David Cameron, once a PR man for a TV company, has brought all his skills to bear on becoming the epitome of everything New Tory stands for, like, er, yes, of course, families (wow!) and the NHS (no!). Is this why he comes over as little more than a pretty windsock, without an idea in
A group of gangsters’ molls in Pereira, which evidently has the highest murder rate in Colombia, has decided to withhold sex from their boyfriends until they give up their guns. Inevitably they have been likened to the women in Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata (staged in Athens in February 411 bc) whose purpose was to persuade their men
Gordon Brown has promised that, when he comes to absolute power, he alone (not parliamentary colleagues, let alone the people) will appoint a cabinet ‘of all talents’ to do his bidding. Even the Romans were more democratic than that. Roman toffs naturally took it for granted that none but they could legislate effectively. As Cicero
The government ardently denies that its proposal to allow 24-hour drinking will lead to streets filled with drunks. It then legislates to, er, deal with streets filled with drunks. Nothing could more perfectly exemplify Plato’s brilliant image of law-makers as people ‘slashing away at a kind of Hydra’ — the many-headed monster which grew two
Whenever the subject of the EU comes up, someone is bound to compare it to the Roman empire. If the comparison relates to the beginning and subsequent development of that empire, it fails. But the end of the Roman empire in the West in the 5th century ad may well offer quite a good model
‘ANGER-management consultants’ have been appearing all over the papers in the past few weeks discussing how the footballer Roy Keane might learn to control his foul temper. The papers could have saved the cost of their predictable services by reprinting selected chunks from Seneca (4 bc-ad 65) De Ira, ‘On Anger’, and Plutarch (ad 46-
The media have been collectively tut-tutting over the mindless mob that gathered to abuse a woman held on bail over the Soham murders. Nothing new there: the Roman historian Tacitus (ad 56-120) long ago pointed out how satisfying it was to submerge one’s individual personality into a collective one. Tacitus paints a splendid picture of
After Rome defeated Carthage in the first Punic war (264–241 bc), it annexed Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica and maintained its interest in the Carthaginian heartlands of North Africa and Spain. So when Hannibal, elephants and all, marched through Spain and southern Gaul and descended over the Alps into Italy to start the second Punic war
It is astonishing how ancient thinkers chanced to anticipate certain developments in our understanding of the nature of the universe. From atoms to swerves to strings, Greeks got there first — after a fashion. Ancient Greeks were the first people we know to propose that a single basic stuff lay at the heart of all
The refusal of his patients to assume responsibility for their own actions is a recurrent theme of Dr Theodore Dalrymple’s columns. He and Aristotle see eye to eye on the matter perfectly. In Nicomachean Ethics III, Aristotle (384–322 bc) begins by arguing that a man can wish for what really is good, or merely for
The Tory leader Michael Howard has published a list of his ‘beliefs’. If this was a political move, Athenians would have found it baffling. The 5th-century bc thinker Protagoras defined ‘excellence’ as ‘proper management of one’s own business … and of the city’s too, so that one can make the most effective contribution to its
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. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc)