All these uniform scenes and dramas, whether you have come to know them through personal experience or through ancient history
All these spectacles were the same, and only the actors were different.
Marcus, for his part, would no doubt have approved of Schopenhauer’s views on history:
From beginning to end, it is the repetition of the same drama, with different costumes and names. This identical element, which persists throughout all changes, consists in the basic qualities of the human heart and head—many of them are bad; a few of them good. History’s overall motto ought to be Eadem, sed aliter. One who has read Herodotus has, from a philosophical point of view, already studied enough history, for his work already contains everything which constitutes the subsequent history of the world.
These spectacles which repeat themselves identically throughout one’s life and throughout the ages are almost always scenes of human evil, hypocrisy, and futility. It makes no difference whether one sees them for forty years, or for ten thousand. Death will deliver us from this spectacle, as tiring as the games of the amphitheater; or at least it will not make us miss anything, since it is impossible for anything new to happen.
-- Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
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