The Five Stages has long been one of my favorites.

I wonder if it's so much a failure of nerve, so much as living in an age where the larger trajectory has crested, leaving those still looking up alone in their vigil?

Rome had long given up on the Republic and feuding among the oligarchs was rule of the day.

Monarchy amounted to acceptance of might as right. It would be a long time before that spell faded.

I think we are today, just one turn of the screw beyond that world and even less enlightened to the larger dynamic, given the extent of modern clutter as ersatz culture.