Tuesday, October 08, 2024
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
Plutarch, The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse 28 (Moralia 408 B-C; tr. Frank Cole Babbitt):
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There is, in fact, profound peace and tranquillity; war has ceased, there are no wanderings of peoples, no civil strifes, no despotisms, nor other maladies and ills in Greece requiring many unusual remedial forces.Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter III:
πολλὴ γὰρ εἰρήνη καὶ ἡσυχία, πέπαυται δὲ πόλεμος, καὶ πλάναι καὶ στάσεις οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ τυραννίδες, οὐδ᾽ ἄλλα νοσήματα καὶ κακὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὥσπερ πολυδυνάμων φαρμάκων χρῄζοντα καὶ περιττῶν.
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.Contrast 2024 A.D., when wars, wanderings of peoples, civil strifes, and despotisms abound.
