Peter Jones

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.

Year by year at exam results time, every Candice in the world points to her sheaves of A-grade A-levels and from the depths of her Pot Noodles ululates her indignation at the manifest injustice of her rejection by Oxbridge. Greeks would have thought such youths deranged: did they not know what it meant to compete?

Schools minister David Miliband, condemned to a life of perpetual enthusiasm for New Labour policies as he attempts to climb the greasy pole, has drawn an analogy between students getting As at A-level and Paula Radcliffe beating a world record; while the gay cleric Canon John, recently rejected as Bishop of Reading, finds a 'true analogy' between homosexual use of the body parts in love-making with unconventional methods of painting a picture (e.g. with the feet). Both had better read Aristotle on the subject before they get carried away. Aristotle sees analogy as a sort of paradigm.

It is fashionable to dismiss the ancient historians' descriptions of tyrannical Roman emperors as so much literary stereotyping. But the evidence offered by, e.g.

The MP John Redwood has hired a London PR firm to raise his profile. The firm is keen for him to feature in lifestyle articles, when he will talk about his great love of windsurfing, films and theatre. 'John is happy to talk about a wide range of subjects,' we are told, including 'his favourite restaurant/food and his passion for motoring.' It sounds an exciting prospect – how one longs to hear about why he loves going vroom – and all too horribly typical of Plato's democratic man. In his Republic, Plato analyses the way in which societies degenerate over time and mutate from one type of political system to another.

Dr David Kelly was a government expert but, in his desire to put the record straight about Iraqi arms, found himself crushed between the grindstones of government determination to impose it own views about the weapons of mass destruction, whatever the truth, and the sense of duty he had to ensure that the public was properly informed. The issue boils down to one of morality, as the opening of Plato's Republic shows. Socrates and his friends are trying to define 'morality', and Thrasymachus asserts that morality is 'acting to the advantage of the stronger party'.

Poor old Archbeard of Canterbury! Who will rid him of these infernal gay priests? Or infernal anti-gay priests? Ancient Greeks would have found the whole issue baffling. First, consulting gods for their views was a straightforward business: one examined entrails or sent a delegation to an oracle. If they got the interpretation wrong, the god would let them know soon enough. Greeks would have wondered what sort of Christian god this was who was incapable of alerting his followers to his will. Second, ancient gods were interested only in being honoured, not in overseeing human morality. So Greeks would have found it strange that gods should be concerned about what people did in bed. To both men and gods, sex was just another aspect of the natural world, like rivers and the harvest.