RE ECHOES OF THE DISTANT PAST

This DK topic title, suggests an irresistible comment here, (why not also echo another really distant past), on a series of lectures I've been watching, 


even in the face of  well deserved Whig fallacy (Butterfield's sense) criticism:


Garrett Fagan, The History of Ancient Rome, especially the series of lectures dealing with the decline of the Roman Republic, lasting 100 years. 


We are now down to 45 BC, and Caesar's takeover of the government after the deaths of his co triumvirs, Crassus (in Parthia, then Persia, fighting it); 


and Pompey, murdered by treacherous Ptolemaic Egyptians, after escaping Caesar's wrath, on the shores of the then, fawning, Egypt.


The picture painted of the Roman state at this time is not a pretty one.


Commenting on DK's current topic, and some of his remarks on democracy, I would also add something like, 


'echoing' his comments on Brooks and Kristof, 


Democracy is, and has been, a highly 'relative' term, 


and not always very much a 'Whig Interpretation Of History' march, toward higher ground.