Shakespeare, Where Art Thou Eternal Prose?

Madamest M:

Your European adventures are keeping me in fine envious green!

Something I left out of this summer’s travelogue.  The two statues outside the very Romanesque National Archives in DC.  These silent sages speak endless volumes, yet who is paying heed?

Does this news report sound familiar?

"The peoples to the east continue to thwart us and are ever a problem for us.  They foment dissent, undermine and threaten our allies, and disrupt our operations.  They refuse cooperation.  Military action may be necessary."

Report on present day Iran?  Nope.  Same area, but  the year was circa 250, and it was our predecessors, the Romans.

Well over three years into this joint blog, and do you not tire of my endless harping on this theme?  I am not primarily an ancient or classical historian per se, but the same regretful sighs hold forth!  But perhaps this public catharsis keeps the down-in-the-dumperies (how do you like this phraseology, lol) at bay! :)

And let us hope that Arnold Toynbee did not have it perfectly right when he said (I’m paraphrasing):  “When the last person who remembers the last terrible war is gone, the next terrible war becomes inevitable.” 

Because I’m just as hopeful as everybody that a new and better age can write better patterns in the human condition, and that the past does not dictate the future!s  That it can instruct so as to steer new paths away from colossal tragedies.