This guy is a great historian. He keeps gunning for the fundamental question - "What was it like to live then?", and backs it up with rigorous foundations.

I was struck by explicit orders being used as suggestive of both commonness[1] and rareness[2]. But maybe it resolves as validating an interpretation of commonly reported events, vs amplifying the reported unusualness of one.

[1] "Heck, Tacitus has a Roman general lay out the sequence in an order to his men" (in a context of "examples [...] are not hard to come by"). [2] "‘engage at discretion’ order needed to be given as an order [...] If [...] this was the standard way of fighting, there would be no point in Plutarch having Aemilius order it" (in a context of "Livy noting the unusual nature").