From Our Oriental Heritage, page 450, on the end of the line of Ashoka:
States are built not on the ideals but on the nature of men.
I highlighted this because the Durant espouses Socialist ideas throughout, but here the Durant explains why socialism and communism and other authoritarian systems fail.
But in a couple of pages, no doubt, the Durant will again lament how an enlightened leader redistributed land/wealth but how his minister, progeny, or an amalgamation became corrupt and the idyll collapsed.
Also, a couple of From the Durant posts ago I said old school pulp writers mined history for story ideas. Apparently, modern pop culture makers mine history for names alone.