"Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. Their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior. For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul. The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.” James Romm
"Nec eventus modo hoc docet, stultorum iste magister est, sed eadem ratio, quae fuit futuraque, donec res eaedem manebunt, immutabilis est."
Livy, History of Rome, Book 22
And it is not only the result that will instruct them, that teacher of fools, but reason itself, which was and will be unchanging, so long as the same fundamental conditions still hold.
