Peter Jones

The ‘globally outstanding’ University of Durham has plans to help its undergraduates who pay their way by prostituting themselves. Three heavyweight ancients, all from different perspectives, might have rather approved of the scheme. St Augustine, looking at the world as it was, regretted his conclusion but decided that if prostitutes were banned, society ‘would be

Greta Thunberg and her supporters were loud in protest at COP26, but one wonders to what end. They demanded deeds, not words, but words were all they had to offer, except when they were so devoutly letting down the tyres of SUVs. Ancient Greeks were extremely interested in the distinction between word (logos, cf. our

MPs are not exactly attracting plaudits for their recent attempts at governing. Perhaps Cicero’s three-book work On Duties (De Officiis) might be of assistance. It was written in 44 BC, a few months after the tyrant Julius Caesar was assassinated. Seeing life as a complex of obligations to others and oneself, Cicero picks apart the

The ‘social mobility tsar’ Katharine Birbalsingh has suggested that children, born evil, ‘need to be taught right from wrong and then habituated into choosing good over evil’. The Twitter mob is equally certain that all children are born ‘good’, and it is their environment that spoils them. Ancient Greeks, ignorant of St Augustine, did not

The Globe theatre’s project to ‘decolonise’ Shakespeare, as if that would make plays like The Tempest ‘acceptable’ to them and their audience, would have met with no approval at all from Plato (c. 425-348 BC). For him, all poetry and the arts were corrupt, and in his Republic, a discussion of how an ideal state

Twitter and other easily accessible means of online communication have encouraged the public to believe that Their Voice Will Be Heard. When it isn’t, they express their frustration through abuse and threats or by blocking roads. In this way, the mentality of the ancient curse-tablet lives on. In the ancient world, the purpose of the

Professor Kathleen Stock of Sussex University is accused by a group of students of being transphobic and a danger to transgender people because she believes that people cannot change their biological sex. ‘We’re not up for debate,’ the students said. ‘We cannot be reasoned out of existence.’ This, in Aristotle’s terms, is pure hatred. In

So James Bond is back, doing exactly what he always does, inviting the audience into a fantasy world for the pleasure of wondering ‘What if?’ In this respect, Bond films resemble the work of the world’s first recorded comic poet, the Athenian Aristophanes (c. 440-380 bc). His premise was that Athens’s problems could be solved

Hardly a day goes by without headlines about immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. In the ancient world, movements of people were also very common (state boundaries did not exist), often because war, famine or exile left them with no option. So how did refugees try to win acceptance? In Homer’s world of heroes (c. 700 bc),

Why are cabinet ministers Liz Truss and Dominic Raab squabbling like children over access to grace-and-favour Chevening? Because they know they are, ultimately, powerless. The Greek statesman Solon (c. 590 bc) made the point long ago: ‘Those who have influence with monarchs are like pebbles used in calculations: for [depending on their place on the

The extraordinary sporting achievement of Emma Raducanu and the response it has received from royalty and politicians alike makes one wonder whether she, too, might start to encourage popular initiatives of the sort Marcus Rashford supports. Roman elites were keen to use such figures in the public eye to keep the people happy. Romans were

A ‘State of the World’ report warns that a third of the world’s wild tree species are threatened with extinction. Agriculture and logging are the main culprits. They were in the ancient world too. It is hard to overestimate the importance of trees for past societies: they were the only source of fuel for heating,

In the 18th century, art historians’ admiration for the beauty of white-ish ancient Greek marble statuary led people to draw conclusions, on the back of their belief in classical ‘authority’, about white superiority. This, we are told, turned many classicists into racists. Today some members of the Cambridge Classics Faculty feel the white-ish plaster-cast replicas

‘No one is stupid enough to choose war over peace. In peace sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons,’ said Croesus to his conqueror, Cyrus of Persia, according to Herodotus. But actually man’s stupidity has lasted thousands of years, and one rather doubts whether the fanatical Taliban will buck that doleful trend.

Oxfam is arguing that if all billionaires forked out 99 per cent of their profits made during the Covid pandemic, the whole world could be vaccinated and every unemployed worker given a handy payout. Dream on. The ancient Athenians had rather more intelligent ways of soaking the rich. They raised annual taxes only for specific,

The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the ears of the charity Classics for All, which has introduced classical subjects into more than 1,000 state schools. Latin has been taken up with especial enthusiasm in primary schools, where word derivations have proved very

Winners at the Olympics were thought to have come as close to a god as any man could. But that did not stop some Greeks wondering whether it was all worth it. The poet Xenophanes commented that ‘a noble boxer would not make a city better ordered, nor keep its granaries filled’. Diogenes the cynic

Every red-blooded Englishman has believed that exercise in the open air is the finest prophylactic against popery, adultery and the fine arts. Baron de Coubertin, who dreamt up the modern Olympic Games, took a different view. He admired the spirit of games on the playing fields of Eton and thought that they might provide a