"Then, for the first time, the boy had realized how good and bad can be blended together in a single man, and in the story of a nation. That thought Livy was to put down in the introduction of his great history of the Roman people, which he was to write in future days.
'That is what makes the study of history so valuable,' he was to say-- 'the fact that you can behold, displayed as on a monument, every kind of conduct; thence you may select for yourself and for your country that which you may imitate; thence note what is shameful in the undertaking and shameful inthe result, which you may avoid...'"
--from Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster, pages 44-45
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