Peter Jones

The Romans were as aware as Jeremy Kyle was of the pleasure that people could get from situations in which others were seen to be in trouble or humiliated in one way or another. Such situations were exploited by everyone from emperors to artists. Is there a new TV show here to replace Mr Kyle’s? Romans would have made programmes exploiting the disabled. There was a fad among emperors for purchasing deformed slaves, and every elite home wanted to have one (we are told there was a market in Rome specialising in them). We hear of someone who paid a vast sum for a guaranteed cretin, only to demand his money back when he turned out to be no fool at all. The emperor Domitian staged a gladiatorial contest between a band of ‘knotted, ball-shaped dwarfs’.

In her cover story last week, Camilla Cavendish argued that we could keep mentally fit in old age through ‘physical exercises, social contact and new challenges’. The ancients reached a similar conclusion 2,500 years ago. When the Roman poet Juvenal (2nd century ad) reflected on what a man should pray for, his first suggestion was a healthy mind in a healthy body. That had already been standard doctrine for 600 years. The historian Herodotus (5th century bc) noted how many different peoples saw a connection between diet, drink, exercise and lifespan; and it was Greek doctors who argued that mental health also came into the equation. Others then joined in. Socrates pointed out many people ‘do not think straight because their body is not in good health’.

As soon as the blaze that nearly brought down Notre Dame was extinguished, two questions were asked: how did it catch fire? And how will it be rebuilt? So too with a famous Greek temple. In 560 bc in Ephesus on the west coast of modern Turkey was built a massive temple to Artemis (Roman Diana), the largest building we know of from the Greek world and the first to be constructed out of marble. It was sponsored by Croesus, king of Lydia, a man so rich you could commit suicide by jumping off his wallet. But it was intentionally burned down in 356 bc by a man called Herostratus, who set fire to the wooden roof supports. That brought down the roof, as in Notre Dame, and everything else with it. His motive? Because he wanted to become ‘famous’. How very 21st-century of him.

Last week Tom Holland reflected on the ‘utter strangeness’ of Christianity’s claim that Christ’s death on the cross was a sign of strength. St Paul agreed: ‘We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the gentiles [correcting the SJV ‘Greeks’] foolishness.’ So did pagan philosophers, who argued fiercely about the nature of the gods. One such was Celsus (2nd C ad), who wrote an anti-Christian diatribe, ‘The True Doctrine’. It survives only in the quotations used by Origen in refuting it (248 ad). Though Celsus had a sense of humour (Christians respected the cross as the tree of life: had Jesus been thrown off a cliff, would there be a cliff of life?), he was deadly earnest about Christianity.

A research professor has pointed out that lengthening human lifespan threatens to turn us into living zombies unless we can cure dementia. That would have come as no revelation to the ancients. They were well aware of the cognitive decline that set in at old age: but who did not want to be old? This provided an easy theme for the Roman satirist Juvenal. In his tenth satire (c. ad 120), known as ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ after Samuel Johnson’s imitation (1749), he mocked the false hopes raised by (among other things) a long life. The physical consequences were bad enough: wrinkled, baggy face, trembling limbs and voice, bald head, toothless gums, a limp and lifeless penis, no taste for food or wine, loss of hearing, dodgy shoulders and hips, failing sight.

Next year the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) will offer one degree, in design, technology and the humanities, to teach students to solve ‘complex problems’ like (they suggest) knife crime. Really? The key to problem solving is the development of two essential faculties — the imaginative and the critical. Can LIS really teach for those — or just how to pass exams? The philosopher Seneca insisted that the search for what really counted (his example was virtue) ‘cannot be delegated to someone else’. He illustrated it by telling the story of Calvisius Sabinus, who had the brains and bank account of the Roman equivalent of Sir Philip Green.

The Olympic Committee has added surfing, skateboarding and break-dancing to the events for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. Heaven knows what ancient Greeks would have made of it. The satirist Lucian (2nd century ad) invented a dialogue in which the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis argued with the famous Athenian statesman Solon (d. 558 bc) about the purpose of athletics. Anacharsis expressed amazement that in the gymnasium men covered in oil were writhing about in sand-filled pits and punching each other, and when Solon told him it was to win prizes at the Games — a wreath of wild olive, of parsley or of pine, or apples — Anacharsis said that proved they were barking: there were easier ways to get apples and olive wreaths.

However much he is heroised by left-wingers, the Venezuelan ‘tyrant’ Nicolás Maduro must wonder what is in it for him. The soldier-historian Xenophon composed a dialogue in which Hiero, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse (478-476 bc), freely admitted what a nightmare a tyrant’s life was. Hiero came clean when his court poet Simonides asked him how much more pleasurable his life must be than that of the ordinary citizen. Far from it, said H: citizens can go to festivals and travel freely abroad; not tyrants, for fear of assassination or a coup. S: But surely it is wonderful being praised to the heavens? H: Not when you know they do not mean it. S: What, however, of the food and drink you enjoy?

All over the world, from Armenia (the Silver Apricot) to India (the Golden Conch) and the UK (the Shaftas, honest), the film industry award season is in full swing — more than 100 festivals and ceremonies for weeping luvvies to hand out prizes to each other. It was ever thus. Ancient Greeks, who from the 6th century bc invented the genres we know as tragedy and comedy, staged them in competitive annual festivals, all paid for by the richest men in Athens. As well as awards for the best play, there were prizes for best producer and best actor too (interestingly, the most famous Greek tragedy, Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, was beaten into second place by Philocles, otherwise virtually unknown).

The Transport Secretary Chris Grayling may be quite right (not words one often reads) to warn that failure to deliver Brexit may end the culture of a broadly moderate politics in the UK and usher in an era of ugly extremism. The Roman republic was destroyed by a similar crisis. In 137 bc, it became clear to Tiberius Gracchus — a grandson of the great Scipio Africanus who defeated Hannibal in 202 bc — that the men who had fought Rome’s overseas wars ‘are called masters of the world but have not a patch of earth to call their own’. So in 133 bc this aristocrat stood for office as a tribune of the plebs in order to bring about a land redistribution in favour of the poor.

At this time of year the media urge us all to turn over a new leaf and believe that we can become and do whatever we want. Those tempted by this idiotic advice would be better advised to turn over a 2,500-year-old one with a stiff dose of Aesop’s fables. A shadowy 6th-century bc figure, Aesop turned animals into literary figures by giving them simple black-and-white human characteristics — the timid mouse, the deceitful fox, the stupid donkey, and so on — and putting them in situations illustrating aspects of the human condition. Theon called them ‘fictitious stories picturing a truth’ — usually truths about human folly. One lesson they regularly rammed home was the advisability of knowing who you were.