History

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

Nero’s personal amphitheatre, recently discovered near the Vatican, was praised to the skies in the ancient Romans’ ‘newspaper’. The historian Tacitus commented drily that it ought to carry stories of much greater historical merit. The ‘newspaper’ was the Acta Diurna (‘Daily Events’), written on papyrus by actuarii, posted up on an Album (whiteboard) in the Roman forum and elsewhere, and left for a few days before being taken down and put into storage for future reference (no copies survive). It was Julius Caesar’s ‘very first act as consul (59 bc) to ensure that the proceedings both of the Senate and of the people should be published daily’. Covering a huge

Architects are thrilled about AI, confident that it will take us into an exciting new world at the flick of a switch. The Roman architect Vitruvius begins his ten-book De architectura (c. 25 bc) by describing an architect’s education. Craftsmanship – continuous and familiar practice – must go hand in hand with theoretical skill and method. He must be a man of letters so that he can draw on precedents; proficient in drawing and geometry; and a master of rule and compass. Optics will teach him how to use the sun to best effect in lighting rooms. He must also be good at arithmetic to cost his buildings. He must

Whatever Prince Andrew has done, the succession to our throne is secure. How envious the Roman emperor Augustus would have been! In vain did he offer rewards for faithful marriage and punishments for adultery and such like. The mildest punishment was temporary expulsion from Roman territory; the harshest, banishment in perpetuity to an ‘island or oasis’, with loss of property and citizenship, and death for returning. But Augustus’s only child, Julia, who had five children, took advantage of her husband’s lengthy spells abroad and had (it appears) many lovers, and even assignations in the middle of the forum. She explained the improbable fact that all her children were the very

Labour may be in a bit of a mess, but Cicero (d. 43 bc) has some top tips. ‘Let conscience and scrupulous regard for the right take precedence over the obligations of friendship.’ ‘The person who corrupts his audience by words commits a graver crime than the man who does so by bribery. For even a virtuous man could be corrupted by words, but not by a bribe.’ ‘People who argue that advantage is one thing and right another are uprooting nature’s fundamental principles. Obviously, we all aim at our own advantage: we find that irresistibly attractive. No one can possibly work against his own interests – indeed no one

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. But as the great Greek historian Herodotus pointed out after spending a lifetime

‘Proscription’ appears to be the current word of the month. But what does it mean? The Latin scribo means ‘I write’ and generates a root in script-. Since the Latin prefix pro carried the idea of ‘bringing something into the open’, the noun proscriptio meant ‘a written notice announcing a sale’. In the 1st century BC, a culture of corruption, bribery and political violence in a fight for power led by wealthy dynasts with private armies at their back resulted in civil wars and the complete collapse of Rome’s traditional institutions. One feature of this collapse was to be particularly significant. In 88 bc the current strong man Lucius Cornelius

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. They were also taught

The Telegraph reports that Attorney General Lord Hermer has ‘been accused of asserting the primacy of human rights law over British government and politics’. Is he then a latter-day Diogenes (4th century bc), who saw himself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e. a citizen of no one place, but rather of the whole world (kosmos, ‘the ordered world’ + polites ‘citizen’)? At one level, obviously not. Diogenes, we are told, travelled from place to place, rejected all conventional values, often lived in a large stone wine jar and performed all natural functions in public, like a dog – kunikos in Greek, whence our ‘cynic’. Self-sufficiency, freedom of speech, indifference to hardship and

Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has generated much talk about the ethics of suicide. As far as the ancients were concerned, it was only in life that you could make your mark. The Christian passion for embracing, even rejoicing at, death made no sense to them. Ancient thinkers generally did not fear an afterlife. Although there were no received views on the matter (unless you were a member of a cult of some sort), many ancients reckoned that, if the gods were displeased with you, they would demonstrate their hostility in this life rather than the next. But when death was inevitable, they wanted to be in control, because the

Flattery will get you everywhere, as the sycophants that surround Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping know. Which makes Elon Musk’s defection rather interesting. Trump’s policies meant that Musk simply could not flatter him any more just to satisfy his inexhaustible self-love, which, says the Greek essayist, biographer and diplomat Plutarch (d. c. ad 120), is what gives the kolax (‘flatterer’) his foothold: the person he wishes to flatter, his victim, will be only too happy for the kolax to endlessly proclaim his qualities and abilities. Naturally, the kolax does not pay attention to poor, obscure or unimportant persons – where is the gain in that? –

The trouble with history is that it is topiary. History is what’s left after the unwanted foliage has been clipped and cleared away. The topiary birds, pigs and pyramids are just yew bushes minus the clippings, these forms having emerged from the topiarist’s shears. Your yew-based pig is a product of selective disposal, even down to its curly tail. Likewise with a historian’s shears. The raw material may be facts (in the words of the 19th-century German historiographer Leopold von Ranke, ‘what actually happened’) but the history book’s account, the shape and meaning we give to an era, relies as much on the happenings we choose to discard as on