Peter Jones

The Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war raises the old question of what constitutes a ‘just’ war. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are the authorities here, but they have their eyes on their predecessors. The Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war raises the old question of what constitutes a ‘just’ war. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are the authorities here, but they have their eyes on their predecessors. Ancient Greeks had little to say about the concept but, contrary to received opinion, they were not (for the most part) committed warmongers.

It has become increasingly fashionable in right-wing circles to argue that New Labour has always been hostile to, because ignorant of and anyway not interested in, history. I wish to argue that it is always vital to know your history, but it can be equally vital, sometimes, to agree with your enemies to forget it. When Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the UK’s most distinguished classicists, reflected on the activity of history, he argued that there are two sorts of discipline — ‘scientific’ and ‘historical’. Science deals with universals, gathering and testing data with a view to generating repeatable experiments which prove the case in hand.

We recently contrasted the Greek soldier Xenophon’s enthusiasm for encouraging more rich foreigners to settle in Athens (to help out the finances) with our own rather mealy-mouthed attitudes. We recently contrasted the Greek soldier Xenophon’s enthusiasm for encouraging more rich foreigners to settle in Athens (to help out the finances) with our own rather mealy-mouthed attitudes. But a work attributed (wrongly) to Aristotle illustrates that the Greeks were not generally short of scams to boost a state’s coffers. Most of these are (legally) played by our government already. Thus, if your house has a patio with a nice view, you can expect to pay more council tax.

What do we do about the wealth-producers? Especially foreign ones? Everything in our power to indicate our distaste for them, seems to be the answer. The Greek essayist and soldier Xenophon would wonder what we were playing at. In 355 bc Athens was in desperate financial straits. It was then that Xenophon, whose military career had taken him as far as Persia and who knew a bit about rich foreigners, wrote the pamphlet Poroi (‘Revenues’). It is a programme for economic recovery quite unlike the usual Athenian public spending cuts and taxation schemes.

A new Telegraph survey on ‘dating’ (the romantic rather than temporal kind), reveals that 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men would not marry someone ‘who had everything you looked for in a partner, but whom you were not in love with’. But what, an ancient would ask, has marriage to do with love? Greek and Roman upper-class males — for they composed the literature, and it is their views of the matter that we have — did not regard love as a crucial component of marriage. To put it crudely, marriage was primarily business: the production of legitimate heirs, preferably male ones, to continue the line and keep the family in the style to which it had become accustomed.

Socrates once met such a girl, Theodote. A stunning beauty — everyone wanted to paint her — she admitted that she came by her wealth through her ability to persuade ‘friends’ to be generous to her. At this Socrates pointed out that, great beauty though she was, it was above all her mind that made all the difference, enabling her to talk attractively and build relationships with her ‘friends’ on the basis of creature kindness and mutual pleasure. Perhaps that is not quite the career that the Cambridge stunners have in mind, but Socrates might still approve, on more philosophical grounds. Returning from military service, he goes to the wrestling ground to see ‘if any young man has become pre-eminent in wisdom or beauty or both’.

As part of a revolution in higher education, Lord Mandelson is requiring information about universities to be modelled on a food-labelling system that will treat students as paying customers — another step on the route to the day when the job of our university teachers will be to provide not education but gratification. What else do paying customers demand? The don becomes a pimp. In his dialogue Gorgias, Socrates describes a pimp as a person who caters for the desires of others. Socrates is driving towards the view that the body and soul have genuine interests that must be served if one is to lead the good life.

Should the Tories follow Frank Field’s lead and, in the light of their ‘broken society’ campaign, make it their policy to produce ‘the good citizen’?  Should the Tories follow Frank Field’s lead and, in the light of their ‘broken society’ campaign, make it their policy to produce ‘the good citizen’? In Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, this famous intellectual is said to produce the ‘good citizen’ by teaching him ‘proper management of his own business and of the city’s too, so that he can make the most effective contribution to its affairs both as a speaker and man of action’.

Parliament is supposed to be open, to be democratic and to serve the people, but MPs first of all attempted to close down any investigation of their expenses, and now continue to kick and scream against demands that they pay any money back. All this leads one to conclude that they have given up caring about their own reputation and that of parliament, so deeply stuck in the mire have they become. This is extremely dangerous. In his unpublished de Legibus (‘On Laws’), Cicero offers some especially instructive views on the matter in his reflections about senatorial corruption. He writes: ‘The senatorial order must be untainted by impropriety and serve as a model for the rest of the citizens. If we can secure this, we shall have secured everything.

In the current financial predicament, everyone seems much keener to cut government spending than raise taxes. This is most unimaginative. Various emperors invented all sorts of novel taxes to swell their coffers. Caligula (emperor ad 37-41) taxed prostitutes and ready-cooked (=fattening?) food, and charged a levy on the sums of money at stake in court cases. At one stage there appears to have been a surcharge on the price of gladiators (=soccer transfers?) supplied for the games. Who would not raise a cheer for any of these? But far more effective psychologically was the ancient Greek invention of hypothecation — raising taxes targeted on specific ends.

Is 'progress'  happiness and relationships or philosophical awareness and self-discipline? ‘What is “progress”?’ asks President Sarkozy, and answers ‘happiness and relationships’. One looks forward to his ‘progressive’ policies. The ancients would have thought him mad. Greeks and Romans took the view that, far from things getting better, they were getting worse.

The question mark hanging over the very existence of newspapers raises the question: is there a future for the written word? BBC business editor Robert Peston is certain there is: in a recent lecture, he says that the blog is at the very heart of his work, enabling him to ‘share information — some of it hugely important, some of it less so — with a big and interested audience’. He sees this as critical to democracy. Ancient Greeks would be wary of his conclusion. In a play by Euripides, the priggish young man Hippolytus learns from a do-gooding nurse that his stepmother Phaedra is wasting away out of lust for him.

The ancient Greeks would have smelt a rat about releasing a murdered ‘on compassionate grounds’. Al-Megrahi, being partly responsible for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, has been released by Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill ‘on compassionate grounds’. Ancient Greeks would have smelled a rat. Mytilene, a city-state on the island of Lesbos, revolted against Athens in 427 bc, and was brought to heel. The Athenian Assembly voted to punish them by executing all the adult males and enslaving the women and children. Next day, however, there was a change of feeling about such a ‘cruel and unprecedented’ act directed against innocent and guilty alike, and a second Assembly was called.

Robert Harris has dedicated Lustrum, the second of his planned trilogy on the Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 bc), to Baron Mandelson, commenting on the two men’s resemblances. There are indeed some. Both were outsiders who made their own way into elite politics by traditional routes, reached the top briefly, and fell from grace. Cicero, from a grandee family in the sticks, used his growing reputation as an advocate in Rome to work his way to the top. But after his consulship in 63 bc, he had served the elite’s purpose and his career stalled. In 58 bc he was exiled for a year and in 52 bc, much against his will, was sent abroad to govern in south-east Turkey. Mandelson’s grandfather was deputy prime minister, but there was no Bush-style political succession.

Following the diktat of the European Court, Law Lords have ruled that ‘control orders’ are illegal, because they allow terrorist suspects to be placed under curfew without the evidence against them being made available to their lawyers. Following the diktat of the European Court, Law Lords have ruled that ‘control orders’ are illegal, because they allow terrorist suspects to be placed under curfew without the evidence against them being made available to their lawyers. A Law Lord commented: ‘The government has a responsibility for the protection of the lives and wellbeing of those who live in this country… The duty of the courts, however, is not a duty to protect the lives of citizens. It is a duty to apply the law.

The moon has been hitting the headlines briefly, for something that happened 40 years ago. It was in the ancients’ minds (and sights) all the time. The ancients were farmers, and farming is season-dependent. So, determined to keep the gods smiling benevolently on their activities, they tied many of their most important religious rituals to the seasons in the hope that this would ensure their crops flourished. But ritual had to be conducted in the same way, place and time, and this was the problem. The ancients knew that the seasons coincided with the time it took for the sun to complete its annual course (the ‘solar’ cycle of 365.25 days). But they counted time by the moon, and the average ‘lunar’ month lasts 29.

Train guards and underground drivers are planning to amuse passengers with a range of thought-provoking apophthegms. Most of the examples sound achingly dull. Classical ones would certainly wake up the carriage. Perhaps the most common Greek sentiment was, ‘It is your duty to help your friends and harm your enemies.’ So the Greek philosopher Thales, asked how best one could endure adversity, replied, ‘If one sees one’s enemies doing worse.’ He also came up with the following gem: ‘There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian.’ Whoops. Clearly the squibs must be appropriate for the audience.

The saga of MPs’ allowances brings to mind the depredations of Gaius Verres, Roman governor of Sicily 73-71 bc. The saga of MPs’ allowances brings to mind the depredations of Gaius Verres, Roman governor of Sicily 73-71 bc. Not that there is any real comparison between MPs’ money-grubbing and Verres’s ruthless looting of the island on a scale that would draw envious gasps from Robert Mugabe, but the issue they both raise — the trust that can be placed in government — is remarkably similar. The Sicilian people were represented in court by the young Cicero, aged 36. The foundation of his success was laid by his intensive and detailed research, which took him to Sicily for two months.

The general public, never having felt politicians can be wholly trusted, already believe any discreditable rumour about them that comes their way. Even though the recent expenses scandal has fingered fewer than 10 per cent of MPs, the situation will become far worse, as the Romans knew. The historian Cassius Dio argued that, under the Roman republic, the political system was broadly open: all decisions were taken by the Senatus Populusque Romanus, and made a matter of public record. But under the emperors, there was dramatic change: ‘Even though some things were made public by chance, they were not believed because they could not be verified. People suspected that things were said and done in accordance with the wishes of the men in power and their associates.

To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). The root of this word was financial — what you were worth. And what you were worth was judged not by your own values (note ‘value’), as by other people’s assessment of you. By that token, ‘honourable’ Members of Parliament should by now be quietly slinking shamefacedly down the back alleys (as the poet Pindar said of a wrestler humiliated in Games held at Delphi). Officials in Athens who had so transparently exploited the people would not be so lucky. Most officials in Athens were appointed by lot and for one year only.