Ancient greece

A Greek essayist c. 420 BC argued that Athens’s radical democracy, giving the vote to every adult male citizen, resulted in the poor having total power to impose their will on the rich. Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party, must dream of such a world. The essayist agrees that, since the poor row the ships which control the Athenian empire, they have a right to enjoy political power which allows them to serve their own interests in the weekly Assemblies. But he thinks that, while the educated rich are most concerned about what is just and good, the common poor are ignorant, disorderly good-for-nothings. Their power simply ensures that they can satisfy their own lawless needs.

The Oscars mark the end of the awards season, with their annual rituals of self-applause to which actors are so addicted, as Oscar nominees are to the $350,000 gift bags. The ancient Greeks are to blame. Greek luvvies and athletes formed the world’s first trade unions to wring from their sponsors privileges and guarantees which make the Olympic Committee look like beginners.  The luvvies’ worldwide union, founded in the 3rd century bc, lasted 600 years. It came to be called the ‘Artists [some said ‘Toadies’] of Dionysus’. They negotiated freedom of travel and immunity from military service, taxation and arrest, and came from all over the Greek-speaking world to perform.

A party that can foretell the future stands a very good chance of success. Given Labour’s record of U-turns, they cannot even foretell the present. A state’s success in the ancient world depended on its mastery of natural resources: the more land and people you controlled, the more powerful you were. So states were frequently at war and naturally sought the favour of the gods – by consulting oracles, entrails and flights of birds, or striking lucky by means of dreams, omens, sneezes, odd events and suchlike. However, there were no guarantees. ‘A prophecy is the guess of a sensible man’ (Euripides), ‘No good has ever come from prophecy’ (Aeschylus). Menander hit the spot, when a character desired ‘A future not as I wish, but to my benefit.

What with the threat of global warming and nuclear war, the new year might start with a big bang. The Greeks were preoccupied with this possibility as well and called it the apocalypse (apokalupsis), meaning ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’. It has a long history behind it. The Greek farmer-poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) introduced the idea of a sequence of five ages – golden, silver, bronze, heroic, iron, each worse than the other – repeated five times and ending in total destruction. In his magnificent On the Nature of the Universe, the Roman poet Lucretius (d. c. 55 BC), who was an atomist, described how a world made of atoms would slowly decay and crumble into ruin – which he thought nature was doing in his own time – but would then renew itself. The evidence?

Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said: ‘This is Tom Stoppard. David West put me on to you.’ West was professor of Latin at Newcastle University and Tom called him when he had queries about Latin. But he had a question about the ancient Greeks which David could not answer, so he suggested Tom try me. I have no memory of what the question was, but my answer must at least have satisfied him because he continued to throw the odd leg-break my way. To give some idea of his range of interests, on one occasion he became interested in the Greek perfect tense. He had done Latin and some Greek at his school in Yorkshire.

Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain had come to a fork in the road. As usual, he took it – the fork between his words and his actions. Athenians of the 5th C bc were fascinated by the implications of logos (‘speech, reason, argument’, cf. ‘logic’) and ergon (‘action/results’, cf. ‘erg’). While Homeric heroes (8th C bc) were ordered to excel as ‘speakers of words’ and ‘doers of deeds’ because that made them winners in both the political and military arenas, the statesman Pericles emphasised the high importance of the interaction between word and deed: ‘We do not think logos is an obstacle to action; no, the issue is the failure to use logos before action has to be taken.

Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to stamp duty on a flat she had bought. Athenians were extremely proud of their citizen-led Assembly and did not take kindly to sub-standard officials. Plato constructed a dialogue (c. 430 bc) between Socrates and the controversial sophist Protagoras, who claimed that anyone taught by him would be a success in public and private life. Socrates challenged this claim. He pointed out that, when the democratic assembly of male citizens met to discuss technical matters (e.g. ship-building), they listened to those who actually had experience of building ships and shouted down anyone who did not.

While Greek and Roman thinkers were influential in developing ideas such as citizenship, justice and equality, the notion of universal ‘human rights’ (1948), especially those involving one’s ‘identity’, would have struck them as absurd. ‘Identity’ derives from the Latin idem, ‘the same, unchanged’, via the French identité (14th century). The term has been colonised by many different groups who feel that their specific identity – e.g. colour, sexual preferences, personal beliefs – bestows ‘rights’ upon them to behave or be treated in specific ways, whatever anyone else thinks about it, let alone the law of the land.

Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young people’s health and athleticism with one-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises. He could usefully add elements of the early training invented by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus to create disciplined, physically and mentally resilient soldiers and citizens. Every baby was examined for fitness. They were trained not to fuss about food, or be frightened of the dark when left alone, or to get angry or cry. At seven, they joined bands in which they grew up together while their elders registered their progress in obedience and courage.

This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral Speech of 431 bc, he was not celebrating victory – the war would end in 404 bc with Athens’s surrender – but doing something quite new: he was reflecting on what Athens stood for and why it was worth dying for.

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on stone and bronze pillars, but it was citizens who oversaw the treaty’s maintenance. In a Greek democracy, however, there was no saying how, under the influence of different leaders, policy might change and annul a treaty at a stroke. Then again, though treaties could be sworn to last forever, ‘circumstances’ were very unlikely to remain so accommodating.

Boris Johnson’s Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plough, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris is among the international elite, perhaps Alcibiades (c. 451-404 bc) would fit him better. Athenian elites had long had connections with the other power-brokers of the classical Greek world, Sparta and Persia. Born into such a family, the young Alcibiades, at the death of his father in 447 bc, was placed in the care of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who chose Socrates as his mentor (we are told he tried to seduce Socrates but failed). A charismatic and handsome young man, he led a life of ‘lawless self-indulgence’ but, as a formidable strategist, he built an alliance to sustain the long war against Sparta, though it was defeated in 418 bc.

Rachel Reeves seems to be promising us an initial Iron Age of misery which will mutate into a glorious Golden Age. How very classical of her. It is true that some ancient Greeks saw it the other way round. They argued that it was early civilisation that was the Golden Age, inhabited by men who lived ageless and free from hardship, while Nature poured forth its fruits, harvested by men at leisure (comic poets greatly enjoyed imagining a world in which it rained wine and pease porridge, hot sausage slices rolled down rivers and inanimate objects jumped to obey orders: ‘Table, come here! Cup, go wash yourself! Fish, turn over and baste yourself with oil and salt!’).