‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus’ – that is, what many since have called the period of the ‘good emperors’: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
Gibbon's Good Emperors--and his naieve belief that everyone would prefer living then.
