History

In his 37-book Natural History, Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) wondered why we wished people ‘Happy new year’ (primum anni diem laetis precationibus faustum ominamur), or said ‘Bless you’ (sternuentes salutamus) when someone sneezed. Was this mere superstition, or something else? Pliny devoted a lot of time to denigrating all forms of superstition and magic, arguing that they were attempts to control the uncontrollable in human affairs, and citing Nero as an example of someone whose interest in magic was nothing but an ‘overwhelming desire to force the gods to do his will’, as if such a thing were ever possible. Beliefs about such phenomena, whose origins Pliny found

Professor Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, had proposed a motion ordering all members of the university to ‘respect’ each other, or else. But significant numbers of members argued strongly against it, and rightly so: ‘respect’ is an emotional term implying deferential regard or special concern or solicitude for someone, a response more in line with the world of counselling and social welfare than with rigorous academic debate. Further, if ‘respect’ became justiciable because an academic appealed against dismissal from his job on that account, where would that end? Thankfully Professor Toope failed, as history suggests he should have. On the ancients’ intellectual agenda, respect had to be earned. Rival

To what use does one put history? Romans thought it provided ‘lessons’. Modern historians rather sniff at the idea, but do in fact dance to the same tune. For Romans, the study of history was all about discovering exempla (‘models, examples’) applicable to current circumstances. Indeed, Valerius Maximus (1st C ad) composed his Memorable Deeds and Sayings entirely out of historical exempla, as ‘torches or spurs that make humans burn with desire to help others and win their respect’. This may seem charmingly naive, but consider two stories from the historian Livy. Manlius Torquatus, ordered by his father the consul not to leave his position, accepted a challenge from an

The next time you settle down in the evening to enjoy the latest work by your favourite historian, treasure it, because it may be their last for a while. This is for the simple reason that historians are effectively being denied access to one of the most essential tools of their trade — the National Archives. For many, this non-ministerial government department may just be an ugly slab of 1970s concrete that sits on the Thames in Kew, but it is actually nothing less than the nation’s memory — for it is here that millions of documents produced by the British state during the past thousand years are held. From

We classicists peering into the past can sometimes be blindsided by the present. 2020 brings the charge that our discipline promotes racism. Last month, America’s Society for Classical Studies announced ‘the complicity of Classics as a field in constructing and participating in racist and anti-black educational structures and attitudes’. A pre-doctoral fellow at Princeton has enjoined ‘white classicists’ to ‘unlearn white supremacy in themselves’. And, closer to home, Oxford’s Faculty of Classics is being petitioned by many of its students to ‘acknowledge explicitly its own role in the proliferation of racist, colonialist, and white supremacist attitudes’. Have I really chosen the career of racism-pedlar? Are classicists really promoting ‘white people’

When I was about ten, on return home from church I ate a peach, the juice of which dribbled down my new pink frock. I scuttled to my room to change, bunching the dress under the bed. I emerged the picture of innocence, but I felt guilty. For weeks, the garment pulsed with accusation. Going to sleep, I always knew it was there. Sure enough, my mother discovered the wad while vacuuming, and she was furious. She could have scrubbed out the juice had I told her about it right away. To this day, I’m mindful that you can only expunge stains while they’re still fresh — and somewhere in

Word has it that ministers already do not bother to argue their corner with the government’s inner ring, while a slimmer, streamlined cabinet office threatens to disempower them still further. Ministers could soon resemble senators under Rome’s second emperor Tiberius (ad 14-37). The historian Tacitus painted an extraordinary picture of Tiberius’s early days in office. The fact was that his stepfather Augustus had exercised autocratic power after he ‘restored’ the republic that had collapsed in 31 bc. The question for senators, therefore, was what change to expect under the new man in power. Their experience suggested precious little. They already knew Tiberius as a cryptic, devious and heartless character, whose

Is it best to erase history, or reappraise history? We haven’t started taking down statues of royalty in Britain yet, but they have in Belgium: statues of King Leopold II were vandalised across the country last week and taken down. It was no surprise – in the bloody history of colonialism, he was one of the bloodiest rulers. He took personal control of the Congo, effectively enslaved everyone, ruled by sadistic brutality (hand and foot removal were a common punishment), killed about half the population, and extracted great wealth. However, the lesson to learn from Belgium is not statue removal, but what they have done to the enormous monument that

I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’) or with Boris Johnson (‘if people wanted the removal of the statue there are democratic routes which can be followed’). No, there was something magnificent about the sight of the Bristol mob throwing into the harbour the statue of a man whose trade was notorious for throwing sick slaves with no monetary value into the sea. 1890s Britain raised that statue. 1890s Britain — the decade in which my grandparents were children, for heaven’s sake — had only just closed the slave market in Zanzibar: and if you want to