Democritus on the 50p rate

What a song and dance about a tax rise affecting a minuscule proportion of the richest in society! Greeks would have been baffled.

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Douglas Murray

What real justice would look like for grooming gang victims

Classical Greeks did not have the automatic admiration for self-made millionaires that we do. They felt that only the very lucky or the very wicked could aspire to wealth. ‘No one gets rich quickly by being honest,’ says one character in a play, articulating that sense of the injustice of the good poor man and the evil plutocrat. Riches could also produce bad citizens because it was easy for a man to become ‘enslaved’ by his money (a common image). By contrast, Socrates, rejecting payment for his teaching, preferred ‘looking after his freedom’. No Greek worth his salt associated with those who were ‘in love with money-making’ (the word used is eros), especially if they spent it all on whores, gambling and luxury food.