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Excerpt from Ancient and Mediæval Republics: A Review of Their Institutions, and of the Causes of Their Decline and Fall The glory and the wane of republics of the past form a subject of never-dying interest to the student, the philoso pher, and the statesman. In the laborious narratives bequeathed to us by patient and truth-loving historians, who not unfrequently had witnessed with their own eyes the scenes portrayed by their pens, in the vivid pictures presented by the comic and the satirical poets, and in the philippics of Demosthenes and the orations of Cicero, we trace the workings of the same jealousy, the same ambition, the same love of power and greed for gold which animate men to-day. In the study of ancient institutions and customs we learn how little there is new under the sun, how few experiments in civil government have been untried, how few tricks and expedients for the achievement of political objects are original with modern partisans. We may observe, at a secure distance, the play of unruly passions. The rage of rival factions, the plots and counter-plots of conspirators. Each sketch of the life of a dead common wealth is in itself a tragedy, full of lessons and full of warnings to every friend of manhood equality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.