Why Baroness Benjamin deserves her coronation role

Baroness Benjamin has suggested that King Charles’s choice of her to join the coronation procession demonstrates that he is in favour of ‘diversity and inclusion’. What would the ancients have made of that, let alone of ‘equality’ and ‘identity’?

‘Equality’ had little purchase. Politically, male citizens had a vote in democratic Athens and (of sorts) in republican Rome. Otherwise there were human experiences of ‘levelling’ or ‘belonging’ in e.g. the battle-line, at childbirth, at the games, religious festivals and initiations.

For the rest, it is important to understand that the ancient world was an unforgiving place and took no prisoners. The ‘normal’ family attempted to survive on the strength of its own efforts to protect and tend its resources (in most cases its farm), produce fit young men to farm and fight, fertile girls to bear children, and elders to pass on their experience to the young. There was no room for anyone who could not pull their weight (the old were usually dead by 50).