Peter Jones

How would Pericles have dealt with the problems facing America after 9/11? As rationally as ever, no doubt. The great Athenian statesman (c. 495–429 bc) controlled the Athenian Assembly so effectively from the 440s till his death that the Athenian historian Thucydides remarked that Athens at this time was a democracy in name only. Not that Pericles wielded any constitutional authority; the Assembly of Athenian males over 18 was sovereign, and it was only by his powers of persuasion that they accepted his policies. As Thucydides said, he ‘knew what was required’ in any situation, and was equally able to restrain the Assembly when it became over-ambitious, and rally it when spirits were low; but he never pandered to it.

Last week we considered a number of the arguments that ancient Greeks and Romans deployed to prepare themselves for death. Once dead, however, they had to be buried, and — more important still — someone had to eulogise them. For status-mad Romans, this was not something to be taken lightly; but help was at hand. Menander the Orator (c. ad 300), who is very sound on how to eulogise a harbour, suggests the following for a great man’s funeral. It all sounds quite ghastly. Encomia of the dead person, he tell us, should be based on the following topics: family, birth, nature, nurture, education, accomplishments, actions, Fortune, ending with consolation. Under ‘family’, the eulogist must stress that there is none more brilliant in the city.

Last week, we observed ancient attitudes to wanting to live for ever. Being against it, the ancients developed many ways of dealing with death. Since there were no scriptures or creeds in the pre-Christian world, there could have been as many beliefs about death as there were believers. What generally emerges from ancient Greek literature is that religion was all about success and failure in this life, and success depended on having the gods on your side. Consequently, if one dishonoured the gods by e.g., refusing to acknowledge them, one would not have to wait till the afterlife for punishment — it would be visited on you at once. Further, the gods, being immortal, had no part to play in the transition from life to death: only the god Hades had an interest in it.

A personal catastrophe strikes, and the cry goes up ‘Why me?’ and ‘Not fair’. The ancients knew all about this, and the 5th-century bc Greek historian Herodotus supplies an answer — of sorts. But first, back to Fronto. Marcus Cornelius Fronto (c. ad 95–166), orator and public servant, was a close friend of emperors, being appointed by Antoninus Pius (emperor ad 138–61) as tutor to the next emperor, the Stoic Marcus Aurelius (ad 161–80). Much of Fronto’s correspondence survives. In one of his many affecting exchanges with Marcus Aurelius, he bewails in ad 165 the loss of a beloved grandson. This, Fronto exclaims, is neither aequum (‘fair’) nor iustum (‘just’).

American interventions in the Middle East have led many commentators to regard the USA as a new imperial power. But there are many ways to control an empire, as the Romans knew. It is automatically assumed that Rome controlled its empire through its provinciae (a word whose origin is unknown, unless Mrs Wordsworth has been keeping it secret), i.e., having conquered a territory, the Romans moved in a governor complete with soldiers and a retinue of advisers to run the show, carving out deals with the local elites relating to taxation, the billeting of troops, legal institutions, etc. This is indeed a large part of the story, but not all of it. In fact, Rome was often slow, or even loath, to annex a territory.

Philip Pullman, author of the apparently anti-Christian His Dark Materials, and the Archbishop of Canterbury debated the significance of religion, and both enthusiastically agreed that ‘myth’ was an important feature of it. But why? The Greek word muthos originally meant ‘word, speech, message’. It gradually came to mean ‘significant story’. At the one extreme, these were stories that had strong traditional and communal significance because (for example) they ‘explained’ the nature of the human and divine worlds; at the other, they were straight inventions by philosophers to make a point (e.g. Plato’s muthos of Atlantis).

Statistics show that in the United States more people die in hospital because of medical blunders than from Aids, breast cancer and car accidents combined. But who carries the can? Ancient Greek doctors are remarkable for being prepared to describe their failures as well as their successes. We read of one Autonomus who ‘died from a head wound on the sixteenth day. The stone, thrown by hand, hit him on the sutures in the middle of the bregma (front of the head). I was unaware that I should trephine, because I did not notice that the sutures had the injury of the weapon right on them (this became obvious only later)...’ Then there was the young girl aged 12 who was hit by a door and had her skull broken.

The Gender Recognition Bill plodding its way through the House of Commons does not deal with hermaphrodites. Bad mistake. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid tells how the nymph Salmacis fell madly in love with him when she saw him strip and dive into a pool. She did the same, wound herself round him and, as he struggled to free himself, prayed that the gods would ensure that they were never parted. Her prayer was granted, and their two bodies were fused into one, so that they seemed ‘both male and female, and neither, at the same time’.

However one regards Mrs Gun after her betrayal of the Official Secrets Act — selfless heroine of Antigonean stature, or self-important, sanctimonious little twerp — her actions raise an important question: the security of the written word. In classical Greece, inter-state politics were usually carried out verbally, either by well-briefed ambassadors or by messengers with orders committed to memory. Personal letters between heads of state were long regarded with suspicion. First, they were seen as secretive; unlike a messenger, a letter could not blab about its contents to its fellows and, in a world where literacy was not universal, a sealed letter was a convenient way of keeping information from prying ears.

If atheism is now to be taught in schools in the RE slot, the Greek essayist Plutarch (46–120 ad) would want to teach superstition as well — to warn against it even more vehemently. In the ancient world, atheism was associated with the fifth-century bc Greek intellectuals known as the sophists. Claiming to be able to teach men how to make a success of their careers, they encouraged them not to be constrained by normal social conventions but to use logos (‘reason, argument’) to advance their cause, whatever the implications for traditional belief (nomos). As a result, religion in particular, which the Greeks acknowledged rested entirely on nomos, came under attack.

Parents who find the state education system unsatisfactory but cannot afford private schooling are getting together to hire tutors to teach their children at home. The Roman public servant Pliny the Younger (AD 61–112) would have applauded. Pliny was visiting his native town of Comum (modern Como) when he found out that the young son of a fellow citizen was being taught not locally but in faraway Mediolanum (Milan) — and he was not the only one. Baffled, Pliny remonstrated with the fathers for not raising their children in their native town where they belonged, adding that at home they could also be guaranteed to be properly brought up.

How would the ancient Athenians have handled the Hutton inquiry? They would not have needed one. Real democracies get to the nub with indecent haste. In the first place, the decision to go to war had to be agreed by the people’s Assembly (all male citizens over 18). It would have been ferociously debated. That decision made, the Assembly voted on the leaders they wished to put in charge. The Council, the Assembly’s steering committee (500 citizens over 30, selected by lot to serve for a year), then took on the job of ensuring that all the necessary resources, human and inanimate, were in place and functioning properly — especially the cavalry and navy.

Iain Duncan Smith, ex-leader of the Tory party, is evidently in a state of some depression at his humiliating rejection. Ancient philosophy must spring to his aid. Greek and Roman philosophers were primarily concerned with ethics: that is, they wanted to show their adherents what the good life was and, at a practical level, how to lead it. One of their most productive lines was dealing with failure and despair. On Tranquillity of Mind by the essayist Plutarch (46–120 ad) is a good example. He rejects the idea that tranquillity is best achieved by doing nothing, as if the best advice for a sick man was never to leave his bed.

Since Christmas is the season of good cheer but seems to leave millions squabbling, resentful and as miserable as sin, it is an appropriate time to consider what the key to happiness is. The ancients provided two distinct but highly practical theories, easily condensable into the average cracker.

As WMDs fail to surface in Iraq, it looks more and more likely that we went to war on false pretences. This is no new phenomenon. According to the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 490-425 bc), the first war of Western literature was fought on equally illusory grounds — though that did not stop Herodotus justifying it. In his Iliad and Odyssey, Homer (c. 700 bc) informs us that Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, seduced Menelaus’ wife Helen back to Ilium in Troy. The Greeks raised an army to get her back. Efforts to reach a settlement failed, but after a ten-year siege Ilium was sacked and Helen recovered. Homer even portrays life chez the Menelauses back home in Greece in their twilight years.

What should men pray for? The Roman satirist Juvenal (writing c. ad 120) famously answered mens sana in corpore sano, ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. One wonders what he would have made of today’s men and women in search of the corpus sanum, lurching along the fume-filled roadsides in their huge fluorescent trainers, chatting earnestly into the bottles of water clenched to their ears. Good health, largely a matter of pot luck in the ancient world, was very highly valued. If you survived birth, childhood and disease and could enjoy a respectable diet, you could count yourself pretty fortunate. In such a world anything that could do you good was to be recommended, and exercise was high on doctors’ priorities.

Cheque-books have been sharpened in America to lure top professors to top universities, and the ones attracting the most attention are those ‘great communicators’ with a reputation based only loosely on specialised knowledge: e.g. those who have released ‘rap’ records, or undergone sex-change operations, or achieved something of comparable intellectual value. The ancient Greek sophists, too, knew all about what would sell. The sophists were freelance professional educators, with a commitment to teaching pupils to make a successful public career for themselves by becoming great ‘communicators’.

So Gordon Brown's Treasury has overspent its budget by 40 per cent - all on itself! No wonder the officials didn't know where the money had gone. What fun if they had had to account for it in classical Athens .... One of the most extraordinary innovations of Athenian democracy was the appointment of executive officials. To simplify and omit some of the steps in the process, most of them were picked out of a hat from those who put themselves forward.

Commentators are expressing shock at the Hutton inquiry's 'revelation' that Tony Blair consults a private cabal of chums about policy. Excuse the Roman historian while he stifles a yawn. The Greeks had a word for 'a monarch's court', and Roman writers adopted it (aula) to describe the imperial 'court' that emerged with the advent of emperors: politics having been a relatively open affair under the republican system (rule by Senate and elected executives), power was now in the hands of the emperor and his chosen associates, a closed circle with personal access to the emperor and the power to control access for others. Immediate family, including wives, bulked large in this circle.

The death of Dr David Kelly has raised questions about justifications for suicide. The ancient Greeks were equally interested in the issue. Greeks, like Romans, tended to take the view that humans were, for the most part, in full control of what they chose to do. The concepts of ‘mental imbalance’ or ‘unconscious motivation’ were not commonly applied. The main question, then, was ‘Why did X commit suicide?’, and the judgment about whether the suicide was to be applauded or condemned depended on the circumstances. In general, it was more favourable to commit suicide as a result of conscious deliberation than rash impulse: one must at all times be in control.