From Our Oriental Heritage, page 373:
But it would be unfair to judge the people from their kings; virtue is not news, and virtuous men, like happy nations, have no history.
He’s talking about the Persians now and the splendid barbarities they paid upon traitors (painful death, razing whole villages in a manner characteristic of a militaristic leader to come later).
However, the quote reminded me a lot of Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The Story of Civilization series differs from most histories, though, that the Durants spend a lot of time covering non-militaristic and non-Great Man threads of history, focusing on the arts and commerce of civilizations especially under the more enlightened leaders of each.
