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Those for whom the welfare state does not provide as much welfare as they would like might care to reflect on the plight of the Romans, for whom there was no such thing as the welfare state. A superb monograph by Kim Bowes, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, drawing on papyrus
In 500 BC, Persia (modern Iran) was the most powerful state in the known world, ruling an area of more than two million square miles from the Balkans and Egypt to central Asia (nearly half of the world’s population). In 499 BC, Athens and a number of other Greek states rebelled against its empire and
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Some Labour MPs are demanding that Colonel Alistair Carns, a former Royal Marine who served in the military for 24 years and was awarded the Military Cross for his service in Afghanistan, become leader of the party. The Romans would have approved, but might have felt he was not quite rich enough. Rome fought its
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What a lot of friends Jeffrey Epstein appears to have had! But what did friendship mean to him? Was it simply a matter of reciprocal benefits and obligations? In the ancient world, such interactions were a matter of life and death for the poor (there was no such thing as the welfare state), and of
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Twice a year the taxman comes to call, exhibiting all the bossy incompetence one expects from the government machine. Why not do as the Romans did, and privatise it? After all, one would surely rather give one’s money to a publican, even if a sinner. The publicanus, as the name suggests, was a public servant,
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To look through Jeffrey Epstein’s curriculum vitae on Google is to be left goggling at how this revolting creature could have gained credence among so many influential people. Roman censors would surely have dealt with him in pretty short order. Their job was to keep an eye on the moral and financial standing of every Roman
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In 416 BC in its war against Sparta, Athens instructed the fleet to break the small island of Melos’ alliance with its enemy. The Athenian historian Thucydides constructed the ensuing debate between the two, here very briefly summarised. Melos: Whatever we say or do, it looks as if we will face either war or slavery.
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A party that can foretell the future stands a very good chance of success. Given Labour’s record of U-turns, they cannot even foretell the present. A state’s success in the ancient world depended on its mastery of natural resources: the more land and people you controlled, the more powerful you were. So states were frequently
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One rather hopes the assisted dying bill will be talked out in the House of Lords. We have no say on matters of government policy, sovereignty, international law (and much else). But this bill is far too controversial, and personally significant, for MPs alone to adjudge. We need a touch of democratic Athens, whose citizens
Has any public figure of recent memory ever admitted to feeling shame for anything they have said or done? As a moral term “shame” appears to have disappeared almost entirely from normal discourse (bar the self-satisfied “fat-shaming”). That tells us much about ourselves. Aristotle discusses the term in some depth. He does not see it
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What with the threat of global warming and nuclear war, the new year might start with a big bang. The Greeks were preoccupied with this possibility as well and called it the apocalypse (apokalupsis), meaning ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’. It has a long history behind it. The Greek farmer-poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) introduced the idea
For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on four Fs: farming (the sole source of food and money), fighting, family and friends. Everything else that made life worth living meant having some degree of political control over your own existence, which could be summed up in a fifth F: freedom, or political
Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study at home when the phone rang and a voice said, “This is Tom Stoppard. David West put me onto you.” David was the professor of Latin at Newcastle University and it emerged that Tom used him when he had queries about Latin, but
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For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on the four ‘Fs’: farming (your sole source of food and money), fighting, family and friends. Everything else that made life worth living meant having some degree of control over your life, which could be summed up in the fifth ‘F’, freedom, or political equality.
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The Pope is visiting Lebanon and Turkey. Will anyone be raising the vexed question of the Latin mass and sacraments with him and asking him exactly why it is so vexed? Though Jesus spoke Aramaic, the New Testament first appeared in Greek in the 1st century ad because that was the common language of the
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Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said: ‘This is Tom Stoppard. David West put me on to you.’ West was professor of Latin at Newcastle University and Tom called him when he had queries about Latin. But he had a question about
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Nero’s personal amphitheatre, recently discovered near the Vatican, was praised to the skies in the ancient Romans’ ‘newspaper’. The historian Tacitus commented drily that it ought to carry stories of much greater historical merit. The ‘newspaper’ was the Acta Diurna (‘Daily Events’), written on papyrus by actuarii, posted up on an Album (whiteboard) in the
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Mr Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old elected mayor of New York, who has described the police as ‘racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety’, says that his top policy priority is implementing free universal childcare, taxing the wealthy, freezing rents, running buses for free and heaven knows what else. How very Marxist! The Greek
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Donald Trump has knocked down the east wing of the White House and is turning it into his Golden Ballroom. Might he be tempted to go a step further and build a Golden House (Domus aurea), as Nero did? Nero was as besotted with gold as Trump is. He wrote poems in gold, preserved his
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The most extraordinary thing about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is that he seems to have no sense of shame. That word in Greek was aidôs, which covered everything from a sense of shame, inhibiting one’s own behaviour, to respect, i.e. sensitivity to the feelings, status and claims of others. ‘When I consider that I am doing
