Peter Jones

There was something admirable about the spirit of careful mockery behind the doggy bags on offer to the finalists in this year’s Oscars and Daftas. The chance to hire a car or visit a New Zealand winery (pay your own airfare) cannot be very high on even the most grasping star’s list of ultimate desiderata. That said, the organisers are missing a trick here — the element of chance. The Roman emperors can come to their aid. Apophoreta, literally ‘takeaways’, were standard features of Roman dinner parties (the satirical poet Martial wrote a book of 221 couplets about them, celebrating everything from bras to nail-scissors and food for dealing with stretchmarks). But the emperors’ dinner parties were something different.

David Cameron has accused universities of being xenophobic, racist and prejudiced against the poor. He is too much of a coward actually to say that, of course: instead, he said they ‘discriminated’. That is a weasel word these days, and it is worth tiptoeing gingerly on to Mrs Wordsworth’s territory to see what Cameron is missing. ‘Discriminate’ derives from the Latin discerno, ‘I separate or divide off spatially; I distinguish mentally or practically’. The noun discrimen could mean anything from ‘a parting in the hair’ and ‘a point in which things differ’ to ‘the act or power of distinguishing; a process for deciding a disputed question’. The educationist Quintilian saw the point with his usual perspicuity.

Professor Louise Richardson, Oxford’s new vice-chancellor, is worried about a new government plan to judge teaching quality. Her reason is that she does not know how to measure it. One wonders what else she does not know about assessing a university’s basic function. Plato made a distinction between the art of teaching and the pupil’s desire for learning. Without the latter, the job was impossible. A good teacher did his best to strike that spark of desire which would turn into a flame. Success was not guaranteed: Plato knew students who preferred a suntan education (his image), turning over now and again till lightly educated on both sides. As for pedagogy, the orator and teacher Quintilian (c.

Last week we read that Isis was crumbling, but still a force to be reckoned with. That is true, but its army is by definition a mercenary one, fighting for pay, and when that runs out, so will they. Ancient Greeks knew all about mercenaries. The 6th century bc Cretan mercenary Hybrias proclaimed ‘I have great wealth — a spear, a sword and a fine shield to save my skin. [Ironically] With these I plough, I reap, I tread the sweet grapes and am called master of my serfs. All those that dare not hold athe spear and sword and fine shield to save their skin, all bow and kiss my knee, calling me master and great king.

Rugby and Ampleforth schools have decided to give their charges experience of sensible drinking by introducing a little alcohol, under close staff supervision, at dinner. But, as Plato realised, what they actually need is experience of senseless drinking. Plato’s last work, Laws (c. 350 bc), depicts a new utopia, quite unlike that of the Republic with its philosopher-kings. Called Magnesia, it lays down a detailed code of laws which its inhabitants must obey without question because the code will inculcate moral goodness. A key feature of that is self-control, which the speaker (‘the Athenian’) proposes to achieve by means of symposia, or drinking parties.

In Living with Difference, a think-tank report on the problems raised by a multi-faith UK, the chair Baroness Butler-Sloss says that the recommendations amount to a ‘new settlement for religion and belief in the UK’ and are aimed at providing space and a role in society for all citizens, ‘regardless of their beliefs or absence of them’. This is what happens when good people decide this messy world needs to be hammered into an intellectually satisfying shape. Plato’s Republic is a very good example of the genre. It is an extraordinarily interesting document, telling one a very great deal about Plato and the ancient Greeks, deeply influential on intellectuals down the millennia, and complete tosh from start to finish. Composed c.

There is much talk today of the enthusiasm with which young entrepreneurs are setting up businesses. One reason why this appears such a daring development is that the industrial revolution changed our thinking about jobs and work so radically that ‘big business’ seemed the only form of honest employment. Before that, going it alone was the norm. Classical Athens was a prime example, though one would never think it to read most accounts of the subject.

Benjamin Clementine, who won the 2015 Mercury Music Prize for his debut album At Least For Now, received his cheque for £20,000 and the trophy and, breaking down in tears, ‘dedicated his award to the victims of the Paris terror attacks’. One may be given leave to doubt it. In the ancient world, people of all backgrounds made dedications, from soldiers thanking gods for their escape from a nasty situation in battle to those who had had a threatening dream or wished to demonstrate their piety. Often people made ‘votive’ offerings (votum, ‘vow’), i.e. after vowing to the god that if they e.g. escaped a storm, they would make a dedication.

The slaughter in Paris is a catastrophe for the victims and their families, but the usual hysterical response across the media reminds us, yet again, what an extraordinary achievement it is that we Westerners simply assume the world owes us a life lived to the full, in comfort and security. From the ancient world until relatively recently, there was little sense that the world owed us anything. About half of Romans would not make the age of five; probably a third would not make three months. War was commonplace, as deadly for civilians as soldiers, as were disease and famine. The destruction of Pompeii by Vesuvius was greeted with relative indifference. Ancients simply accepted that this sort of thing was bound to happen.

Among all the arguments about how many non-EU immigrants we should let in, campaigners are proposing a scheme for private sponsorship of Syrian asylum seekers. The idea of sponsorship for immigrants goes back to Athens in the 5th century bc. Metoikos (literally ‘household-changer’), our ‘metic’, was the category into which any non-Athenian wanting residence in Athens was placed. While having no citizen rights, of which Athenians were very jealous, they did have access to the courts; but they were unable to own property, so were always lodgers, had to serve in the military, pay a metic tax and, if they became wealthy, were liable for taxes on the rich. Most came to do business, many very successfully.

As the national girth expands by the second, Auntie, never backward about lecturing us on the topic, continues to glory in the popularity of The Great British Bake Off. What a take-off, ancients would have thought. Philosophers, naturally, had little time for fancy cooking. Socrates argued that cooks had no interest in health, only in thrilling the client. They were mocked for the extremes they went to in perverting nature. The Roman poet Martial tells us that one Caecilius fashioned a complete meal from pumpkins which he turned into cakes, lentils, beans, mushrooms, sausages, tuna fish, sprats and sweetmeats. All very Bake Off.

The virtuous Mr Corbyn is insisting that New Old Labour should return to its traditional republican ways and take decisions ‘democratically’. The emperor Tiberius (ad 14–37) tried this one and it did not work. The first Roman emperor Augustus agreed to his stepson Tiberius’ accession only because death had cheated him of all his preferred options. The problem was that Tiberius’ heart was not really in it. A man with republican sympathies, he seemed to be keen to persuade the senate to return to involvement in the full process of ‘democratic’ rule and decision-making, duties which that body had embraced for nearly 500 years under the republic, but which Augustus had rather sidelined as he single-handedly turned the republic into a monarchy.