Lord Byron

There is the moral of all human tales;
’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption,—barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, London, 1818, c. 4, st. 108