Peter Jones

Last week this column began publishing Alexander Demandt's list of the 210 reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire (from Der Falls Rom, 1984). The list is now completed, and a conclusion drawn: 'Lack of leadership, lack of male dignity, lack of military recruits, lack of orderly imperial succession, lack of qualified workers, lack of rainfall, lack of religiousness, lack of seriousness, large landed properties, lead-poisoning, lethargy, levelling (cultural), levelling (social), loss of army discipline, loss of authority, loss of energy, loss of instincts, loss of population, luxury.

Greeks and Romans loved lists, from Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning together with a List of Their Writings to Words Suspected of Not Having Been Used by the Ancients. In the same spirit, this column will over the next two weeks publish, from Professor Alexander Demandt's Der Falls Rom (1984), a list of the 210 reasons for the fall of the Roman empire. As modern empires rise and fall in these troubled times, the lessons of history – or should that be historians? – may help us find our bearings: 'Abolition of gods, abolition of rights, absence of character, absolutism, agrarian question, agrarian slavery, anarchy, anti-Germanism, apathy, aristocracy, asceticism, attacks by Germans, attacks by Huns, attacks by nomads on horseback.

A spate of books is being published to explain the many useful lessons that businessmen can learn from the great figures of the past. One of the figures is Alexander the Great. Well, yes. But then again, no. In 334 bc, with a formidable army at his back, Alexander set out to take revenge against the might of the Persian empire for having dared to attack Greece 150 years earlier. By 331 bc he had driven the Persians out of Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Judaea and Egypt; by 330 he had conquered Iraq and Iran (the Persian homeland) and defeated the Persian king Darius. Mission accomplished? Not for Alexander.

In his essay 'Politics and the English Language' (1946), George Orwell laments the corruption of the English language in postwar society. Everywhere he finds pompous phrases designed to sound weighty ('render inoperative', meaning 'break'); Latin- or Greek-based words where simpler words will do ('ameliorate' for 'improve', 'clandestine' for 'secret'); words which have lost their meaning ('fascism', meaning 'something not desirable'); padding to give an impression of depth ('this is a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind'); clichés ('ring the changes on', 'play into the hands of', 'toe the line', 'explore every avenue').

Chancellor Brown has identified our national genius with 'enterprise and inventiveness, our tolerance and belief in liberty, fairness and public service – and our internationalism'. This last, meaningless aspect of our 'genius' is tossed in to help him argue that we should adopt the 'you-row', as that Welsh newscaster puts it, and change Europe to our way of doing things. It is not a logic that would have appealed to Pericles. The Athenian historian Thucydides tells us that Pericles devoted his Funeral Speech of 430 bc (commemorating those fallen in battle that year) to identifying the unique qualities that made up the 'national genius' of Athens.

Nearly 75 per cent of university lecturers think the current intake of students is the worst they can remember. Plato may help us decide what 'worst' means; and an important conclusion follows. In his Euthydemus, Plato portrays two clever-clogs sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, toying verbally with a young man, Cleinias. First Euthydemus asks him who learns – the wise or the ignorant? Cleinias answers, 'The wise'. Euthydemus now points out that, when Cleinias was learning (for example) how to play the lute or to write, he had a teacher; and the teacher taught him because Cleinias did not know how to do either of those things. Cleinias assents, and Euthydemus asks him if in that situation he was wise or ignorant; and Cleinias is forced to admit that he was ignorant.

As the forces returning from duty in Iraq know best of all, important though amazing technology is, the camaraderie and morale of the unit make the crucial difference. The Romans knew this, too, and took steps to nurture the right frame of mind in their soldiers. First, punishments and incentives strongly affected personal behaviour. The penalty for sleeping on watch, failing to obey orders or abandoning weapons in battle was to be clubbed to death. But the soldier who performed well was congratulated and rewarded by the general in front of the whole army, while victory usually meant a distribution of booty among the men, often worth a very great deal (a prospect that always did wonders for recruitment). Second, high-quality leadership brought out the best in the men.

Apologies for singing a very old song, but with the debate on a referendum over the European constitution in full swing, and the term 'parliamentary democracy' being bandied about by New Labour to repel the notion, it is time to remind readers again how meaningless the term 'parliamentary democracy' actually is. 'Democracy' derives from d'mokratia, 'people-power' (Greek d'mos 'people' + kratos 'rule, authority, power'). This term was invented to describe the system put in place in Athens by Cleisthenes in 508 bc. The result was that all the decisions which our MPs take today were taken in Athens by the majority vote of the people (male citizens over 18) meeting in the Assembly. D'mokratia was destroyed by the Macedonian conquerors of Athens in 322 bc and has never been tried since.

The footballer David Beckham has had new tattoos imprinted on his arms, complete with Latin tags. One reads perfectio in spiritu, 'perfection in spirit', the other ut amem et foveam, 'to love and to cherish', translated into Latin from the Solemnisation of Matrimony in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. What is going on? Tattoos have a long history going back to 11th-dynasty Egypt (c. 2000 bc). They were especially popular in Britain – Britanni, originally Pretani or Priteni, meant 'painted/tattooed people' (cf. Latin Picti). These days they have become a form of heraldry, marking the body rather than the shield with one's personal 'coat of arms', for sexual as well as social purposes.

Two British commandos from the Special Boat Service (motto 'Not by force, but by guile') escaped capture in Iraq by trekking some 100 miles across mountainous terrain, by night, to the Syrian border. Who were they? Nobody knows, or will know – a unique form of heroism. In the ancient world it was public performance, and so public acknowledgment, that counted. In Homer's Iliad, Sarpedon, a Trojan ally from Lycia, gives the classic statement of the heroic 'contract' to his second-in-command Glaucus that in return for the best of material rewards 'we are obliged to take our places in the front ranks and fling ourselves into the flames of battle. Only then will our Lycian men-at-arms say of us, "Well!

The Americans say they have no plans to attack any other foreign power – at the moment. To judge by the Iraq conflict, however, it will not be St Augustine's concept of the 'just war' that controls that decision, but that of the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero. In his de officiis ('On Obligations', 44 bc), Cicero discusses how justice should be applied in a range of cases, including war. Arguing that there are laws of warfare which must be strictly observed, he continues, 'Since there are two ways of settling a dispute, by discussion or by force, and the former is characteristic of man, the latter of animals, we must resort to force only when discussion is no longer possible. The only excuse for going to war is that one may live in peace, unharmed.

What will be Middle Eastern historians' judgment of Saddam's regime and its enforced collapse? Is there a Tacitus among them? In his Histories, Tacitus describes the traumatic 'Year of the Four Emperors' (ad 69) that followed the death of Nero, a year when general after general attempted to seize power by force, and the Roman world seemed to fall apart. There is an especially dramatic description of the fall of the third brief tenant of the imperial throne, Vitellius – an end which may yet mirror Saddam's. When Rome was captured by the troops of his successor, Vespasian, Vitellius was taken by chair through the back of the palace to his wife's house. His aim was to lie low and get away by night to his brother's home, 60 miles to the south in Tarracina.

Commentators are complaining that the Iraqi army is refusing to confront the coalition forces head-on. Very sensible of them. Quintus Fabius Maximus (charmingly known as Verrucosus, 'covered in warts') would have applauded. In 218 bc Hannibal brought his Carthaginian army (complete with elephants) from north Africa, across Spain and southern France, and over the Alps down into Italy. His purpose was to take revenge on the Romans for the Carthaginian defeat in the first Punic War (265-241 bc). In battles at Ticinus, Trebia and Trasimene, he thrashed the Romans in open field, at a cost to the them of about 50,000 casualties. The Romans were appalled at this turn of events.

George Bush wishes to see democracy - he means, of course, elective oligarchy - imposed all over the Middle East, whether Middle Easterners want it or not. Alexander the Great had the same sort of idea, but his way of doing it was not quite what Mr Bush has in mind. Alexander set out from Macedon in 334 bc, he said, to take revenge against the Persians for attacking Greece in 490-479 bc (the 'Persian Wars'). His formidable army drove the Persians out of Asia Minor (Turkey) and marched into Iraq; and on 1 October 331, he defeated the Persian king Darius at the climactic battle of Gaugamela. When he took Babylon (Baghdad), Susa and then Persepolis, with their fabulous riches (he never needed to raise another penny), the job was effectively done.

In his already classic sociological study of the Hooray Henry in last week's Spectator, Professor Oborne did not have space to explore in full the ancient precedents for this style of behaviour. Herewith, then, a humble footnote to his marr-sterful overview, together with a forward-looking proposal.

The EU has recently proclaimed that, for the purposes of its statistical analyses, Britain is not an island. That poses an interesting question: when did it become an island? It has recently been argued that it became one, in Roman eyes at any rate, on 21 July 54 bc, at 9.21 p.m. The historical and archaeological record shows that, in the 1st century bc, Britain enjoyed very close commercial and political ties with Europe. This, indeed, is probably what attracted Julius Caesar to it in the first of his expeditions here in 55 bc, for which he was officially thanked by the Senate in Rome. But it did not work out at all well.

The debate grinds on about whether to bid for the Olympic Games to be staged in London. It is time to apply a little ancient wisdom. Alcibiades, darling of the Bright Young Things in 5th-century bc Athens, was very proud of his achievements in the prestigious chariot race at the Olympic Games (he entered seven teams, finishing first, second and fourth). He argued that, since his performance generated tremendous regard for Athens' power, it could hardly be regarded as a 'folly', as some had said. But Alcibiades was talking not about staging but about winning the Games, something Brits rarely do.

What is it in our interests to do about immigration? The ancient Athenians came up with an interesting answer. The reason for Athens' control of immigrants (metoikoi, 'those who change their habitation', metics) was suspicion of aliens (war being endemic in the ancient world) and paranoia about the purity of their own citizenship. Any non-Athenian who wanted to take up residence in Athens, temporary or permanent, had to fulfil certain conditions. First, they registered with the state authority; then they registered with the local authority (the 'deme', roughly 'parish') where they were living. These registers were kept for administrative purposes. They also had to pay a unique monthly tax, and were liable for military service, but they could not own land or take any political role.

Every week professionals such as teachers and doctors express their desire to get out of their jobs. Why? Because they have lost their independence. Greeks and Romans would have richly sympathised. When Cicero was discussing the problems of old age, he said, 'The old will be respected only if they fight for themselves, maintain their own rights, avoid dependence, and assert their authority over their households as long as life lasts.' His point is that in old age one tended to yield one's grip on that independence and control over one's own affairs that gave one a sense of purpose.

Mrs Samira Ahmed, an ex-university professor in Sudan, has launched a sex-strike in an attempt to end the 19 years of (un)civil war that have torn the country apart. The newspapers went into their usual routines about Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 bc) - and, as usual, got it wrong. In Lysistrata, we are regularly told, the women of Greece are persuaded to refuse to sleep with their husbands in an attempt to end the Athens-Sparta war that had begun in 431 bc; as a result, the sex-starved men, sporting huge erections all day, give in and the war ends. This is true as far as it goes, but in fact the sex-strike is only the half of it.