It is also interesting to note that Cato, like many of his Roman contemporaries, successors, predecessors, and others in different places and times well into the modern day, lauded the agrarian lifestyle as the pinnacle of human thriving.
Ideal Realism
Rather than grittiness, I see realism in how long it takes to walk from point A to point B, or in the equipment and technologies to which the characters have access and can carry, or the odds that they can reasonably face.
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