Peter Jones

This is the recession, so we must spend our way out of it! So speaks Old Labour. No, no. ‘Thrift’ must be the watchword, insists New Tory. Talk about missing the point. Aristocratic Romans knew all about the pleasures of spending vast sums of money. Lucullus (1st C bc) was a byword for it (hence our ‘Lucullan’). From a rich family anyway, he made a gigantic fortune during his campaigns in the East (Turkey, Syria, Armenia), duly rewarded his troops and made copious, magnificent benefactions in Rome (the manubiae discussed a few weeks ago), but then found political life did not suit him. So he retired, dedicating himself to a life of cultured excess. Fishponds were the order of the day among the rich.

Damian McBride, the latest spawn of the Campbell, has notable forebears in the infamous delatores, or informers, of the Roman empire. They too worked with passionate servility to suck up to the emperor of the day by bringing to his attention those who might be considered dangerous to him. A trumped-up charge of treason would be brought against the victim, followed as often as not by his exile or death, an invitation to commit suicide being the preferred option. The great historian Tacitus sketches the typical delator for us in the person of Caepio Crispinus. He was assistant to the governor of Bithynia, Marcus Granius Marcellus, and brought an accusation of treason against him.

As the true depth of the recession emerges, and fury increases against bankers for the massive bonuses they have demanded, effectively from the taxpayer, for creating it, Roman generals might set an unexpected example. Manubiae, probably derived from manus ‘hand’ and habere ‘to have’, meant the booty which a general could claim as his own, to do what he liked with, after a successful campaign. But unlike bankers, he knew where his duty lay. First and foremost, there would be handsome hand-outs to those who made it possible: troops, officers and family. He would then memorialise his achievements in Rome with public buildings, magnificent games and dinners for the plebs.

Pupils, we are told, must be kept ‘happy’ at all costs. Pupils, we are told, must be kept ‘happy’ at all costs. It is a surprise, therefore, that the educational potential of drunkenness has not been recognised by Mr Ed Balls, or by government adviser Professor Sir Liam Donaldson who has proposed that the price of drinks be increased in order to cut drunkenness. In his last work, Laws, Plato (427-347 bc) describes a Spartan boasting about how Sparta had abolished that most anarchic and licentious activity of all, the drinking party. But Plato disagrees, arguing that ‘Drunkenness is a science of some importance... and I am not speaking about taking or abstaining from wine: I do mean drunkenness.

Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Ancients would not be surprised. For them a ‘peace process’ implied the cessation of the ‘war process’, and a ‘war process’ could be ended only by a treaty which committed both parties to an agreement that the likes of Adams and his kind could never agree.

Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman ‘famous’ for appearing on Big Brother should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant. Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman ‘famous’ for appearing on Big Brother should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant. But the Stoics would have been baffled why she and her unhappy demise were thought worthy of such attention from the media. Stoicism, invented by the Cypriot Zeno (335-263 bc), taught that the ‘divine’ element in man was his rational mind.

To general disapproval (and in direct contradiction to the Chancellor Alistair Darling), Lord Mandelson has suggested that the government should not be too hasty in removing bonuses from (presumably) ‘hard-working’ bankers. To general disapproval (and in direct contradiction to the Chancellor Alistair Darling), Lord Mandelson has suggested that the government should not be too hasty in removing bonuses from (presumably) ‘hard-working’ bankers. How very ‘New Roman’. There were far-reaching social and cultural changes in the Roman world from 100 bc to ad 120, during the collapse of the republic and growth of empire (beginning with the first Roman emperor Augustus, 27 bc–ad 14).

Sandwell Council recently advertised for a ‘Thematic Liaison Manager (Performance)’ at £41,000 a year. Sandwell Council recently advertised for a ‘Thematic Liaison Manager (Performance)’ at £41,000 a year. It would be instructive if any reader could tell from that description what the job entailed. I doubt anyone could, and thereby hangs a tale. Latin was the language of learning in the West for more than 1,000 years after the fall of the western Roman empire in the 5th century ad. When it began to be replaced by vernaculars and translations, some other justification for it had to be found. One common one was that it gave you an entrée into the world of those who had done Latin at school, i.e.

The Today programme would call her iconic, but since she is a 16.1cm gold and ivory (‘chrys-elephantine’) statuette, it would not be saying much. She stands there, erect, shoulders back, thrusting forward impressive bare breasts (one nipple the tip of a golden nail), both hands holding snakes that, twined round her arms, stretch outwards from her, tongues flickering. The best-known of all the ancient Cretan snake goddesses, she has graced the covers of, and been reproduced in, a thousand books. It is her face that has caught the imagination. With her pouting lips and deep-set eyes, she has been hailed as ‘charmingly serene’, ‘radiant’, ‘demure’, ‘expressive of individuality’ and ‘arresting’.

Andrew Motion’s tenure as Poet Laureate is about to end, and the search for a successor has begun. It is accompanied with the usual tidal wave of claptrap about this not being ‘the sort of job which any real poet would want’ and the importance of not involving public opinion in the choice. What is it about modern poets that they feel so threatened by the idea of public opinion? Ancient Greeks would have thought them barking. When in Homer’s Odyssey the pigman Eumaeus reported to Penelope the effect that the (disguised) Odysseus’s stories had on him, he says, ‘Sitting in my hut, he held me spellbound.

In the last two columns we have considered Barack Obama as novus homo and orator. But what about his mixed race? The racist seeks the cause for the differences between groups of people in either physiological or genetic determinism. The resulting characteristics are unalterable and define them as inherently inferior. But are prejudice, xenophobia and stereotyping ‘racist’ in those terms? If they are, Romans were certainly racist, as probably all people of all colours, ages and backgrounds have been and always will be. A major theme is the contamination that results from contact with foreigners. Romans living in the East, we are regularly told, stood a fair chance of being corrupted by foreigners’ low morals and love of luxury.

It is no coincidence that the rules of persuasive public speaking were being formulated by Greeks in the 5th century bc when real democracy was in its first flush in Athens; for if a man was to be given the chance to take an active part in open debate in the assembly, he must know how to do it. Handbooks (as well as expensive educations) could help him. Democracy was not just for toffs. But there was a rub: while such resources might be able to show a man how to persuade, would they also help him discern right from wrong? As Plato pointed out, imagine the outcome if a man thought a horse was a donkey and persuaded the assembly to equip its army with a squadron of donkeys to ride into battle.

It is a relief that there is one magazine in which one will not be hauled up on a charge of libel or sexual harassment for writing that Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, is a novus homo. So too was the 1st-century bc Roman orator, philosopher and politician Cicero, and he never stopped boasting about it, as well he might — there were only 12 novi homines in the last 300 years of republican Rome. In strong contrast to our system, Romans sensibly designed their ‘constitution’ to make it impossible for anyone with no background in or experience of politics to reach a position of power. From the earliest days, it was families who were patrician by birth who held the top jobs.

Last time we saw that the Romans did not have anything like a banking system i.e. a machinery for creating credit through various negotiable instruments. What they did have was minted coin — and that was the sole monetary instrument. So at a personal level, if you wanted money, you went to a rich friend and hoped he would help you out with a loan. But if there were no bankers in our sense, there were small-scale businessmen such as money-changers, charging up to 5 per cent to change high-value into low-value coins, who also received deposits and advanced credit. We hear of one Novius receiving a short-term loan of 10,000 sesterces from such a businessman against collateral of grain, chick-peas, lentils and spelt. Penalties for late payment are often attached.

In the banking chaos, we should recall the words of the American president Thomas Jefferson: ‘The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a grand scale.’ There was no such swindling in the ancient world because minted coin was the sole monetary instrument, and there was no machinery for creating credit. So there were no banks in our sense, and only two sources of wealth: agricultural and mineral, the former far more important, but the latter having more dramatic instant consequences. For example, in 483 bc, it would never have occurred to the Athenians to borrow the money from somewhere to build a Persian-defeating fleet. But the lead mines at Sounion suddenly revealed a fabulous seam of silver, and bingo!

A group of 200 pagan worshippers gathered recently at the Parthenon to beg Athena not to allow material to be removed from her temple and relocated in the new, specially designed museum nearby. The goddess was obviously not impressed. One cannot blame her. The ancient relationship between men and gods was perfectly reflected in the way prayers were offered to them. First, you identified the god, and gave him his titles (you must get the right god for the job); then you listed everything you had done for the god and the god for you; then you made your request; and finally you promised that, if the prayer was granted, the god would in the future receive yet more handsome favours. Ancient gods, in other words, were biddable.