Plato

He reduced political evolution to a simple formula: a sequence of monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and dictatorship. History will support his analysis. Civilizations decay quite leisurely, however. For example, Rome was at nadir when Caesar came (60BC); yet it did not succomb to the barbarians until 465AD. Our civilization is still very young as compared with some in the past. Hopefully, we will not be a supporting statistic for Plato's formula.