Rome

Money is a pagan god because it has value only as long as people believe it does. Refuse to believe, and the value disappears. In the 3rd century ad, the Roman empire was under intense pressure, and emperors resorted to increasing taxes and debasing coinage to fund its protection. The result was terrifying inflation. Cash became worthless. Soldiers refused to be paid in it and the state to accept tax in it. So ‘requisitioning of supplies’ – goods, materials, labour – became, in effect, taxation ‘in kind’ to pay for the military; and the army plundered at random to ‘collect’ it. The emperor Diocletian rationalised the system by organising this requisitioning of supplies into a coherent tax scheme.

Rumour has it that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is selling his agreeable little yacht Koru because it will not fit into places like Monaco and Venice and costs far too much to run. Poor old Jeff! Had he studied Classics, he would have known this was not a wise project. In 240 BC, we are told, Archimedes designed for Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, the cargo boat Syracusia, protected by fearsome armaments, carrying 400 tons of grain and 500 tons each of pickled fish, wool and other cargo. It had interior panelling of cypress, ivory and aromatic cedar. Multi-coloured mosaics re-telling the Iliad covered the three floor-levels. There was a temple to Aphrodite, the ship’s guardian deity, and statues and artworks were liberally scattered about.

Americans never tire of asking themselves whether their country is turning into Rome. A Latin motto on the Great Seal of the United States proclaims a novus ordo seclorum – a “new order of ages.” But in the poem from which that phrase is adapted, Virgil’s fourth eclogue, the words mean a quite exact replay of past events: there will be, for example, another voyage of the Argo and another Trojan War. Our new order might likewise repeat the history of Rome. One philosopher who gave a great deal of thought to new orders and Roman history as a template was Niccolò Machiavelli, particularly in his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.

On the afternoon of Easter Sunday last year, Pope Francis was driven through St Peter’s Square in an open-topped Popemobile. A few weeks earlier he had nearly died from pneumonia, so pilgrims were thrilled to watch him blessing babies. They told journalists that it was a miracle to see the 88-year-old Argentinian in such good shape. At 9.45 the next morning the Vatican announced that Francis had just died from a stroke. And so began the preparations for a conclave that elected the second pope from the Americas. Cardinal Robert Prevost – ‘Bob’ to his friends – was a Chicago-born dual citizen of the United States and Peru. Until 2023 he’d been bishop of the Peruvian diocese of Chiclayo.

Those for whom the welfare state does not provide as much welfare as they would like might care to reflect on the plight of the Romans, for whom there was no such thing as the welfare state. A superb monograph by Kim Bowes, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, drawing on papyrus and other finds from across the Roman and Egyptian worlds, shows in fascinating detail how the poor survived. She defines the poor as the c. 90 per cent who ‘worked with their hands’, most of whom were farmers renting their farm (rents were not cheap). One Soterichos rented a number of small, scattered plots, with small yields, and died in debt. His wife and children budgeted carefully and started breeding farm animals (very profitable).

Some Labour MPs are demanding that Colonel Alistair Carns, a former Royal Marine who served in the military for 24 years and was awarded the Military Cross for his service in Afghanistan, become leader of the party. The Romans would have approved, but might have felt he was not quite rich enough. Rome fought its rivals for control over the only resources anyone had: land and its products and people. The more territory a state controlled, the more powerful it would be. Those doing the fighting were led by the phenomenally wealthy landowners who, combining political authority with military command, controlled the Senate. Success in the field of battle virtually guaranteed an influential political career.

To look through Jeffrey Epstein’s curriculum vitae on Google is to be left goggling at how this revolting creature could have gained credence among so many influential people. Roman censors would surely have dealt with him in pretty short order. Their job was to keep an eye on the moral and financial standing of every Roman in the state. For those who did not live up to the standard expected of a citizen, a mark (nota) was put next to his name on the census rolls, resulting in humiliation and loss of political status. Extravagantly flashing one’s wealth about, bad parenting, cruelty, disgusting behaviour, disreputable business practices, cowardice on the battlefield and suchlike would lead to infamia (public ignominy) and expulsion from official positions.