Peter Jones

What do you do with a captured soldier? In 255 BC, fighting the Carthaginians, the Roman consul and general Marcus Atilius Regulus was taken prisoner near Tunis. They sent him back to Rome, having sworn an oath that he would ensure the release of some important Carthaginian prisoners; but if he failed, he himself would

Given the tonnage of missiles launched at Iran, it seems remarkable how relatively few Iranians have been killed. But the Americans have no interest in wasting multi-million-dollar ordnance on pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders. However, Donald Trump is now considering a land invasion. That would have been unwise, as the ancients knew. Understanding all about the problems

A discussion has broken out about the end of liberalism and emergence of the age of the tyrant. Our political term ‘liberalism’ refers to civil liberties, constitutional government, free trade and so on. It used to mean something very different. ‘Liberalism’ comes from the Latin word līber, ‘free’ (nothing to do with liber, short i,

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

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

In 500 BC, Persia (modern Iran) was the most powerful state in the known world, ruling an area of more than two million square miles from the Balkans and Egypt to central Asia (nearly half of the world’s population). In 499 BC, Athens and a number of other Greek states rebelled against its empire and

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

What a lot of friends Jeffrey Epstein appears to have had! But what did friendship mean to him? Was it simply a matter of reciprocal benefits and obligations? In the ancient world, such interactions were a matter of life and death for the poor (there was no such thing as the welfare state), and of

Twice a year the taxman comes to call, exhibiting all the bossy incompetence one expects from the government machine. Why not do as the Romans did, and privatise it? After all, one would surely rather give one’s money to a publican, even if a sinner. The publicanus, as the name suggests, was a public servant,

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 416 BC in its war against Sparta, Athens instructed the fleet to break the small island of Melos’ alliance with its enemy. The Athenian historian Thucydides constructed the ensuing debate between the two, here very briefly summarised. Melos: Whatever we say or do, it looks as if we will face either war or slavery.

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

One rather hopes the assisted dying bill will be talked out in the House of Lords. We have no say on matters of government policy, sovereignty, international law (and much else). But this bill is far too controversial, and personally significant, for MPs alone to adjudge. We need a touch of democratic Athens, whose citizens

Has any public figure of recent memory ever admitted to feeling shame for anything they have said or done? As a moral term ‘shame’ appears to have disappeared almost entirely from normal discourse (bar the self-satisfied ‘fat-shaming’). That tells us much about ourselves. Aristotle discusses the term in some depth. He does not see it

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

For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on the four ‘Fs’: farming (your sole source of food and money), fighting, family and friends. Everything else that made life worth living meant having some degree of control over your life, which could be summed up in the fifth ‘F’, freedom, or political equality.

The Pope is visiting Lebanon and Turkey. Will anyone be raising the vexed question of the Latin mass and sacraments with him and asking him exactly why it is so vexed? Though Jesus spoke Aramaic, the New Testament first appeared in Greek in the 1st century ad because that was the common language of the