The classical world was very different from us in some of its attitudes. One of the things that impressed me most in reading Plutarch was what he considered noble and ignoble.
Noble was a war leader who led his people to pillage, rape and enslavement of the enemy and became rich and powerful in the process.
Ignoble was a guy who ran a business that provided people what they wanted in exchange for their money. Successful businessmen often spent the second half of their lives pretending they had never been in business, and certainly their sons did the same.
IOW, he thought theft, if conducted in a military way, was far more honorable than business. He didn’t argue this point, he just took it for granted as one his audience would agree with, which they did.
Yes, I think that is one of the things I like about reading history. I get to enter another age with ideas and sentiments different from my own, and ones that I often disagree with. And yet I find this to be a very rewarding experience. I get to look at the world through someone else's eyes. And when I stop reading and come back to the every-day world of modern life, things seem somehow refreshed. I get to live in a bigger world.
That is why I also like old literature. I know that epic poetry has gone out of fashion a long time ago, but reading the Iliad in Homeric Greek made that ancient world come alive. If it weren't for reading that story, I wouldn't have any interest in the ancient Greeks at all, and I wouldn't be posting to this thread.