Ancient greece

Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said: ‘This is Tom Stoppard. David West put me on to you.’ West was professor of Latin at Newcastle University and Tom called him when he had queries about Latin. But he had a question about the ancient Greeks which David could not answer, so he suggested Tom try me. I have no memory of what the question was, but my answer must at least have satisfied him because he continued to throw the odd leg-break my way. To give some idea of his range of interests, on one occasion he

Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain had come to a fork in the road. As usual, he took it – the fork between his words and his actions. Athenians of the 5th C bc were fascinated by the implications of logos (‘speech, reason, argument’, cf. ‘logic’) and ergon (‘action/results’, cf. ‘erg’). While Homeric heroes (8th C bc) were ordered to excel as ‘speakers of words’ and ‘doers of deeds’ because that made them winners in both the political and military arenas, the statesman Pericles emphasised the high importance of the interaction between word and deed: ‘We do not think logos is an obstacle to action; no, the issue is the

Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to stamp duty on a flat she had bought. Athenians were extremely proud of their citizen-led Assembly and did not take kindly to sub-standard officials. Plato constructed a dialogue (c. 430 bc) between Socrates and the controversial sophist Protagoras, who claimed that anyone taught by him would be a success in public and private life. Socrates challenged this claim. He pointed out that, when the democratic assembly of male citizens met to discuss technical matters (e.g. ship-building), they listened to those who actually had experience of building ships and shouted down

While Greek and Roman thinkers were influential in developing ideas such as citizenship, justice and equality, the notion of universal ‘human rights’ (1948), especially those involving one’s ‘identity’, would have struck them as absurd. ‘Identity’ derives from the Latin idem, ‘the same, unchanged’, via the French identité (14th century). The term has been colonised by many different groups who feel that their specific identity – e.g. colour, sexual preferences, personal beliefs – bestows ‘rights’ upon them to behave or be treated in specific ways, whatever anyone else thinks about it, let alone the law of the land. But as the great Greek historian Herodotus pointed out after spending a lifetime

Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young people’s health and athleticism with one-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises. He could usefully add elements of the early training invented by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus to create disciplined, physically and mentally resilient soldiers and citizens. Every baby was examined for fitness. They were trained not to fuss about food, or be frightened of the dark when left alone, or to get angry or cry. At seven, they joined bands in which they grew up together while their elders registered their progress in obedience and courage. They were also taught

This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral Speech of 431 bc, he was not celebrating victory – the war would end in 404 bc with Athens’s surrender – but doing something quite new: he was reflecting on what Athens stood for and why it was worth dying for. Pericles began by ticking off a number of important features of dêmokratia, ‘people-power’: the system ran in the interests of the many, not the few; men of distinction were given scope to win promotion on the grounds of merit (‘people-power’ was always thought to deny them that opportunity); but

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on stone and bronze pillars, but it was citizens who oversaw the treaty’s maintenance. In a Greek democracy, however, there was no saying how, under the influence of different leaders, policy might change and annul a treaty at a stroke. Then again, though treaties could be sworn to last forever, ‘circumstances’ were very unlikely to remain

Boris Johnson’s Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plough, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris is among the international elite, perhaps Alcibiades (c. 451-404 bc) would fit him better. Athenian elites had long had connections with the other power-brokers of the classical Greek world, Sparta and Persia. Born into such a family, the young Alcibiades, at the death of his father in 447 bc, was placed in the care of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who chose Socrates as his mentor (we are told he tried to seduce Socrates but failed). A charismatic and handsome young man, he led a life of ‘lawless self-indulgence’ but,

Rachel Reeves seems to be promising us an initial Iron Age of misery which will mutate into a glorious Golden Age. How very classical of her. It is true that some ancient Greeks saw it the other way round. They argued that it was early civilisation that was the Golden Age, inhabited by men who lived ageless and free from hardship, while Nature poured forth its fruits, harvested by men at leisure (comic poets greatly enjoyed imagining a world in which it rained wine and pease porridge, hot sausage slices rolled down rivers and inanimate objects jumped to obey orders: ‘Table, come here! Cup, go wash yourself! Fish, turn over

However great the achievements of athletes at the Olympic Games – and even more so the Paralympics – there will always be those who have their doubts about their real value. Some ancient Greeks certainly felt like that about their Olympics. Complaints were made that an athlete’s physical fitness did nothing for the public health. No boxer would order the city better or stock her granaries, and surely it was valour in war that counted. A satirist pointed out that naked wrestlers covered in olive oil would not be much use in the front line of battle. Others expressed concern about the character of the Games’ founder, Heracles, the greatest

Riots are difficult enough for us to deal with, let alone for the ancients, who had neither police nor prisons; and only late on housed troops in cities. Since Athenian citizens – the poor – made all political decisions, and the state and the rich funded them, there was little for them to riot about. The two riots organised by oligarchs to destroy democracy failed. But in republican Rome, political tensions between the rich and the poor could produce serious rioting, often designed to disrupt the voting. Tiberius Gracchus’ Bill (132 bc) forbade anyone from owning more than 120 hectares of public land (50 soccer pitches), the excess being distributed

A lawyer who wished to serve on a jury but was no Christian was given permission to swear his oath in the name of a local river. He saw it as ‘his god’, as people did in the past, when the association between nature and divinity was widely taken for granted. Consider, for example, the ancient Greek understanding of the natural world. The farmer poet Hesiod (c. 700 bc), often drawing on Hittite and Babylonian myths, provided the West with its first account of how the world was made. First there was khaos, he said (that meant, ‘emptiness, void’, cf. ‘chasm’). Then there appeared Earth, Underworld and Eros (without which

As the party of the lost and the party of the losers square up to each other, the next few weeks bid fair to raise tedium to an excruciating new level. Still, one can always rely on the c. 4,000 epigrams of the Greek Anthology (7th century bc – 6th century ad) to provide some light relief. ‘We arrived at Apelles’ for supper./ He’d stripped his garden bare./ It looked as if he was feeding his sheep,/ Instead of his friends gathered there,/ With radish and lettuce and chicory too,/ And leeks, mint and onions, and basil and rue./ And fearing we’d soon be presented/ with a nourishing helping of

After much debate it was decided that the people would not be ordered to reciprocate the King’s oath of allegiance. This was wise. As ancient Greeks knew, oaths have serious implications. For them, to take an oath was in effect ‘to invoke powers greater than oneself to uphold the truth of a declaration, by putting a curse upon oneself if it was false’. The Trojan war – the subject of the West’s first work of literature – happened only because Tyndareos, stepfather of Helen, compelled all her Greek suitors, on oath, to go to war on anyone who seduced her from her husband – which the Trojan Paris proceeded to