Reflect often how all the life of today is a repetition of the past; and observe that it also presages what is to come. Review the many complete dramas and their settings, all so similar, which you have known in your own experience, or from bygone history: the whole court-circle of Hadrian, for example, or the court of Antonius, or the courts of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus.
The performance is always the same; it is only the actors who change.
Meditations - Book 10 no. 27
Marcus Aurelius
'That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.'
'. . . after 45 years of research and study the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.'
Aldous Huxley