Penguins 735 - Freedom Farewell

‘The history of past centuries ought to be the instructress of the present, though not in the vulgar sense, as if one could simply by turning the leaves discover the conjunctures of the present in the records of the past; it is instructive because the observation of earlier forms of culture reveals the organic conditions of civilisa- tion generally — the fundamental forces every- where alike, and the manner of their combination different … In this sense the history of Caesar and of Roman Imperialism is in truth a more bitter censure of modern autocracy than could be written by the hand of man.’                   

        Mommsen: History of Rome, Vol. 4