Peter Jones

If atheism is now to be taught in schools in the RE slot, the Greek essayist Plutarch (46–120 ad) would want to teach superstition as well — to warn against it even more vehemently. In the ancient world, atheism was associated with the fifth-century bc Greek intellectuals known as the sophists. Claiming to be able

Parents who find the state education system unsatisfactory but cannot afford private schooling are getting together to hire tutors to teach their children at home. The Roman public servant Pliny the Younger (AD 61–112) would have applauded. Pliny was visiting his native town of Comum (modern Como) when he found out that the young son

How would the ancient Athenians have handled the Hutton inquiry? They would not have needed one. Real democracies get to the nub with indecent haste. In the first place, the decision to go to war had to be agreed by the people’s Assembly (all male citizens over 18). It would have been ferociously debated. That

Iain Duncan Smith, ex-leader of the Tory party, is evidently in a state of some depression at his humiliating rejection. Ancient philosophy must spring to his aid. Greek and Roman philosophers were primarily concerned with ethics: that is, they wanted to show their adherents what the good life was and, at a practical level, how

Since Christmas is the season of good cheer but seems to leave millions squabbling, resentful and as miserable as sin, it is an appropriate time to consider what the key to happiness is. The ancients provided two distinct but highly practical theories, easily condensable into the average cracker. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc)

As WMDs fail to surface in Iraq, it looks more and more likely that we went to war on false pretences. This is no new phenomenon. According to the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 490-425 bc), the first war of Western literature was fought on equally illusory grounds — though that did not stop Herodotus justifying

What should men pray for? The Roman satirist Juvenal (writing c. ad 120) famously answered mens sana in corpore sano, ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. One wonders what he would have made of today’s men and women in search of the corpus sanum, lurching along the fume-filled roadsides in their huge fluorescent trainers,

Cheque-books have been sharpened in America to lure top professors to top universities, and the ones attracting the most attention are those ‘great communicators’ with a reputation based only loosely on specialised knowledge: e.g. those who have released ‘rap’ records, or undergone sex-change operations, or achieved something of comparable intellectual value. The ancient Greek sophists,

So Gordon Brown’s Treasury has overspent its budget by 40 per cent – all on itself! No wonder the officials didn’t know where the money had gone. What fun if they had had to account for it in classical Athens …. One of the most extraordinary innovations of Athenian democracy was the appointment of executive

Commentators are expressing shock at the Hutton inquiry’s ‘revelation’ that Tony Blair consults a private cabal of chums about policy. Excuse the Roman historian while he stifles a yawn. The Greeks had a word for ‘a monarch’s court’, and Roman writers adopted it (aula) to describe the imperial ‘court’ that emerged with the advent of

The death of Dr David Kelly has raised questions about justifications for suicide. The ancient Greeks were equally interested in the issue. Greeks, like Romans, tended to take the view that humans were, for the most part, in full control of what they chose to do. The concepts of ‘mental imbalance’ or ‘unconscious motivation’ were

Year by year at exam results time, every Candice in the world points to her sheaves of A-grade A-levels and from the depths of her Pot Noodles ululates her indignation at the manifest injustice of her rejection by Oxbridge. Greeks would have thought such youths deranged: did they not know what it meant to compete?

Schools minister David Miliband, condemned to a life of perpetual enthusiasm for New Labour policies as he attempts to climb the greasy pole, has drawn an analogy between students getting As at A-level and Paula Radcliffe beating a world record; while the gay cleric Canon John, recently rejected as Bishop of Reading, finds a ‘true

It is fashionable to dismiss the ancient historians’ descriptions of tyrannical Roman emperors as so much literary stereotyping. But the evidence offered by, e.g., Saddam and his dreadful sons might give one pause; and now the palace of Caligula (Roman emperor ad 37

The MP John Redwood has hired a London PR firm to raise his profile. The firm is keen for him to feature in lifestyle articles, when he will talk about his great love of windsurfing, films and theatre. ‘John is happy to talk about a wide range of subjects,’ we are told, including ‘his favourite

Dr David Kelly was a government expert but, in his desire to put the record straight about Iraqi arms, found himself crushed between the grindstones of government determination to impose it own views about the weapons of mass destruction, whatever the truth, and the sense of duty he had to ensure that the public was

Poor old Archbeard of Canterbury! Who will rid him of these infernal gay priests? Or infernal anti-gay priests? Ancient Greeks would have found the whole issue baffling. First, consulting gods for their views was a straightforward business: one examined entrails or sent a delegation to an oracle. If they got the interpretation wrong, the god

Last week this column began publishing Alexander Demandt’s list of the 210 reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire (from Der Falls Rom, 1984). The list is now completed, and a conclusion drawn: ‘Lack of leadership, lack of male dignity, lack of military recruits, lack of orderly imperial succession, lack of qualified workers, lack

Greeks and Romans loved lists, from Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning together with a List of Their Writings to Words Suspected of Not Having Been Used by the Ancients. In the same spirit, this column will over the next two weeks publish, from Professor Alexander Demandt’s Der Falls Rom (1984), a