It's so funny when people get caught up with things like that.
It's also funny but a little sad when people's expectations of how colorful ancient times ought to be, or rather shouldn't be, create standards of "realism" that are completely opposite to how history really was.
If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
-Terry Pratchett
