"Looking back, not only to the last century or two but to earlier epochs, history can seem more like a random walk through periods of progress and retreat, light and darkness, civilization and tyranny, than a straight arrow aimed at freedom and peace.

 

In the 146 BCE, the citizens of Athens who had been meeting to make policy, spend public money and elect leaders in the form of government that gave us the word "democracy," lost, the city and its residents cowered under the heel of a distant ruler, a subjugated outpost of a vast foreign empire.

The Roman Republic may not have been democratic in our understanding of the term, but its constitutional order and many of its institutions served as templates for the modern American republic. Yet it was soon enough replaced by imperial rule that, while it retained the trappings of republicanism, was for centuries a personal autocracy that was in turn eventually replaced by barbarous chaos." [1]

1. Free Expression: The Enemies of Freedom Are Deadlier Than Ever. Baker, Gerard.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Oct 2023: A.15.