Ancient and modern

Last week, Brendan O’Neill described in this magazine how students regulate ‘unacceptable’ political views with ‘no platform’ policies, safe spaces and trigger warnings. Two weeks ago a student Latin course (Reading Latin, P. Jones and K. Sidwell) was ‘outed’ by an American PhD student, because the text featured three goddesses, each confidently stripping off, determined to win the golden apple from Paris, and two rapes. Such ‘offensive’ choices, she said, did not help the cause of Latin, ‘or make the historically racist and classist discipline of classics any more accessible’. Both rapes featured in a foundation myth of early Roman history.

As expected, the prospect of charging £9,000 (and rising) per annum, per student has universities abandoning any pretence to maintaining standards in favour of piling ’em high. Ancient ‘universities’ knew all about it. Ancient education was private. A city might pay a ‘lecturer’ a small retainer, but he made his money through the fees he charged. But since all lecturers taught the same thing — rhetoric, with a view to a career in politics and law — each was in a constant, often literal, battle to attract students and stop them defecting. We hear of lecturers urging their students to waylay ‘freshers’ as they arrived in port and drag them to their classes. Libanius (c.

Sir Trevor Nunn is directing a play called ‘Dessert’. It seems to be a virtue-signalling riff on the evil of possessions. Doubtless Cicero and Aratus will not feature. On the face of it, the Roman statesman Cicero (1st c bc) was a passionate upholder of property rights. He said ‘it is the proper function of the state and its citizens to ensure for everyone the free and undisturbed guardianship of their possessions’. But that did not mean ownership of property overrode the state’s central purpose and therefore duty — the maintenance of social cohesion and so social harmony, that concordia to which Cicero returned again and again.

Asked about the monarchy, Prince Harry said his aim was to ‘modernise’ it. Not that any royal wanted to be king or queen, he said, but they would ‘carry out [their] duties at the right time. We are not doing this for ourselves but for the greater good of the people.’ It sounds as if he thinks he is doing us a favour. The question of one’s communal obligations was first raised in the West in Homer’s Iliad (8th century bc). In a dangerous assault on the Greek camp, King Sarpedon, an ally of the Trojans from Lycia (S.E. Turkey), explained to his cousin Glaucus the reason for risking their lives in this way. He began by asking the crucial question: why in Lycia were they looked up to as gods, and given the best of everything?

In a political ‘post-truth’ world, currently the subject of a slew of books, emotions and personal belief are said to shape opinion more than ‘objective’ fact. But as Aristotle pointed out in his Art of Rhetoric (4th century bc), there are facts only about the present and past; about the future, politics’ main concern, there are only interests and aspirations.

Donald Trump, whose word no one can believe and actions no one can anticipate, looks to blame anyone but himself for the chaos of his administration. The result is an inability to attract staff and a deep paranoia among those already in White House trying to work under him. But how to withdraw from serving such a man without recriminations? Seneca, the philosopher and adviser to Nero, took the view that entering politics was honourable as long as there was no good reason not to, and suggested that no state could be so bad that a man could not serve it at some level or other. But when the Trump in Nero emerged, no one had the remotest idea what he would do next or whether what he said was true or false.

Ian Paterson, a ‘charming’ breast surgeon with a ‘God complex’, has been found guilty of intentionally wounding patients by carrying out ‘extensive, life-changing operations for no medically justifiable reason’, probably to enrich himself. It raises a long-standing question. The brilliant Greek doctor Galen (129-216 ad) was the most famous doctor in the Roman Empire. In all, he may have written c. 500 medical treatises, of which more than 120 (c. three million words) survive. His influence on medical practice was to last into the 17th century.

A year ago, the Danes reached into their groaning cracker barrel and pulled out ‘hygge’ as their own solution to the world’s problems. That was bad enough, but now it is the Swedes’ turn, offering up ‘lagom’ as the shrine before which all must now grovel in untimely worship. Yet what are both of these but replays of two hoary classical injunctions? ‘Hygge’ ultimately stems from the philosopher Epicurus (d. 271 bc): ‘He who needs tomorrow least will approach it with the most pleasure.’ In his take on the subject, the poet Horace (d. 8 bc) urged Leuconoe to ‘trust as little as possible in tomorrow’ and instead carpe diem, usually translated ‘seize the day’.