Saturday 5 July 2008

 

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Liz Anderson

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Ancient & Modern

Wednesday, 16th January 2008

‘Change’ is the latest buzzword of contemporary politics.

Change is, of course, quite meaningless until one knows what (precisely) is being changed and to (precisely) what; and, for a government in power for ten years, it leaves hanging in the air the objection, ‘If you want to keep on changing things, it rather suggests that you have kept on getting things wrong.’

The Romans had a terror of change. ‘Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque’, /intoned the epic poet Ennius — ‘Rome’s foundations are its tried and tested values and its men’ — and even when the going was at its roughest, Romans went out of their way to deny that change had happened at all. The most stunning example of this is the moment when, to Romans’ utter horror, the Republic collapsed in bloodshed and Augustus emerged as sole ruler.

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