A Warning to Washington From Empires Past

So you see pass before your eyes, as if in an instant, I say not kings and emperors but those grand empires that had made the whole universe tremble? When you see the Assyrians, ancient and modern, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans appear before you one after the other and fall, one on top of the other, so to speak, this terrifying fracas makes you feel that there is nothing solid among men [sic] and that inconstancy and agitation are the proper fate of things human.

-- Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, teacher of the heir of Louis XIV of France, in his work Discourse on Universal History, written 108 years before 1789