Ancient and modern

In writing an article that argued both for and against the European Union, Boris Johnson was following a solidly classical precedent — that the finest exponents of the art of persuasion were those able to argue equally convincingly on both sides of any question. An anonymous document entitled Dissoi Logoi (‘Two-sided arguments’, c. 4th Century BC) provided a long list of examples: ‘Death is bad for those who die, but good for the undertakers and the grave-diggers. Farming, when it makes a handsome success of producing crops, is good for the farmers, but bad for the merchants… It is shameful for a husband to adorn himself with white lead and wear gold ornaments, but proper for a wife. It is proper to do good to friends, but shameful to do it to enemies.

‘If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,’ proclaimed Theresa May in a speech to the Conservative party conference. Oh dear! And her a vicar’s daughter too! ‘Cosmopolitan’ derives from the ancient Greek kosmos ‘world’ plus politês, ‘enfranchised member of a polis, citizen’. It was a word used by the 4th century BC philosopher Diogenes to describe himself when he was asked where he came from. Famous for living ‘like a dog’ (kunikos, whence ‘cynic’) and rejecting all conventional values, it seems that he was claiming to be an example of a man wholly in tune with nature and existing on a higher plane of virtue that should embrace the whole world.

Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected leader of the Labour party not by MPs but by his teenage ‘fans’ in Momentum. So what does Corbyn need to do when he wins power? Follow the example of the emperor Augustus, that’s what. When Rome was a republic, its monuments and military banners proclaimed it as SPQR — Senatus Populusque Romanus, a combination of the senate, mostly consisting of Rome’s elite families, and the people. The Greek historian Polybius greatly admired its clever balancing of powers between senate, people and office-holders. In the course of the 1st century BC, this system collapsed in bloody civil war. From that final conflict in 31 BC emerged Rome’s first emperor, the revolutionary Augustus (d. AD 14).

It comes as no surprise to find that there has recently been much talk among Brexit supporters about ‘the wisdom of crowds’. The question fascinated Aristotle, who discussed it at some length in his Politics. Aristotle (4th century BC) firmly believed that only the ‘best’ should rule. Nevertheless, he had lived in a direct people’s democracy in Athens, and agreed that ‘perhaps, for all its difficulties, it has something to be said for it’. He proceeded to make the case by a series of analogies. The many, he suggested, might be collectively better than the few ‘in the same way that a feast to which all contribute is better than one supplied at one man’s expense’.

Theresa May has brought her own advisers with her into No. 10, and as usual the knives are out for them: they are parasites, and what are the civil service and the cabinet for anyway? Romans had the same trouble with freedmen. A ‘freedman’ (libertus or libertinus) was someone who had been a slave but been freed by his master. The emperor had hundreds of such slaves at his service, many with valuable skills, and any who were freed could be invited to retain their position in the imperial entourage, a duty they had to fulfil if their master asked them. While such a man was a slave, whatever his position, he was a non-person. But once freed, he became a citizen (though not a full one) and that was a very different kettle of fish.

Whether the EU commission knows what is good for it or not — always a tricky call — post-Brexit Britain should follow Roman practice in intelligently organising its borders. These were not meant to be barriers, but traversable, under Roman control. Take the Red Sea ports. Travellers to and from Egypt were given trackable passes, at a cost, to access both the roads and the ports. Everyone understood the system, and services sprang up along the routes to keep trade flowing. The very presence of Roman soldiers created mini-markets of their own for clothes, food and sex. An inscription records the hire of a prostitute, Procla, to a military outpost for 60 drachmas plus transaction and goods levy (higher than for women in general).

Wrapped in his fantasy world of a Labour party ruling the country in accordance with the diktats of those of its members who support him, Jeremy Corbyn reminds one of Plato’s image of humans trapped in a cave, able only to see the wall in front of them. Behind them, at the opposite end of the cave, is a fire, and in front of that, a puppet show. The shadows of those puppets, cavorting on the wall in front of him, are man’s reality. And Corbyn’s. His MPs are right to want a party connected to the real world, but is a leadership battle the right way to go about it? The contest should be a purely rhetorical one, though Corbyn’s followers will not hesitate to use force instead.

Inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo in Delphi were the famous words gnôthi sauton (‘know yourself’) and mêden agan (‘nothing in excess’). They should be re-inscribed in the chamber of the House of Commons, and especially on every piece of paper that passes across the desk of the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. The ancients were all too aware that life was characterised by man’s weakness, ignorance and vulnerability to sudden, unpredictable reversals of fortune. Although one reaction was to eat, drink and be merry, pessimism was the Greeks’ default position to the world about them.

A traitor to one man is a hero to another. So debate rages around the role of David Cameron’s old friend and adviser Steve Hilton — is he a noble Brutus who saved parliamentary democracy by throwing in his lot with Leave, or the traitor who destroyed Cameron’s European dream? A foundational story of Rome was the expulsion in 509 BC of the last king, the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus (‘the arrogant’), and birth of the free republic. Well before Caesar met his end on the Ides of March 44 BC, Romans were remembering that story and relating it to Caesar’s growing power and ambition. ‘Absolute power vested in one man easily and quickly degenerates into a tyranny,’ said Cicero, who hated Caesar’s assault on old Roman values.

If Remain has won, for all the political and financial flurries, it will be business as usual for us plebs. But such is the EU’s octopus-like embrace, so it will be if the Leavers win, creating much disillusionment. Cicero felt equally impotent at a similarly dramatic turning point — the assassination of EUlius Caesar. Cicero had long despaired at the slow collapse of the ‘free’ republic and the rise of the tyrant Caesar. ‘We ought to have resisted him while he was weak — then it would have been easy,’ Cicero wrote in a letter. When Caesar started the civil war in 49 BC, he exclaimed ‘Are we talking about a Roman general or Hannibal?

Our politicians, realising that the referendum campaign will be settled not by themselves under the usual parliamentary constraints but by the Twitter-maddened populace under no constraints at all, have decided to abandon any principles they may have and play the straight populist game. Plato well understood the behaviour and its consequences. In his Republic, he envisages a man in charge of a large and powerful animal who studies its moods and needs. He learns when to approach and handle it, when and why it is savage and gentle, the meaning of the various noises it makes and how to speak to it to annoy or calm it. He might then deduce that he has a scientific understanding of animals.

The principle of countries working harmoniously together is wholly admirable. Why, then, has the European Union become such a disaster area? The success of the Roman empire may offer a clue. Romans won that empire almost entirely by military might. But they could not have maintained it that way: for some 500 years, a mere 300,000 legionaries patrolled this area of approximately two million square miles and about 60 million inhabitants. So what was their secret? The key is pleasingly paradoxical: the Romans never consciously planned an empire at all. Once they had started down that road, they saw the material advantages it could bring, but there was no blueprint for it. Success was a result of hard-won experience.