Post #2742182

Good question and a great segue into a fun fact: it seems quite possible people waking up in the middle of the night was the norm for centuries, and that the assumption of sleeping the whole night is potentially a more modern idea. I am having trouble finding a specific article, but a historian recently catalogued a large number of historical entries which note 'the second sleep'. He basically posited that it's likely that for ages, people in the pre-industrial world would sleep for about 3-4 hours, wake up in the middle of the night for an hour or two, and would then go back to sleep. [Article](https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/11/03/why_its_normal_to_get_up_in_the_middle_of_the_night_1144853.html) talking about it. Articles quite often say that writing as far back as homer talk about an hour which terminates the first sleep like a normal thing everyone knows about. I haven't read much of homer or Virgil so i can't personally confirm or deny that.