Ah, those Romans......................

     The insightful and luckily nonacademic historian Tom Holland once commented:  "The thing I most admire about the Romans was the utter contempt they were capable of showing the cult of youth."  He also wrote:  "the Romans judged their political system by asking not whether it made sense but whether it worked," ...

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb,  Skin In The Game:  Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life