Go shovel concrete for hours/days/weeks on end and start your day with oatmeal and bacon, and end it with beef stew and a whiskey. Drink bucket water throughout.
Regarding the first, homelessness was illegal, and you could be in a lot of trouble (including execution) for being out after curfew. People lived in catacombs and tunnels to avoid detection, and if they were half as bad as described, it was a hellish life.
The second, if I recall correctly, there was a tax to enter the city. Even for “citizens” going out for the day or whatever
So if you were desperately poor, you couldn’t even hunt for work outside the city without commiting to stay away until you could pay to reenter. So there became a trap where people were too poor to leave, too poor to get a legal residence, and had to find somewhere the guards wouldn’t hassle them.
I’m sure some of this is a bit different, but if it’s even close, it’s a brutal trap to be stuck in
It’s fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.
Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.
But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn’t describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the “we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way.”
Next, the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is relevant here, but in a backwards way.
Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic…read…aliens).
Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.
There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I’ve discussed, which is more abstract. I’m not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.