestae” in the 4th century to H.C.

To be fair to Ammianus, he had some pretty sharp things to say about the elite, too.

My guess is that Ammianus had never actually set foot in an ordinary Roman bar and had never thought about the sheer illogicality of what he was claiming - if these guys really were desperately poor, how on earth could they afford to drink all night?

It would be nice to think that we had actually "come on a bit" since the time of Ammianus more than 1,500 years ago.

I've been quoting, more or less word for word, the description of social conditions in the capital city of the Roman Empire given by a decidedly upmarket historian of the 4th Century, Ammianus Marcellinus.