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Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

Wealthy Romans had a bit of a culture-boner for leaving a lasting legacy, maintaining the dynasty, and that sort of thing, and conversely often relied on ancestral clout to borrow credibility from. I don't think anyone today would try to base their credibility on being the distant relative of Ben Franklin in the way an upstart roman might invoke their familiar relationship with Scipio Africanus.

Makes sense they built stuff to last in such an environment.

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Survivorship bias. The only artifacts we see are the ones that were meant to last. Those Romans who did not build for eternity have not been remembered, which distorts our view of thier society. It is akin to classic car enthusiasts who think cars were made better way back when. They think that because they only see the survivors. They do not see all the junk that history has rightly forgotten.

The city was buried in two days, if anything we may not see the most valuable possessions.

Something like 90% of romans did not live in cities. Survivorship bias again. We judge them buy the solid cities, or lord's manor houses. We have lost the mud/brick/wood farms where the vast majority lived.

I'm sorry, but you're getting into "I'm smart and want to argue a point" territory.

Nothing of that applies to Pompeii, as it was buried by a volcano, and everyone and everything that wasn't taken as the people were runnung away stayed as it was. It's basically the Pripyat of Classical Antiquity

I think also they were very much more in touch with their own mortality than is common today.

Other thing would not be expected in a war driven society, where being a legionary was quite common, and very few managed to return back (alive) to civil life after doing their part on the assigned legion.

> In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori

It was also impossible to make things out of fiberglass, but hand-carved stone was actually available.

So was non-permanent building materials such as wood, to be fair.

Not really, that's the resource that disappeared faster than anything, being the simplest to get. Mediterranean forests have never been particularly dense, already the Greeks were moving lots of wood on the sea from the best locations. Stone was easier to get from the areas around Rome.

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