"History repeats itself," is not just the weary battle cry of teachers lecturing at nodding heads.

World history can be viewed cyclically or spirally as the inevitable rise and fall of political empires. It can also be viewed as a succession of dominant cultures, each with contributions that would be valuable to us today--if only we'd pay attention.

Ancient dental techniques compare favorably with our modern mercury based methods. Some people compare ancient infant exposure with modern partial birth abortions. Plautus' comedies -- with their focus on the old-fashioned virtues of (usually deficient) filial piety and duty -- suggest our vaunted, old-fashioned family values have long been illusory.

After the Roman Empire fell, a lot of information disappeared--at least in the West. Some of it was deliberately suppressed for its pagan character; some of it was lost because Westerners no longer understood Greek or most of the other ancient languages; and some of it was burned or lost through attrition. We are still in the process of regaining the lessons of our Mediterranean forebears. The more we revert to traditional herbal medicine, the more important are the medical writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Soranus, and others. The more we question the wisdom of following a Judaeo-Christian morality in a pluralistic society, the more we need to read the ethical philosophy of Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, and Plato. And the more we head in the direction of a unified, democratic world, the more we should learn from the ancient empire builders, like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar and the lawmakers of the birthplace of democracy, Athens.