Ancient rome

As both sides of the great EU debate line up their forces, it is worth reflecting on the implications of the collapse of the Roman republic in the 1st century bc and its transformation into an imperial system under the first emperor Augustus. Romans dated the start of the collapse to 133 bc. Up till then, they felt that relations between the senate, the traditional, if de facto, ruling authority, and the Plebeian assembly, with its tribunes who could veto senatorial proposals, had worked pretty well, without any serious clashes. This all changed when the ambitious aristocrat Tiberius Gracchus got himself elected tribune in order to use the Plebeian assembly

John McDonnell, shadow chancellor in the Corbynite splinter-group, has announced that £120 billion is waiting to be reclaimed from tax avoidance, evasion and other schemes. Nero was equally detached from reality. The Roman historian Tacitus tells us that in ad 65 a fantasist from Carthage by name of Caesellius Bassus bribed his way into an interview with Nero and told him that on his estate there was hidden a vast quantity of gold, not in coin but in unworked bullion — great columns of it. It had been hidden there, he said, by Dido, the Phoenician queen who had founded Carthage. Nero was thrilled. Triremes filled with soldiers and rowed

True to his antique, bearded ideology, guru Corbyn is a ‘republican’, a form of government invented 2,500 years ago. ‘Republic’ derives from the Latin res publica — ‘people’s property, business’ (not politicians’). It defined Rome in contrast to its earliest condition as a monarchy, under the control of kings. Romans dated the republican revolution to 509 bc, when the last king, Tarquinius Superbus (‘arrogant’), was thrown out after his son Sextus raped the noblewoman Lucretia. From then on, at least in theory, the people could always have the last word through the various people’s assemblies. One can be quite sure that Corbyn will welcome popular control of the Labour party

While the Labour party rakes over its past in an effort to find a policy for its future, the commentators continue to speculate about Boris’s role, if any, in a Tory party increasingly dominated by chancellor George Osborne. Romans would have sympathised. Life in the imperial court in Rome was not necessarily one long orgy. One’s fortunes rested precariously on the good will of the emperor, who could inspire both love, hate and fear, as the philosopher Epictetus pointed out, because he had the ‘power to confer the greatest advantages’ such as ‘wealth and office — tribunates, praetorships, consulships’. In a striking image Epictetus envisaged men in the court scrabbling for

Alex Salmond, the ex-first minister who proved incapable of making Scotland independent, has assured the world that he and his handful of SNP MPs will force Westminster to dance to his tune, or else. So his response to humiliating failure is the threat of political blackmail. At least it is now clear what the SNP stands for. For Cicero (106–43 bc), surveying the ruins of the Roman republic at the hands of ruthless dynasts such as Caesar and Pompey fighting for power with personal armies at their back, the question of the ethics of public service — the duty one owed to the state — loomed large. What he saw disturbed

In the UK the richest 1 per cent — 300,000 — of the working population control 23 per cent of the nation’s total wealth. Austerity and cuts loom. Oxfam says there are 13 million ‘relatively’ poor in the country. But the poor seem rather relaxed about it. The ancients, however, knew the poor could not be ignored. In the Athenian radical democracy, the poor were in fact the bosses, having total control of Athens’ courts and sovereign assembly. They could have voted themselves pensions for life had they so wished, or stripped the rich of everything they owned. They did not. Instead the rich were taxed in times of war and made

The Green party’s manifesto appears to make saving the planet only a small element in its otherwise painfully unoriginal agenda. This is a pity. People have been wreaking environmental havoc for thousands of years, Greeks and Romans included. Deforestation and subsequent soil erosion were the most serious example of such havoc in the ancient world. Wood was the equivalent of today’s coal and plastic. It provided fuel for houses, baths and industry, especially pottery-firing. We hear of one Phaenippus who made a useful income from his six donkeys bringing firewood into Athens every day. It was the basic building material for everything from chairs to houses and ships (even the pitch

In responding as they did to the Daily Telegraph ‘sting’, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind may well have done nothing wrong by the letter of parliamentary law. But people’s perception of behaviour is quite another matter. The MPs’ bloated self-importance and Rifkind’s shameful defence of his actions, that no one would want to become an MP unless they could also line their pockets, did them no credit at all. The ancients knew all about this sort of thing. Roman senators, for example, made millions if they were posted abroad to run provinces. As cynics said, they had to make three fortunes: one to recoup election expenses from climbing the

Before taking their seats in Parliament, all MPs must swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Mark Durkan, MP for Foyle in Northern Ireland, recently suggested that they should also swear an oath to do no wrong. In this election year, that could set a useful precedent. Political orators in the Greek world talked of the good citizen as one who cared for the like-mindedness of all citizens and for his city’s interests — defending the fatherland, obeying the laws and authorities, and honouring the state’s cults — and young Athenian males swore to this effect when they reached the age of 18. The Roman emperor Augustus made all