Autumn Journal indeed! I always feel the last two lines here refer, not only to the Ancient World, but to my youth, way back before, during & just after WWii; & I feel MacNeice, writing them, was thinking of his own youth also --

             I think of the slaves.
And how one can imagine oneself among them
     I do not know;
It was all so unimaginably different
     And all so long ago.   
Louis MacNeice · Autumn Journal (1939)

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