Ancient & modern | 27 March 2010

Stephen Byers looks more like a seller as he touts himself round the House of Commons like a ‘taxi for hire’.

Stephen Byers looks more like a seller as he touts himself round the House of Commons like a ‘taxi for hire’. Romans knew all about this sort of thing.

The Latin for ‘electioneering’ was ambitio, and its cognate ambitus meant ‘bribery’. Since vote-winning was an honourable pastime, bribery did not mean corruption. It meant doing favours by offering gifts for something in return, which could (at a pinch) be seen to be in the public interest. Such a culture was at the heart of all relationships, social, political, legal and business, in the Roman world. The general public also played the game, getting to the head of the queue by greasing palms. The emperor Caracalla (ad 198-217) offered sound advice to officials here: do not take ‘everything, nor every time, nor from every one’.

For the great and good, this could be done on a huge scale. When Caesar and Pompey, for example, took steps in 59 bc to ensure that Cleopatra’s father Ptolemy XII became king of Egypt, they picked up a cool £50 million. Provincial governors, appointed from those who had served their year of office, found it easy to make a fortune in the service of Rome, even an honest one like Cicero. But as wits said, a governor had, in fact, to make three fortunes: one to recoup election expenses from climbing the greasy pole in Rome; one to bribe the jury on charges of provincial mismanagement; and one to live off thereafter.

But where Byers went badly wrong was to suggest he had far more influence than he did.