“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

One must also keep in mind that there is a lot of drama in the past. Seriously, if you look at how Julius Caesar died it sounds like it comes from a really cliched movie that even the director would have second thoughts about.