Forget David Davis, Boris, the cabinet, the commentariat. It’s time to concentrate on the big picture and the central question: where does final authority lie in the UK? The ancients grappled with this problem too. In the direct, radical democracy of 5th and 4th c Athens, it lay with the male citizens meeting in assembly.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has given all his cabinet a copy of Cicero’s advice on how to win arguments. This is a very foolish move. ‘Rhetoric’ (same root as ‘orator’), or persuasive speaking, was the name of this activity. In the 4th century bc, Aristotle produced the definitive guide in his Art of Rhetoric, from
The UK obesity crisis is again in the headlines, and ‘life-style’ is the culprit. The ancients may have come up with a different analysis. Our word ‘diet’ derives from the ancient Greek diaita, which meant ‘way of living’ and, medically, a prescribed way of life, or regimen, especially in relation to diet for the ill.
Peace with his enemy Kim Jong-un on the one hand, conflict with his European allies on the other: what sense can one make of President Trump? The ancients would have understood him all too well. The 5th c bc Greek historian Thucydides, seeing how anarchic city-state rivalry made any state liable to be attacked by
Matthew Parris feels that he has become a genuine Remainiac, and kindly readers, fearing for his mental health, have been springing to his aid. The Roman elite, who felt the same sense of disempowerment after the republic collapsed and Augustus became the first Roman emperor in 27bc, might have a solution. The point about Augustus
Brexiteers argue for ‘sovereignty’, i.e. that Brexit should release us entirely from the grip of Europe, leaving us free to make our own way in the world. But it is our democratically elected parliament that is sovereign, and if it decides to hand over some of that decision-making power to external bodies, so be it.
Alfie Evans was seven months old when he went to hospital with seizures. When more than a year later doctors said that nothing more could be done for him, his parents took the hospital to court. They lost a number of cases on the issue, and when the courts ruled he could not be moved
A couple of weeks ago a reader (Emma Lyons) queried Taki, the High Life professor of ancient Greek culture and society, who had argued that Achilles and Patroclus, heroes of the Trojan War, were not gay, and implied that Greeks did not do transgenderism. On both counts a little clarification is required. The 5th-century BC
Jeremy Corbyn, it is said, does not have a racist bone in his body, and therefore cannot, by definition, be anti-Semitic (‘Semitic’ here referring to Jews, not Arabs). The Jewish community, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the problem is that Corbyn and Momentum take a Roman attitude towards the Jews. If racism today relates to
The Russian economy is not in the greatest of shapes. That being the case, one would have thought friendly diplomatic and economic relations with the West would be a priority for Vladimir Putin, given his need for cash to build weapons against threats from superpowers such as Estonia. A little Roman history would help. As
Barely a day passes without yet another Russian explanation for the Salisbury nerve agent attack. What’s new? Such disinformation has a very ancient history. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 bc, his old friend Mark Antony and the 18-year-old Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son and heir, emerged as the two contenders for power. In 32 bc, it had
President Trump’s acceptance of talks about denuclearisation must have been as big a shock to Kim Jong-un as his offer was to the USA. So Kim is probably scrambling, too. And if there is a positive outcome, he will live to regret it. In the 2nd century bc the two big Mediterranean players were Rome and the vast
The presenters of the BBC 2 programme on civilisations seem unable to decide what civilisation is. Socrates would therefore wonder how they could make a programme about it. Still, that’s academe for you. Let the Romans help out. First, the root of ‘civilisation’ is Latin civis, ‘citizen’. That implies a law-bound society. Secondly, in his
Europe, a majority of MPs (party loyalties aside), the Lords, the civil service, the BBC and the CBI are all determined to keep Britain in the EU. To that end, emitting crocodile tears, they would welcome a final Brexit deal that is effectively worthless. That, they hope, will cause a second referendum, resulting in a
Jeremy Corbyn is the master of ‘raising issues’. He received an obscure prize last year for his ‘work for disarmament and peace’ — i.e. talking about it. He ‘raised issues about human rights in Iran’, he said, when he worked for TV there. It will be at the ‘centre of my foreign policy’. The ancient
The outsourcing business Carillion has gone bust because its bids for government work have been far too low. The problems raised by such contracts are not new. The Romans outsourced a great deal of state business. The Bible’s ‘publicans’ were wealthy publicani (lit. ‘men engaged on public business’). No doubt aided by the occasional sinner,
Advertisements encouraging men and women to join the army emphasise that their religious beliefs, sexual orientation and emotional needs will be no barrier to making a career. Very nice too, but what sort of come-on is that? Is there no positive reason for joining up in the first place? In the ancient world, war was
Whatever one makes of the accuracy of the journalist Michael Wolff’s depiction of President Trump, it cannot all be the product of an overheated imagination. What makes it so interesting is that his picture of total dysfunctionality is typical of Roman historians’ accounts of many emperors. Suetonius (d. c. ad 125), for example, was a
This year will be the 100th anniversary of some women over the age of 30 getting the vote, and for the first time all men over the age of 21. One can confidently expect an avalanche of articles about increasing women’s power, with the usual sanctimonious finger-wagging at ancient Athenians, who empowered citizen males in
D(is) M(anibus) Regina liberta(m) et coniuge(m) Barates Palmyrenus natione Catuallauna an(norum) XXX ‘To the spirits of the dead, and to Regina, his freedwoman and wife, of the Catuvellauni, aged 30 years, Barates of Palmyra erected this.’ There Regina sits, in all her Roman finery. You cannot make out her face because the great stone funerary
