Peter Jones

Labour may be in a bit of a mess, but Cicero (d. 43 bc) has some top tips. ‘Let conscience and scrupulous regard for the right take precedence over the obligations of friendship.’ ‘The person who corrupts his audience by words commits a graver crime than the man who does so by bribery. For even a virtuous man could be corrupted by words, but not by a bribe.’ ‘People who argue that advantage is one thing and right another are uprooting nature’s fundamental principles. Obviously, we all aim at our own advantage: we find that irresistibly attractive. No one can possibly work against his own interests – indeed no one can refrain from pursuing them to the best of his ability.

Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to stamp duty on a flat she had bought. Athenians were extremely proud of their citizen-led Assembly and did not take kindly to sub-standard officials. Plato constructed a dialogue (c. 430 bc) between Socrates and the controversial sophist Protagoras, who claimed that anyone taught by him would be a success in public and private life. Socrates challenged this claim. He pointed out that, when the democratic assembly of male citizens met to discuss technical matters (e.g. ship-building), they listened to those who actually had experience of building ships and shouted down anyone who did not.

While Greek and Roman thinkers were influential in developing ideas such as citizenship, justice and equality, the notion of universal ‘human rights’ (1948), especially those involving one’s ‘identity’, would have struck them as absurd. ‘Identity’ derives from the Latin idem, ‘the same, unchanged’, via the French identité (14th century). The term has been colonised by many different groups who feel that their specific identity – e.g. colour, sexual preferences, personal beliefs – bestows ‘rights’ upon them to behave or be treated in specific ways, whatever anyone else thinks about it, let alone the law of the land.

Since, in the absence of border posts, people in the ancient world could come and go at will, refugees and asylum seekers were as common as they are now. But then the notion of ‘citizenship’ came into play. Roman plebs were indeed proud to be citizens, but the ruling oligarchic elite, intent on expanding Rome’s control over land and people (the ancients’ sole resources, bestowing power and wealth), were reluctant to give them any political say. Democratic Athens, however, took citizenship very seriously. All males with Athenian parents, and aged 18 or above, met weekly in assembly to take all political decisions by majority vote. The idea that any Tom, Dick or Harry could be involved was absolutely anathema to them.

‘Proscription’ appears to be the current word of the month. But what does it mean? The Latin scribo means ‘I write’ and generates a root in script-. Since the Latin prefix pro carried the idea of ‘bringing something into the open’, the noun proscriptio meant ‘a written notice announcing a sale’. In the 1st century BC, a culture of corruption, bribery and political violence in a fight for power led by wealthy dynasts with private armies at their back resulted in civil wars and the complete collapse of Rome’s traditional institutions. One feature of this collapse was to be particularly significant. In 88 bc the current strong man Lucius Cornelius Sulla decided to call any Roman who opposed him a hostis (cf.

Why are people in the UK protesting about the situation in Gaza? Surely it should be because the helpless Gazans cannot protest about their plight, caused by Hamas, because if they did, Hamas would kill them. But in that case, why isn’t it Hamas that people are protesting against? Or are they in favour of Hamas and therefore hate Israel for wanting to destroy Hamas? But wouldn’t that free Gazans? The whole situation would have baffled the Romans. Romans protested only when their own interests were at stake. On one occasion around ad 50, the emperor Claudius was confronted by a mob in the forum, cursing him and pelting him with bread crusts because of a grain shortage.

Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young people’s health and athleticism with one-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises. He could usefully add elements of the early training invented by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus to create disciplined, physically and mentally resilient soldiers and citizens. Every baby was examined for fitness. They were trained not to fuss about food, or be frightened of the dark when left alone, or to get angry or cry. At seven, they joined bands in which they grew up together while their elders registered their progress in obedience and courage.

Last week, in his jovial Spectator piece about Donald Trump’s golf diplomacy, Patrick Kidd drew a comparison with the Roman emperor Nero, who adored chariot racing and was always deemed to have ‘won’, whether he crashed or not. He also raced a chariot drawn by four camels, but that was just the half of it. He was passionate about music, took lyre and singing lessons and kept his weight down with enemas and emetics. No one was allowed to leave while he performed. Women gave birth during his recitals, we are told, and people climbed out over the rear wall or shammed dead in order to be carried out. Whenever he performed, his claqueurs made sure the applause went on and on.

The Telegraph reports that Attorney General Lord Hermer has ‘been accused of asserting the primacy of human rights law over British government and politics’. Is he then a latter-day Diogenes (4th century bc), who saw himself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e. a citizen of no one place, but rather of the whole world (kosmos, ‘the ordered world’ + polites ‘citizen’)? At one level, obviously not. Diogenes, we are told, travelled from place to place, rejected all conventional values, often lived in a large stone wine jar and performed all natural functions in public, like a dog – kunikos in Greek, whence our ‘cynic’. Self-sufficiency, freedom of speech, indifference to hardship and lack of shame were Cynic hallmarks.

The BBC chef Gregg Wallace has been sacked for his objectionable behaviour over many years, but has blamed the BBC for not taking the action which, he claims, would have saved him from himself. Aristotle (d. 322 bc) would have doubted that. Let us assume, says Aristotle, that it is possible for any human to wish to do what is good. But a mere wish counts for nothing. Goodness will find its expression only in the way a man deals with the means he adopts to bring about the wished-for result. But what if he is just not the sort of man to take the trouble? That is surely a consequence of the style of life which he has adopted: after all, one acquires particular attributes only by constantly behaving in particular ways.

Killer whales have been seen offering titbits to divers – but as a gift or a lure? Plutarch (c. AD 100) had strong views on animal sentience.  Unlike most ancients, Plutarch did not think that animals were there to be exploited for humanity’s benefit, whatever that entailed for the animals themselves. He believed they were worthy of respect rather than exploitation because they demonstrated, admittedly in a ‘weak’ and ‘muddy’ form, a capacity to think, reason and remember. For example, without those capacities, an animal would not be able to discriminate between what it should avoid and what pursue.

Now that new drugs have allowed the government’s Fat Controller to celebrate a nation of skinnies – let us hope the drugs are not too temptingly tasty – he will not have to adopt the Spartan custom of checking their naked young men every ten days for signs of excessive thinness or corpulence. In Greek eyes, obesity was particularly associated with luxury. On their tomb paintings, Etruscans tended to depict aristocrats at dinner as very fat and even more contented. Ptolemy Alexander, a Greek king of Egypt, needed two people to support him when he left the room to relieve himself.

Now that parliament has decided to decriminalise abortion, it is interesting to see what the ancients made of the matter. The question for them was, as for us – when did the foetus become ‘human’? The answer was when it developed a psukhê (‘soul’). Some Greek philosophers argued that the foetus was fully ‘ensouled’ from the moment of conception, and abortion was therefore wrong. Others asserted it was only ensouled at birth. The ‘gradualists’ thought the foetus took between 36 and 50 days to became human (active kicking was a good sign). Aristotle (d. 322 BC) argued that the embryo became human when it had developed four ‘capacities’ in the following sequence – nutrition, motion, perception/sensation and finally reason. That took the male 40 days, the female 90.

Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has generated much talk about the ethics of suicide. As far as the ancients were concerned, it was only in life that you could make your mark. The Christian passion for embracing, even rejoicing at, death made no sense to them. Ancient thinkers generally did not fear an afterlife. Although there were no received views on the matter (unless you were a member of a cult of some sort), many ancients reckoned that, if the gods were displeased with you, they would demonstrate their hostility in this life rather than the next. But when death was inevitable, they wanted to be in control, because the way one died revealed the true stature of the person, which could do much for one’s posthumous reputation.

Flattery will get you everywhere, as the sycophants that surround Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping know. Which makes Elon Musk’s defection rather interesting. Trump’s policies meant that Musk simply could not flatter him any more just to satisfy his inexhaustible self-love, which, says the Greek essayist, biographer and diplomat Plutarch (d. c. ad 120), is what gives the kolax (‘flatterer’) his foothold: the person he wishes to flatter, his victim, will be only too happy for the kolax to endlessly proclaim his qualities and abilities. Naturally, the kolax does not pay attention to poor, obscure or unimportant persons – where is the gain in that? – but only to those with power, engaged in great affairs.

It is embarrassing to compare Thames Water’s efforts even to the Greeks, let alone the Romans. Most Greek cities got their water from public fountains fed by springs. Doctors new to a district examined the supply to determine likely ailments (one spring was said to make your teeth fall out). A few towns had piped supplies: Athens had one, and Greek Pergamum (in Turkey), from a source 20 miles away. An inscription there ordered wardens to ensure ‘fountains are clean and pipes supplying them allow the free flow of water’. But the Romans were the great water engineers, spreading comfort and luxury thereby far down the social scale. Initially they were privately funded benefactions (not ‘serious’ enough for the state: this changed under the empire).

Writing in a lesser organ, Matthew Parris wondered whether most ancient Greeks ‘really, sincerely, did believe in their bizarre pantheon of gods’. Belief in a single god was at that time limited to two peoples: Jews and Zoroastrians (and Egyptians once, briefly). To everyone else, perhaps the sheer variety of the world, the extraordinary generative power of nature and the impossibility of making secure predictions about anything suggested a multitude of powers at work.

The Sunday Times rich list would have excited the male citizens over the age of 18 who determined state policy in the Athenian assembly in the 5th century bc. The reason is that Athens levied taxes on citizens by their wealth, as judged by the property they owned. The most important tax was the leitourgia (source of our ‘liturgy’). This was imposed upon the 300 wealthiest Athenians and was hypothecated on two specific projects: the funding of the annual comic and dramatic festivals (one of which involved, among much else, the training of 1,165 men and boys for months on end) and the funding and maintenance of fully equipped Athenian triremes, which controlled Athens’s marine empire. At times of emergency, mainly war, a further tax was levied on the 6,000 wealthiest.

Will Pope Leo turn out to be a lion or a pussycat? That depends on what he has to confront, but one hopes he will do better than Pope Siricius (384-399), let alone Kirill, current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. When the Roman emperor Constantine published a letter in 313 allowing freedom of worship to pagan and Christian alike, it opened the door to Christian leaders taking over the function of the old Roman elite. This at once presented a problem: if there really was one true God, whose will only bishops could interpret, was the emperor lord over the church or the church lord over the emperor? In 390 Butheric, a close friend of the emperor Theodosius, arrested a star charioteer for homosexual rape. A riot ensued and Butheric was murdered.

This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral Speech of 431 bc, he was not celebrating victory – the war would end in 404 bc with Athens’s surrender – but doing something quite new: he was reflecting on what Athens stood for and why it was worth dying for.