Ancient and modern

A senior civil servant in the Department of Education, having lost a case for ‘bullying’ brought against its special advisers, took her grievance to a tribunal and was promptly awarded an out-of-court settlement of £25,000. Hacks on a Sunday newspaper were jubilant, devoting three pieces to it: it must have been bullying after all, the Department was out of control, will no one rid us of these turbulent Spads, and so on. But were they right? The greatest of Roman historians, Tacitus (ad 56-117), was well aware how hard it was to get solid information. Though an insider himself — consul and provincial governor — time and again he found himself up against a brick wall.

Last week, Stoics applauded the idea that the doctor might in certain situations give the patient a book, not a pill, on the grounds that thinking rationally solved all personal problems. So why was Stoicism associated with the stiff upper lip? What was rational about that? Since Stoics believed that divinity/reason permeated the universe ‘like honey through a honeycomb’, they concluded that the will of the divinity ruled our lives inescapably: providence, or fate, must have its way. But this worried Stoics, because they also believed in free will. Square that circle! They did so by arguing that fate did not necessarily come in single statements. It could be conditional: ‘if I do X (e.g. go to the doctor), Y will result (I shall recover)’.

It has been proposed that, to deal with certain sorts of emotional problems for which we go to the doctor, we should be given an improving book to read. Quite right too, the Stoic would reply. ‘Stoicism’ derives from the Greek stoa, the portico in Athens where from 300 BC its inventor Zeno (a Cypriot) taught it. Its main principle is caught in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ with its ‘motion and a spirit that impels/All thinking things, all objects of all thought,/And rolls through all things’.

The government is having its annual fit about the fat. In the ancient world, most of the population worked the land, while aristocrats kept trim in the gymnasia. Only the militarily obsessed Spartans made it government business, inspecting their warriors naked every ten days for signs of excessive thinness or corpulence. But ancient doctors were aware of the problems. While no one mentions anorexia or slimming for aesthetic reasons, the famous 5th C. bc Greek doctor Hippocrates commented that ‘dieting which causes excessive loss of weight, as well as the feeding-up of the emaciated, is beset with difficulties’. He was also aware that sudden death was more common in the fat, and judged obesity a cause of sterility in women, causing a blockage to the mouth of the uterus.

Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, may have to confront this year the possible break-up of the world-wide Anglican communion. Perhaps the splendid letter from Seneca the Younger (AD 1-65), sketching a pagan take on religious feeling, will suggest a way ahead. After discussing the divine spirit ‘which guards us and watches us in the evil and the good we do’, he turns to nature: ‘Imagine you come across a dense wood of exceptionally tall, ancient trees that shut out all sight of the sky with thick screens of overlaying branches. Its loftiness, its seclusion and your wonderment at finding so deep and unbroken a gloom out in the open, will prove the presence of a deity.

Christmas is the time in the church calendar when Woman-as-Mother comes into supreme prominence. But in classical literature, Women-as-Anything never seem to enjoy much of a press, being either ignored or depicted as sex-mad, treacherous drunkards — and this despite a world teeming with goddesses, as well as stories about mortal women producing offspring from divine encounters. The reason most often given is simple: misogyny. But it is not as simple as that. The West’s first and most influential author is Homer (c. 700 BC). Composer of the Iliad and Odyssey, he paints a quite different picture of women in many roles — as wives, mothers or slaves. The Iliad opens with Apollo sending a plague against the Greek army.

By refusing to consecrate women as bishops, the C of E has failed in the eyes of all its Revd Lucys and Giles to fulfil its sacred calling of acquiescence to the commandments of a secular society. Fifth-century BC Athenians must therefore step in and show them how to do it. All the ‘political’ words in English, from ‘policy’ to ‘police’, derive from the ancient Greek polis, meaning (roughly) ‘city-state’; and in ancient Greece, the polis wielded the ultimate authority over the sacred rituals that lay at the heart of its religious life. Priests did not run churches, preach, teach, meet in synods or claim moral or theological authority, let alone demand adherence to 39 articles.

George Entwistle accounted himself ‘honourable’ as he resigned his position as head of the BBC, and Lord Patten joined in the applause. It was as if Entwistle thought he deserved it. Ancient Greeks would have been baffled. You cannot honour yourself. Only others can do that. The man had failed. Did he have no shame? Aristotle analysed shame much as we do: it is a feeling ‘connected with disrepute in the eyes of those whom a person holds in high regard’.

Prime Minister Cameron has argued that ‘retribution [against criminals] is not a dirty word’ and ‘punishment is what offenders both deserve and need’. Many ancients would have keenly agreed. Ancient Greeks argued that society was held together by systems of rewards and penalties, and revenge, recompense and deterrence were the main features of their penal thinking. In Homer’s epics (c.700 bc), for example, the hero demands recompense to restore any loss of status or wealth, see the offender squirm, advertise that he is squirming, and deter him from repeating the offence. Romans were in general less sophisticated.

If Ian Hislop in his new TV series is right, the English up to the 19th century were a bunch of softies. It was from studying the Romans, among others, that they learnt about the stiff upper lip. True enough, but the reality behind such behaviour is provided by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, on the death of his beloved daughter Tullia in February 45 BC. The funeral over, Cicero fled for two weeks’ refuge to his oldest friend Atticus, reading the ‘consolation literature’ in Atticus’ extensive library. On 6 March he retreated to his own secluded house in Astura on the coast, nearly 40 miles from Rome. Daily private letters to Atticus reveal his state of mind: ‘I write all day long, not that it does any real good, but for a time it distracts me.

The ancient Greek example has already shown the Lib Dems how to enact the Mansion Tax. Now the Romans must step in to explain how to bring about the full-blown wealth tax they so ardently covet. The historian Livy says that an early king, Servius Tullius (traditional dates 578-534 BC), invented the idea of raising money through a wealth tax, i.e. a tax on property. Its purpose was to compensate soldiers for loss of income during long campaigns. The problem was the vast disparity of the property that anyone owned. So Servius came up with the idea of ensuring that the wealthiest paid the most. He did this by creating seven bands of citizens, from the wealthiest to the poorest, defined by their capacity to provide military resources.

All the foul-mouthed effing and blinding by Andrew Mitchell did not worry the copper, only his use of the word ‘pleb’. Quite right too: who could be more plebeian than Mr Mitchell? If we can trust accounts of early Roman history when kings ruled Rome (traditional dates 753-509 bc), plebs was contrasted with patricii simply because patricians came from those clans that had supplied the kings with his circle of advisers, while the plebs had not. Note in passing that plebs is singular, ‘general body of citizens’. It does not refer to an individual member of the plebs, as ‘pleb’ does. The distinction sharpened when the kings were driven out and in the new republic the Senate, dominated by patricians, came to play a major role.