Things just don’t ever change, do they?

This is a com­ment pub­lished in 1776 about a leader who died ear­ly in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry CE:

“Tra­jan was ambi­tious of fame; and as long as mankind shall con­tin­ue to bestow more lib­er­al applause on their destroy­ers than on their bene­fac­tors, the thirst of mil­i­tary glo­ry will ever be the vice of the most exalt­ed characters.”

–The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol I, Edward Gibbon