Ancient and modern

The question mark hanging over the very existence of newspapers raises the question: is there a future for the written word? BBC business editor Robert Peston is certain there is: in a recent lecture, he says that the blog is at the very heart of his work, enabling him to ‘share information — some of it hugely important, some of it less so — with a big and interested audience’. He sees this as critical to democracy. Ancient Greeks would be wary of his conclusion. In a play by Euripides, the priggish young man Hippolytus learns from a do-gooding nurse that his stepmother Phaedra is wasting away out of lust for him.

The ancient Greeks would have smelt a rat about releasing a murdered ‘on compassionate grounds’. Al-Megrahi, being partly responsible for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, has been released by Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill ‘on compassionate grounds’. Ancient Greeks would have smelled a rat. Mytilene, a city-state on the island of Lesbos, revolted against Athens in 427 bc, and was brought to heel. The Athenian Assembly voted to punish them by executing all the adult males and enslaving the women and children. Next day, however, there was a change of feeling about such a ‘cruel and unprecedented’ act directed against innocent and guilty alike, and a second Assembly was called.

Following the diktat of the European Court, Law Lords have ruled that ‘control orders’ are illegal, because they allow terrorist suspects to be placed under curfew without the evidence against them being made available to their lawyers. Following the diktat of the European Court, Law Lords have ruled that ‘control orders’ are illegal, because they allow terrorist suspects to be placed under curfew without the evidence against them being made available to their lawyers. A Law Lord commented: ‘The government has a responsibility for the protection of the lives and wellbeing of those who live in this country… The duty of the courts, however, is not a duty to protect the lives of citizens. It is a duty to apply the law.

The moon has been hitting the headlines briefly, for something that happened 40 years ago. It was in the ancients’ minds (and sights) all the time. The ancients were farmers, and farming is season-dependent. So, determined to keep the gods smiling benevolently on their activities, they tied many of their most important religious rituals to the seasons in the hope that this would ensure their crops flourished. But ritual had to be conducted in the same way, place and time, and this was the problem. The ancients knew that the seasons coincided with the time it took for the sun to complete its annual course (the ‘solar’ cycle of 365.25 days). But they counted time by the moon, and the average ‘lunar’ month lasts 29.

Train guards and underground drivers are planning to amuse passengers with a range of thought-provoking apophthegms. Most of the examples sound achingly dull. Classical ones would certainly wake up the carriage. Perhaps the most common Greek sentiment was, ‘It is your duty to help your friends and harm your enemies.’ So the Greek philosopher Thales, asked how best one could endure adversity, replied, ‘If one sees one’s enemies doing worse.’ He also came up with the following gem: ‘There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian.’ Whoops. Clearly the squibs must be appropriate for the audience.

The saga of MPs’ allowances brings to mind the depredations of Gaius Verres, Roman governor of Sicily 73-71 bc. The saga of MPs’ allowances brings to mind the depredations of Gaius Verres, Roman governor of Sicily 73-71 bc. Not that there is any real comparison between MPs’ money-grubbing and Verres’s ruthless looting of the island on a scale that would draw envious gasps from Robert Mugabe, but the issue they both raise — the trust that can be placed in government — is remarkably similar. The Sicilian people were represented in court by the young Cicero, aged 36. The foundation of his success was laid by his intensive and detailed research, which took him to Sicily for two months.

The general public, never having felt politicians can be wholly trusted, already believe any discreditable rumour about them that comes their way. Even though the recent expenses scandal has fingered fewer than 10 per cent of MPs, the situation will become far worse, as the Romans knew. The historian Cassius Dio argued that, under the Roman republic, the political system was broadly open: all decisions were taken by the Senatus Populusque Romanus, and made a matter of public record. But under the emperors, there was dramatic change: ‘Even though some things were made public by chance, they were not believed because they could not be verified. People suspected that things were said and done in accordance with the wishes of the men in power and their associates.

To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). The root of this word was financial — what you were worth. And what you were worth was judged not by your own values (note ‘value’), as by other people’s assessment of you. By that token, ‘honourable’ Members of Parliament should by now be quietly slinking shamefacedly down the back alleys (as the poet Pindar said of a wrestler humiliated in Games held at Delphi). Officials in Athens who had so transparently exploited the people would not be so lucky. Most officials in Athens were appointed by lot and for one year only.

This is the recession, so we must spend our way out of it! So speaks Old Labour. No, no. ‘Thrift’ must be the watchword, insists New Tory. Talk about missing the point. Aristocratic Romans knew all about the pleasures of spending vast sums of money. Lucullus (1st C bc) was a byword for it (hence our ‘Lucullan’). From a rich family anyway, he made a gigantic fortune during his campaigns in the East (Turkey, Syria, Armenia), duly rewarded his troops and made copious, magnificent benefactions in Rome (the manubiae discussed a few weeks ago), but then found political life did not suit him. So he retired, dedicating himself to a life of cultured excess. Fishponds were the order of the day among the rich.

Damian McBride, the latest spawn of the Campbell, has notable forebears in the infamous delatores, or informers, of the Roman empire. They too worked with passionate servility to suck up to the emperor of the day by bringing to his attention those who might be considered dangerous to him. A trumped-up charge of treason would be brought against the victim, followed as often as not by his exile or death, an invitation to commit suicide being the preferred option. The great historian Tacitus sketches the typical delator for us in the person of Caepio Crispinus. He was assistant to the governor of Bithynia, Marcus Granius Marcellus, and brought an accusation of treason against him.

As the true depth of the recession emerges, and fury increases against bankers for the massive bonuses they have demanded, effectively from the taxpayer, for creating it, Roman generals might set an unexpected example. Manubiae, probably derived from manus ‘hand’ and habere ‘to have’, meant the booty which a general could claim as his own, to do what he liked with, after a successful campaign. But unlike bankers, he knew where his duty lay. First and foremost, there would be handsome hand-outs to those who made it possible: troops, officers and family. He would then memorialise his achievements in Rome with public buildings, magnificent games and dinners for the plebs.

Pupils, we are told, must be kept ‘happy’ at all costs. Pupils, we are told, must be kept ‘happy’ at all costs. It is a surprise, therefore, that the educational potential of drunkenness has not been recognised by Mr Ed Balls, or by government adviser Professor Sir Liam Donaldson who has proposed that the price of drinks be increased in order to cut drunkenness. In his last work, Laws, Plato (427-347 bc) describes a Spartan boasting about how Sparta had abolished that most anarchic and licentious activity of all, the drinking party. But Plato disagrees, arguing that ‘Drunkenness is a science of some importance... and I am not speaking about taking or abstaining from wine: I do mean drunkenness.

Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Ancients would not be surprised. For them a ‘peace process’ implied the cessation of the ‘war process’, and a ‘war process’ could be ended only by a treaty which committed both parties to an agreement that the likes of Adams and his kind could never agree.

Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman ‘famous’ for appearing on Big Brother should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant. Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman ‘famous’ for appearing on Big Brother should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant. But the Stoics would have been baffled why she and her unhappy demise were thought worthy of such attention from the media. Stoicism, invented by the Cypriot Zeno (335-263 bc), taught that the ‘divine’ element in man was his rational mind.

To general disapproval (and in direct contradiction to the Chancellor Alistair Darling), Lord Mandelson has suggested that the government should not be too hasty in removing bonuses from (presumably) ‘hard-working’ bankers. To general disapproval (and in direct contradiction to the Chancellor Alistair Darling), Lord Mandelson has suggested that the government should not be too hasty in removing bonuses from (presumably) ‘hard-working’ bankers. How very ‘New Roman’. There were far-reaching social and cultural changes in the Roman world from 100 bc to ad 120, during the collapse of the republic and growth of empire (beginning with the first Roman emperor Augustus, 27 bc–ad 14).

Sandwell Council recently advertised for a ‘Thematic Liaison Manager (Performance)’ at £41,000 a year. Sandwell Council recently advertised for a ‘Thematic Liaison Manager (Performance)’ at £41,000 a year. It would be instructive if any reader could tell from that description what the job entailed. I doubt anyone could, and thereby hangs a tale. Latin was the language of learning in the West for more than 1,000 years after the fall of the western Roman empire in the 5th century ad. When it began to be replaced by vernaculars and translations, some other justification for it had to be found. One common one was that it gave you an entrée into the world of those who had done Latin at school, i.e.

The Today programme would call her iconic, but since she is a 16.1cm gold and ivory (‘chrys-elephantine’) statuette, it would not be saying much. She stands there, erect, shoulders back, thrusting forward impressive bare breasts (one nipple the tip of a golden nail), both hands holding snakes that, twined round her arms, stretch outwards from her, tongues flickering. The best-known of all the ancient Cretan snake goddesses, she has graced the covers of, and been reproduced in, a thousand books. It is her face that has caught the imagination. With her pouting lips and deep-set eyes, she has been hailed as ‘charmingly serene’, ‘radiant’, ‘demure’, ‘expressive of individuality’ and ‘arresting’.