The Roman historian Tacitus commented that the visit of an Armenian king to Rome to clinch a deal in ad 66 demonstrated ‘that the king did not understand how we Romans value real power, but disdain its vanities’. What about Donald Trump’s recent visit, then? The imperial powers of Rome and of Parthia (modern Iran)
Labour may be in a bit of a mess, but Cicero (d. 43 bc) has some top tips. ‘Let conscience and scrupulous regard for the right take precedence over the obligations of friendship.’ ‘The person who corrupts his audience by words commits a graver crime than the man who does so by bribery. For even
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
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
Since, in the absence of border posts, people in the ancient world could come and go at will, refugees and asylum seekers were as common as they are now. But then the notion of ‘citizenship’ came into play. Roman plebs were indeed proud to be citizens, but the ruling oligarchic elite, intent on expanding Rome’s
‘Proscription’ appears to be the current word of the month. But what does it mean? The Latin scribo means ‘I write’ and generates a root in script-. Since the Latin prefix pro carried the idea of ‘bringing something into the open’, the noun proscriptio meant ‘a written notice announcing a sale’. In the 1st century
Why are people in the UK protesting about the situation in Gaza? Surely it should be because the helpless Gazans cannot protest about their plight, caused by Hamas, because if they did, Hamas would kill them. But in that case, why isn’t it Hamas that people are protesting against? Or are they in favour of
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
Last week, in his jovial Spectator piece about Donald Trump’s golf diplomacy, Patrick Kidd drew a comparison with the Roman emperor Nero, who adored chariot racing and was always deemed to have ‘won’, whether he crashed or not. He also raced a chariot drawn by four camels, but that was just the half of it.
The Telegraph reports that Attorney General Lord Hermer has ‘been accused of asserting the primacy of human rights law over British government and politics’. Is he then a latter-day Diogenes (4th century bc), who saw himself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e. a citizen of no one place, but rather of the whole world (kosmos, ‘the ordered
The BBC chef Gregg Wallace has been sacked for his objectionable behaviour over many years, but has blamed the BBC for not taking the action which, he claims, would have saved him from himself. Aristotle (d. 322 bc) would have doubted that. Let us assume, says Aristotle, that it is possible for any human to
Killer whales have been seen offering titbits to divers – but as a gift or a lure? Plutarch (c. AD 100) had strong views on animal sentience. Unlike most ancients, Plutarch did not think that animals were there to be exploited for humanity’s benefit, whatever that entailed for the animals themselves. He believed they were
Now that new drugs have allowed the government’s Fat Controller to celebrate a nation of skinnies – let us hope the drugs are not too temptingly tasty – he will not have to adopt the Spartan custom of checking their naked young men every ten days for signs of excessive thinness or corpulence. In Greek
Now that parliament has decided to decriminalise abortion, it is interesting to see what the ancients made of the matter. The question for them was, as for us – when did the foetus become ‘human’? The answer was when it developed a psukhê (‘soul’). Some Greek philosophers argued that the foetus was fully ‘ensouled’ from
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
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.
It is embarrassing to compare Thames Water’s efforts even to the Greeks, let alone the Romans. Most Greek cities got their water from public fountains fed by springs. Doctors new to a district examined the supply to determine likely ailments (one spring was said to make your teeth fall out). A few towns had piped
Writing in a lesser organ, Matthew Parris wondered whether most ancient Greeks ‘really, sincerely, did believe in their bizarre pantheon of gods’. Belief in a single god was at that time limited to two peoples: Jews and Zoroastrians (and Egyptians once, briefly). To everyone else, perhaps the sheer variety of the world, the extraordinary generative
The Sunday Times rich list would have excited the male citizens over the age of 18 who determined state policy in the Athenian assembly in the 5th century bc. The reason is that Athens levied taxes on citizens by their wealth, as judged by the property they owned. The most important tax was the leitourgia
Will Pope Leo turn out to be a lion or a pussycat? That depends on what he has to confront, but one hopes he will do better than Pope Siricius (384-399), let alone Kirill, current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. When the Roman emperor Constantine published a letter in 313 allowing freedom of worship
