A toddle along the Gibbon trail

What is likely to be the future of Europe? Is some kind of unity really on the cards? Boris Johnson, in his formative period a student of the classical world, finds his mind turning back from the Treaty of Rome to the pukka Romans, the ancient chappies. What do they have to tell us about this EU caper?

Being a politician, and consequently at least as subtle as your average serpent, Johnson does not start out in quite that direct way. He follows the approved manner of the poet Horace, not to mention the philosopher Aristotle, by beginning in the middle of events, with a bang. His opening gives the flavour:

No one knows the exact moment when Publius Quintilius Varus realised what a colossal idiot he had been, but when the barbarians on either side of him started uttering their war cry we must assume that the penny finally dropped.

Varus, in case these events have rusted a little in the memory, was the aristocratic Roman general who in AD 9 led his army to ambush and destruction in the great German forests across the Rhine, losing his three legions, his reputation, and his life, and — even worse, if possible —– the sacred emblems, the legionary eagles. He thus played, inadvertently, a major role in history. After the Varus experience, the Romans would decide to cut their losses and stay on the western side of the river. No more serious attempts to conquer these German tribes to the east, who had shown themselves so dashed ungrateful for the benefits of Roman rule: olive oil, hot baths, written laws, and European culture generally. Let them jolly well go on painting themselves blue and avoiding the bath house like the plague, if that was how they felt.