Friday Night Tacitus: Partly to keep my mind in good shape and partly to share with you my love of the Classics, I'm periodically going to translate a Latin (or Greek!) work that I like or that is relevant. Tonight is a snippet of Tacitus's Annals, Book IV, Chapter 32, on the difference of history between Republican and Imperial regimes.

"I am not unaware that most of these things I have related and will relate appear small and trifling to note: but no one can compare our annals with the writings of those who composed the ancient affairs of the Roman people.
They were commemorating with a free stride enormous wars, sieges of the cities, the overthrow and capture of kings, or - if they ever chanced to turn to internal affairs - the discords of consuls against tribunes, agrarian and corn laws, the struggles of the plebs and optimates; yet we have a protracted and inglorious task: an immovable or barely disturbed peace, the wretched matters of the city, and the Emperor was incurious of expanding the Empire.
Nevertheless, it will not have been without use to examine those things, while trifling at first blush, out of which the motion of great things often rises."