Over the course of our history as a species, people have roughly always had the same drive. The same types of people have always existed and always follow the same patterns. Compare Alexander and Napoleon. Aristotle and Freud. Pliny and Darwin. Follow the lines of philosophy, science, engineering, politics, military all the way from antiquity to today. Each has a common thread woven back to the beginning of civilization.

You are not that different from someone living in ancient Rome, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. Times and culture change, but people have always been what we are now, good and bad both. We have the same drive for greed, generosity, community, solitude, family, power, glory. The wheel of Ka turns and turns.

You should study ancient history, it's pretty fascinating for exactly this reason. People are frequently quite surprised to learn just how similar ancient people were to how we see ourselves now. This is also one of the biggest mistakes people make when studying history: underestimating ancient peoples and framing them as some sort of primitive undeveloped animals. The pyramids were just as ancient and mysterious to the Romans as they are to us to this day.