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Why are our years structured as they are? Censorinus in his de die natali (‘Birthday Book’) for his chum Caerellius (ad 238) revealed all, as follows. The Roman year once had ten months. It began in March, named after Mars god of war, since that was when the fighting season began. April derived from aperio,
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Around 1 ad a 14-year-old Jewish Arab girl called Maryam, almost certainly in Nazareth in Galilee, gave birth to a son, Yeshua, (Joshua, Greek Iêsous, Latin Iêsus, Jesus). Typically of any such peasant family — the more the merrier — she added four more sons and at least two daughters to the tally. Some 30
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The country’s champions of free speech — the police — were recently out in force to ensure that the alt-right Trump-supporting Steve Bannon could address the student union in Oxford. The students, inevitably, wanted him silenced. But what were they so afraid of? Plato knew: it was a matter of the difference between the spoken
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If Brussels is willing to offer the British Parliament only a dog’s Brexit, that should tell Parliament everything it needs to know about any future prospects for a Britain tied in with the EU. It is about time for Parliament to say, ‘Enough is enough’. As every Greek polis (city state), however small, averred, its
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The Royal College of Physicians has suggested that doctors should learn to talk to patients about death. But talk about what, precisely? The medical diagnosis? Matters spiritual? Philosophical? In a play about his fate, Prometheus, the mythical champion of mankind, said that he had benefited mortals by preventing them from foreseeing their death. Asked how,
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World Mental Health day raised again the issue of suicide, still regarded as happening only among those ‘whose balance of mind is disturbed’. Not necessarily, Romans would have argued. For Romans the manner of one’s death was as important as that of one’s life. As Seneca said, ‘Like a story, the important thing about life
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Financial constraints combined with a shortage of staff have brought the NHS to a situation so desperate that it is proposing that doctors treat patients, not one by one, but in groups of 15 or more. It is good to see the NHS finally catching up with the cutting-edge thinking of the ancient Babylonians. Let the great
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At the Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn said that he would do whatever his party members told him to. This, apparently, is what he means by democracy. Neither the original nor the modern version bears any resemblance to it. Full-on Athenian direct democracy developed from its origins in 508 bc into a system in which
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The 5th century bc Athenian historian Thucydides proposed that the driving force behind interstate relations was power and fear. But the soldier-essayist Xenophon (d. 354 bc) thought that humiliation, of the sort that the EU recently heaped on Mrs May, lay at the heart of the problem. In his Cyropaedia, Xenophon wrote an extended essay
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‘Divide and rule’ (or ‘conquer’) diplomacy aims to disunite the opposition, the better to control it. The ancients were masters of it. So is the EU, unlike the UK. In the 4th c bc Philip II of Macedon played the game very skilfully as he plotted his conquest of Greece. Taking full advantage of the
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Boris the rhetorician is in full voice at the moment, delighting his followers and infuriating his enemies. But is this the purpose of rhetoric? It was the ancients who invented, or rather deduced, the rules. As the Roman professor of rhetoric Quintilian said: ‘Just as men discovered the art of medicine by observing that some
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The ex-leader of the SNP, Alex ‘Five Pensions’ Salmond, has scrounged nearly £100,000 from the people to help him in an impending legal case. How shameless can you get? In the ancient world, it was commonplace for the wealthy to massage their reputations by magnanimous public gestures — providing the cash to build a library
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Hardly a day goes by without someone making excitable predictions about human progress and how, thanks to AI, we are all going to become algorithms served by robots. The ancients took a different view. All ancient man had available to him was what nature in its raw state offered. Only fire (e.g. cookery, metal-work) or
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Jeremy Corbyn regularly apologises on the subject of anti-Semitism, yet admits that he has done nothing wrong. So what does he actually mean by ‘apology’? He obviously does not feel the need to repent — the usual implication of the term — because he is convinced, as always, of his own unassailable rectitude. Perhaps it
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Given that we use only 2 per cent of the rain that falls on these islands, one would not think it an insuperable job to secure our water supplies during the longest dry spells. If the Romans could do it with their technology, surely we can with ours. Since communities in the ancient world could
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Everyone talks about the importance of ‘charisma’ in a politician. But while it may take one a long way with the voters, it does not necessarily cut much mustard in parliament unless bolstered by other strengths. The Romans provided a useful checklist. Boris, still popular in the country but now, despite high office, in self-exile
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Forget David Davis, Boris, the cabinet, the commentariat. It’s time to concentrate on the big picture and the central question: where does final authority lie in the UK? The ancients grappled with this problem too. In the direct, radical democracy of 5th and 4th c Athens, it lay with the male citizens meeting in assembly.
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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has given all his cabinet a copy of Cicero’s advice on how to win arguments. This is a very foolish move. ‘Rhetoric’ (same root as ‘orator’), or persuasive speaking, was the name of this activity. In the 4th century bc, Aristotle produced the definitive guide in his Art of Rhetoric, from
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The UK obesity crisis is again in the headlines, and ‘life-style’ is the culprit. The ancients may have come up with a different analysis. Our word ‘diet’ derives from the ancient Greek diaita, which meant ‘way of living’ and, medically, a prescribed way of life, or regimen, especially in relation to diet for the ill.
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Peace with his enemy Kim Jong-un on the one hand, conflict with his European allies on the other: what sense can one make of President Trump? The ancients would have understood him all too well. The 5th c bc Greek historian Thucydides, seeing how anarchic city-state rivalry made any state liable to be attacked by