Peter Jones

Boris Johnson is a gung-ho classicist. He has supported the subject throughout his journalistic and political career, is a generous donor to the charity Classics for All, and has a bust of his hero Pericles in his study. Indeed, he says his reading of Pericles’s famous funeral speech (431 bc) when he was 12 or 13 had a powerful effect on him, especially Pericles’s statement that ‘Athens is called a demokratia because it runs its house in the interests not of the few but of the majority’. Last week, however, he turned into the Roman emperor Augustus to explain his sacking of 21 rebel MPs. Augustus, emerging as victor in 31 bc in the civil war against Antony and Cleopatra,  did just this, killing potential rivals and ushering in a long and peaceful reign.

The Tories, allegedly a ‘one-nation’ party, are currently imposing Brexit on a divided nation. As a result, some Tory MPs will vote against Brexit, effectively abandoning the party. This raises the question of political values – the question being, what happens after Brexit? Romans faced the same problem when the republic collapsed (27 bc) and Augustus became emperor. The Roman historian Tacitus, looking back at those events some 140 years later, summarised how Augustus achieved supreme power: he charmed the army with bonuses, the people with cheap corn, and everyone with the beguiling pleasures of peace.

It is said that our political system is ‘broken’ simply because the passions aroused by Brexit have effectively created a hung parliament. So what to do about it? Athenians would have dealt with the problem by ostracism. Its purpose was to send one citizen into exile. Once a year Athenian citizens (all males over 18) meeting in assembly got the chance to vote for an ostracism. It was held by citizens inscribing the name of their candidate on a potsherd (ostrakon). As long as at least 6,000 votes were cast, the man with the most votes was sent into exile for ten years. He did not suffer disgrace, lose citizenship or property, just his ability to reside in Athens. About 10,000 such ostraka survive. Some citizens spoilt them.

Stanley Johnson suggests his son, the PM, will easily deal with Iran because he is well acquainted with Persian history and knows all about kings such as Darius and Xerxes. But talking ancient history with Ayatollahs could have its problems. Here, for example, is what Herodotus (d. c. 425 bc) had to say about Darius. Distantly related to the royal family, he served loyally under King Cambyses, at whose death in 522 bc a usurper took power. Darius plotted with six others to dethrone him, suggesting they should lie their way into the palace and kill him: ‘Where a lie must be told, tell it. Those who lie and those who tell the truth all have a similar objective, to gain advantage: same end, different means.

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to take serious action against Labour’s anti-Semitic members is no surprise: Marxists know who their friends are. The Roman plebs showed how to deal with such cabals. In 509 bc, Rome’s last tyrant king was thrown out, and the very nobles who had advised him at once took over the new republic as senators and annually appointed leaders (‘magistrates’ such as praetors, consuls, etc). And the plebs? Desperate for change, they found none: poverty, debt and landlessness persisted. So they took action —rioting and withdrawing their labour, especially on the battlefield.

With parliament irretrievably deadlocked over Brexit and the EU intransigent, there remains little belief that either of the prime ministerial candidates can find an even remotely happy solution to the problem. All they can currently offer are the tender leaves of hope. The ancient Greek farmer poet Hesiod (c. 680 bc) told the story of this ambiguous commodity. The gods, determined that life on Earth should be one of suffering, fashioned an irresistibly beautiful woman, Pandora, and sent her down among men with a large storage jar, which she proceeded to open.

If Rory Stewart had taken full advantage of his education at Eton and read classics at Oxford rather than PPE, he would not have made the basic mistakes that blew apart his short-lived campaign to become prime minister. Not that his failure was one of content: far from it. His views on public services and Brexit were entirely predictable and could be correct. So what went wrong? His failure was one of rhetoric, the skill of peaceful persuasion dissected by Aristotle and further refined by Cicero; and his failure consisted in his being so swept away by his millions of followers on social media that he started to believe his own hype, as if that guaranteed victory. But to win, you must persuade those who are not your followers.

So: Boris triumphans, ready to deliver a 140-seat majority for the Tories and lead the UK out of Europe and on to greater triumphs? The shade of an Athenian statesman might offer a warning. Themistocles (c. 524-459 bc) came from an obscure family, but early on conceived a passion for politics. His father ‘pointing out some ancient triremes, mere hulks abandoned on the seashore, said that was what happened to leaders when the people decided they were irrelevant’. This merely spurred him on. Themistocles flourished in the direct democracy invented in Athens in 508 bc. He built up a following among the poor, was said to know every citizen by name, and helped many with difficult court cases. The elites regarded him with great suspicion.