All have the same question =)
+ Mark Twain
- "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
+ Zosimus, 5th century,
- "empires fell through internal disunity"
- Greece and Macedonia. In the case of each empire, growth had resulted from consolidation against an external enemy
- Rome herself, in response to Hannibal's threat posed at Cannae, had risen to great-power status within a mere five decades. With Rome's world dominion, however, aristocracy had been supplanted by a monarchy, which in turn had tended to decay into tyranny; after Augustus Caesar, good laws had alternated with tyrannical ones. Subsequently the Roman Empire, in its western and eastern sectors, had become a contending ground between contestants for power, while outside powers acquired an advantage.
+ Niccolò Machiavelli
- "when states have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend, and thus from good they gradually decline to evil and from evil mount up to good."
- The circle: virtù (valor and political effectiveness) => peace => idleness (ozio), idleness disorder, and disorder rovina (ruin) => order => glory and good fortune
- human nature as remarkably stable—steady enough for the formulation of rules of political behavior
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Potential books
- The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, G.W. Trompf
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Paul Kennedy
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