History

Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has generated much talk about the ethics of suicide. As far as the ancients were concerned, it was only in life that you could make your mark. The Christian passion for embracing, even rejoicing at, death made no sense to them. Ancient thinkers generally did not fear an afterlife. Although there were no received views on the matter (unless you were a member of a cult of some sort), many ancients reckoned that, if the gods were displeased with you, they would demonstrate their hostility in this life rather than the next. But when death was inevitable, they wanted to be in control, because the

Flattery will get you everywhere, as the sycophants that surround Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping know. Which makes Elon Musk’s defection rather interesting. Trump’s policies meant that Musk simply could not flatter him any more just to satisfy his inexhaustible self-love, which, says the Greek essayist, biographer and diplomat Plutarch (d. c. ad 120), is what gives the kolax (‘flatterer’) his foothold: the person he wishes to flatter, his victim, will be only too happy for the kolax to endlessly proclaim his qualities and abilities. Naturally, the kolax does not pay attention to poor, obscure or unimportant persons – where is the gain in that? –

The trouble with history is that it is topiary. History is what’s left after the unwanted foliage has been clipped and cleared away. The topiary birds, pigs and pyramids are just yew bushes minus the clippings, these forms having emerged from the topiarist’s shears. Your yew-based pig is a product of selective disposal, even down to its curly tail. Likewise with a historian’s shears. The raw material may be facts (in the words of the 19th-century German historiographer Leopold von Ranke, ‘what actually happened’) but the history book’s account, the shape and meaning we give to an era, relies as much on the happenings we choose to discard as on

Hard reset Sir: Once again we must debate Brexit (‘Starmer vs the workers’, 24 May). The ‘reset’ agreement does give more control over UK domestic policy to the EU, if the points outlined in it are followed through. I assume they will be, as that’s what Labour’s front bench wants. (The prospect of us rushing through EU passport control, as Michael Gove and others suggest, is still unlikely, though – the document states only that there will be the ‘potential use of e-gates where appropriate’.) Britain must pay for many of the extra ‘benefits’. Apparently the boost to the UK amounts to £9 billion by 2040, but I’m unable to

Eighty years ago, as Red Army shells rained down over Adolf Hitler’s Reich Chancellery garden, a group of his remaining friends and colleagues huddled under the block-shaped exit of his last grim command centre, the Führerbunker. Flames engulfed the bodies of the newlywed Mr and Mrs Hitler, casting a flickering light over the onlookers, who raised their arms in a final straight-armed salute. The enduring cultural and political relevance of Hitler’s death hardly needs restating. It gave us online parodies of the rant scene in the film Downfall and, of course, a wild range of conspiracy theories. I once hoped that my book Hitler’s Death: the Case Against Conspiracy might

Donald Trump’s obsessive ‘awhairness’ makes one wonder: why is it so important to him? The topic was of some interest in Rome. The emperor Domitian wrote a treatise on baldness. So too did Cleopatra, who offered the following remedy: ‘For bald patches, powder red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with oak gum, as much as it will bear. Put on a rag and apply, having soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam of nitre, and it worked well.’ Pompey had himself depicted in statuary wearing a hairstyle associated with Alexander the Great, with a lock of hair brushed back from the forehead.

The young in Canada are said to be taking up astrology. But why? Do they think Mark Carney is a star? The ancients saw astrology as a form of divination, which Cicero debunked in 44 bc. The debunking is in the form of a debate with his brother Quintus, who defines divinatio as ‘the foreknowledge and foretelling of events that happen by chance’. First, Cicero points out that no one summons up the diviner when there are experts to hand. On questions of nature men go to a scientist, on statecraft to a politician, on war to a general and so on. The diviner has no role anywhere. Then consider

It is the early 9th century. Peace reigns in a small French village as they prepare for a wedding. Garlands are being hung, sheep are being shepherded, all is sunshine and smiles. Then, in a snap, this bucolic bliss bursts as Viking warriors invade the scene and unleash hell. The original Puy du Fou is unashamedly pro-God, pro-monarchy and Vive la France A longboat splashes down a chute into the river, another spectacularly emerges from beneath the lake; swords clash, fires erupt, women are carried off and treasures seized. The villagers need a miracle, and it comes with the sudden appearance of a bishop, the blessed St Philibert. Just as

The criminals Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both believe that might is right. The whole question fascinated the ancient Greeks.  In his famous history of the long war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 bc), Thucydides (d. c. 400 bc) explored the question through speeches on both sides, but on one occasion – when Athens demanded the surrender of the small island of Melos – he put it in the form of a debate. Here is an edited sample, strangely apposite too: Ath: You know as well as we do that, in the real world, justice comes into it only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can

Nearly six million people are on out-of-work benefits. It is claimed that, for most of those, going back to work would not be financially worth it. Aristotle would have agreed with them because for him, leisure was the most important possession a man could have. The ancients generally had no concept of the dignity of labour, apart from idealistic views about the farmer working in harmony with gods and man for the moral betterment of mankind. For most people, work was a painful necessity whose only purpose was to keep you from penury. The farmer-poet Hesiod (c. 680 bc) saw farming mainly as a matter of survival, when men ‘will never

‘I get along with him well. I like him a lot,’ Donald Trump has said of Sir Keir Starmer. ‘He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person and I think he’s done a very good job thus far. I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him.’ Sir Keir must be thrilled – how wonderful to be praised by the most powerful man in the world, joining Nigel Farage as teacher’s pet! There were many Romans too who prided themselves as being amici principis, ‘friends of the emperor’. These were an inner ring of