Pacem supplices petunt
Explorers of the past are never quite free. The past is their tyrant. It forbids them to know anything which it has not itself, consciously or otherwise, yielded to them.
- * Livy II.49.12, of the Veientes in the early fourth century before the common era; they had been driven back to their camp by the Romans, from whom they ‘on bended knees’ (supplices) sought peace. Doubtless Livy was not literal; an entire army of grovelling Veientes seems unlikely. One assumes they sent messengers.