Peter Jones

To what use does one put history? Romans thought it provided ‘lessons’. Modern historians rather sniff at the idea, but do in fact dance to the same tune. For Romans, the study of history was all about discovering exempla (‘models, examples’) applicable to current circumstances. Indeed, Valerius Maximus (1st C ad) composed his Memorable Deeds and Sayings entirely out of historical exempla, as ‘torches or spurs that make humans burn with desire to help others and win their respect’. This may seem charmingly naive, but consider two stories from the historian Livy. Manlius Torquatus, ordered by his father the consul not to leave his position, accepted a challenge from an enemy, won and returned in triumph. His father’s reaction?

Donald Trump may be a narcissist, but since he is not mentally ill in the technical sense, he is not a pathological one. Aristotle would have seen him as entirely normal — a man driven by rage that the world does not see things his way. For Aristotle, a man becomes angry because of what has been, or will be, done to him. According to Aristotle, Trump’s current feelings would be that he has been belittled and humiliated in an election in which he was by far Joe Biden’s superior. The consequence of that, as Aristotle says, is anger: anger that Biden — whom Trump sees as e.g. ‘inferior, of no account, not fit to rule, disrespectful, forgetful of his name (!)’ (Aristotle) — has defeated him and leaves Trump, the great winner, a loser.

So Humpty Trumpty has had his great fall. But how democratic or logical was his election in the first place since, thanks to the USA’s ‘collegiate’ system, he became POTUS even though he lost by three million votes? Romans, too, used an undemocratic collegiate system for appointing their consuls, but at least there was a certain logic to it. The logic arose from the Roman ‘class’ system. This defined both how much tax you paid, and in which ‘college’ you were placed for voting purposes. To these ends, regular property censuses divided citizens into seven bands by wealth.

The ancients knew nothing about global warming, but they still reflected on the relationship between man and nature. In the absence of modern technology and with few sources of power (men, animals, wind and water), the ancients were limited in the use they could make of natural resources. Fire brought about the most radical change to nature’s offerings (cooking, pottery, smelting), with weaving, wood- and stone-working a close second. This could provide the farmer with all he needed, as Cato the Elder tells us: tunics, togas, blankets, shoes, iron tools, scythes, spades, mattocks, axes, carts, sledges, storage jars, pots, tiles, oil-mills, nails, buckets, oil-vessels, water-carriers, wine-urns, bronze vessels, etc.

The term ‘Carthaginian’ is often used of the EU’s attitude to post-Brexit trade negotiations with the UK, i.e. as if the UK were Carthage, and Brussels were Rome. One of the few safe harbours on the dangerous North African coast, Carthage with its superb fleet had been a trading power for centuries when, shortly after Rome became a republic (509 bc), it recognised a potential rival and signed a treaty of friendship. But three more treaties later, everything fell apart in two devastating defeats, the first over Sicily (264-241 bc) and the second after Hannibal’s failed revenge assault (218-201 bc).

To beat the virus, the government is asking us to keep to simple hands-face-space guidelines. When these are not followed, the virus spreads, but it is still (apparently) the government’s fault, i.e. the people can do no wrong. That was the case too in Athens’s direct democracy, where anyone whose proposal was ratified by the people’s assembly, but then turned out badly, could still be prosecuted for ‘misleading the people’. Even Pericles. In 431 bc war broke out between Athens, a sea-based power, and Sparta, a land-based one. Since Athens’s walls embraced its harbour Piraeus, Pericles proposed withdrawing the whole population inside the walls, and using their marine dominance to supply Athens and attack Sparta and its allies by sea.

A spokeswoman has been appointed ‘to communicate with the nation on behalf of the Prime Minister’. He apparently needs ‘a protective ring of steel’ and Tories feel that she will be the answer. So getting someone else to say what the PM thinks solves all problems? Really? It is inconceivable that Boris Johnson’s hero Pericles would have sent someone else to speak and answer questions on his behalf before Athens’s democratic citizen assembly. (The spokesman would have been given the world’s shortest shrift — ‘a confession before execution’ — anyway.) The reason why Pericles would never have dreamed of such idiocy was that his success as a statesman depended entirely upon his personal ability to persuade.

The Covid-19 pandemic is apparently causing a large number of mental health problems. On that subject, one could do a lot worse than read the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC). An attractive feature of Horace’s views about man’s efforts (including his own) to enjoy the good life is that you have to laugh about it all. He reflects that everyone thinks others better off than they are and envies their good fortune, but if a god told them to swap jobs, they would all refuse, thus (apparently) giving up their chance to be happy. And what would Zeus think of that — no more answers to your prayers! ‘Harvest the day (carpe diem),’ Horace says, ‘and don’t put too much trust in the next’ i.e. enjoy what you have and forget about tomorrow.

Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions, day after day after boring day, brings to mind the way in which Socrates dealt with such people. Plato, our major source for Socrates’s life and teaching, tells us that, on trial for his life, Socrates described how his friend Chairephon had asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the answer came back ‘No’. Baffled, since he was conscious of his own ignorance about almost everything, Socrates decided to put the oracle to the test and find someone wiser than himself. But his efforts were in vain.

If neighbours break whatever new Covid rules might soon emerge, it has been suggested that the Good Citizen might snitch on them to the authorities. Though not perhaps our cup of tea, it was certainly the ancient Greeks’. The Athenian lawgiver Solon (594 bc) was responsible. In the absence of a police force or a state prosecutor, Solon put the responsibility for bringing criminals to justice into the hands of citizens. They brought their complaints before legal authorities who established procedures for bringing them to court. This was all very well when litigants had been personally harmed, but it raised a problem when the state’s, rather than the individual’s, interests were concerned (e.g. accusations of treason). Who brought the case then?

Pursuing last week’s theme, this week’s column raises the question: if there is no such thing as ‘race’ — since all humans belong to the same subspecies — why is there such a thing as racism? The modern answer is that race is (yawn) a ‘social construct’. But in the light of a famous passage in the 5th century BC by Thucydides, there is a case for saying that racism is the antisocial construct. Thucydides described how in 427 BC civil war broke out in Corcyra (Corfu) as pro-Spartan oligarchs attempted to drive out pro-Athenian democrats. What struck Thucydides about this development was that violence became the norm, with men ‘reversing the usual evaluative force of words to suit their own assessment of the situation’.

Rod Liddle has questioned whether Ms Jolly, chief librarian of the British Library, was right to say that whites invented racism, and cites the Ancient Greeks and Romans as racists. But he does not define what he means by the term. If, as Mr Liddle suggests, a racist is someone who loves fighting other people, then racism has indeed been universal throughout human history. But fighting does not necessarily have anything to do with race. So what distinguished races for Greeks and Romans? Environmental determinism is the key. For example, working from medical beliefs about ‘humours’, Greeks thought Germans living in the north were cold, and therefore courageous but thick; Ethiopians in the south, hot and intelligent but cowardly.

The British Museum’s aim is to use its collection ‘for the benefit and education of humanity’. If that manifests itself in jerking the knee to Black Lives Matter’s anti-colonial agenda, the Museum might do well to learn from the ancients. Near Eastern conquerors used to dedicate their loot in temples, and so exhibit it. It was Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (6th C bc) who gathered reliefs, weapons, inscriptions (one going back to 2,400 bc) etc. and placed them in a ‘Wonder Cabinet of Mankind’ for the public to enjoy. Greeks and Romans took up the idea, filling their temples with collections of relics, statuary and art. The temple of Lindos on Rhodes contained a bracelet of Helen of Troy, Orpheus’s lyre and the weapons of Heracles.

Many commentators have argued that the recent grading controversy indicates just how important public examinations are. Up to a point, Lord Copper. Romans did jobs, not ‘education’. Most who went to school (there was no state provision) probably learnt not much more than the basic three Rs (peasant families — the majority of the population — needed their children to work the land). A freed slave in Petronius’s Satyricon boasts that he knows ‘no geometry or fancy criticism or any such meaningless drivel, but I do know the alphabet and I can work out percentages and measures and currency’; Horace mocked pupils for being asked what is left from 1/12th subtracted from 5/12ths. One option for children was to be sent away as apprentices.

The kind of arguments raging about migrants crossing the Channel to enter Britain illegally never raged in the Ancient Roman world. The reason is quite simple: borders, in as much as they existed, weren’t controlled. Romans did their best to negotiate entry and settlement for armed tribal groups, many of whom they welcomed into the army. Otherwise, individuals and families came and went as they liked. The point is that newcomers were essential — they kept numbers up (Rome required about 10,000 immigrants a year net, not including slaves) and were not a ‘drain on the economy’ because the welfare state did not exist. If they could not carve out a living for themselves, no one would do it for them.

Arguments about the purpose or indeed very existence of anything resembling the House of Lords would have struck classical democratic Athenians as bizarre. But its Areopagus might prompt thought. This body had been in existence long before Cleisthenes invented radical democracy in 508 bc. It was made up of the wealthy aristocratic elite from whom alone the main state officials (archons) could be drawn. Their term of office completed, they joined the Areopagus for life. This body was the state’s legal guardian. The democratic reformer Solon (594 bc) slightly broadened its membership, and removed some of its political powers.

Tackling obesity is the latest government initiative, universally condemned as nannying. Ask a Spartan. From an early age, Spartan children were taught not to be fussy: to eat up their food, and not to fear the dark or being left alone. At the age of seven, boys were taken from their homes and lived together in ‘herds’, exercising bare-footed and often naked, keeping fit and learning obedience. Food was sparse, because ‘overeating produces a broad, squat frame, and laboured breathing’. Lean features ‘defined the body’s true shape’, unlike obese ones. Competitive games were fostered, winners encouraged and a proud mental resilience developed. Now that’s nannying: the full Rees-Mogg.

Should the PM move parliament to York? There is, of course, historical precedent for such a move, as he very well knows. Rome was founded in 753 bc and when it became a republic in 509 bc it had a population of about 40,000. By about 260 bc it commanded manpower across Italy of about 730,000. At the collapse of the republic in 31 bc when Augustus became its first emperor, Rome controlled all Italy and an empire from Gaul to North Africa and Syria.

In 1984, China agreed a ‘one country, two systems’ treaty with the UK, designed to control the relationship between Hong Kong and China for 50 years after Britain ceded control of the colony in 1997. It has now broken the treaty, for no other reason than that it can. So what next in that tinderbox? Classical Athens was at war three years out of four, and if arbitration had failed to solve the treaty problem, it would have gone to war. No Greek preferred war to peace, but fighting for life and territory was simply a given of the ancient world.

Word has it that ministers already do not bother to argue their corner with the government’s inner ring, while a slimmer, streamlined cabinet office threatens to disempower them still further. Ministers could soon resemble senators under Rome’s second emperor Tiberius (ad 14-37). The historian Tacitus painted an extraordinary picture of Tiberius’s early days in office. The fact was that his stepfather Augustus had exercised autocratic power after he ‘restored’ the republic that had collapsed in 31 bc. The question for senators, therefore, was what change to expect under the new man in power. Their experience suggested precious little. They already knew Tiberius as a cryptic, devious and heartless character, whose word could never be trusted.