Peter Jones

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, i.e. a contractor for public works of any kind. Indeed, from early on, wars were fought, roads built and mines worked on the back of service contracts offered out to hopeful bidders, as was the right to gather dues from harbours and toll stations.

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 in the state. For those who did not live up to the standard expected of a citizen, a mark (nota) was put next to his name on the census rolls, resulting in humiliation and loss of political status. Extravagantly flashing one’s wealth about, bad parenting, cruelty, disgusting behaviour, disreputable business practices, cowardice on the battlefield and suchlike would lead to infamia (public ignominy) and expulsion from official positions.

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. Athens: If that is your attitude, we may as well stop now. Melos: But there is such a thing as fair play and just dealing. You too might need that one day. Athens: We’ll take that risk. But our aim is to preserve you and your city. Melos: Can we not be neutral? Athens: That would be a sign of our weakness. Melos: Will this not make you more enemies than friends? Athens: We are more concerned about those we have not yet subdued.

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 at war and naturally sought the favour of the gods – by consulting oracles, entrails and flights of birds, or striking lucky by means of dreams, omens, sneezes, odd events and suchlike. However, there were no guarantees. ‘A prophecy is the guess of a sensible man’ (Euripides), ‘No good has ever come from prophecy’ (Aeschylus). Menander hit the spot, when a character desired ‘A future not as I wish, but to my benefit.

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 determined all political and legal outcomes. Citizen arbitration was used to settle most cases. Take Neaira. Not an Athenian, she had been trafficked from birth, but saving what money she earned, she eventually bought her freedom, with help from a large sum donated by the Athenian Phrynion. But she tired of him touting her around high-class orgies, took what she reckoned she was entitled to, and walked out.

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 as an active virtue, but rather as a ‘condition involving a range of feelings’, which he defines as: ‘A kind of pain and agitation concerning the class of evils, whether present, past or future, that seem to bring a person into disrespect’. His definition is well in tune with the evidence of ancient Greek literature, in which the presence or absence of shame puts your reputation at stake.

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 of a sequence of five ages – golden, silver, bronze, heroic, iron, each worse than the other – repeated five times and ending in total destruction. In his magnificent On the Nature of the Universe, the Roman poet Lucretius (d. c. 55 BC), who was an atomist, described how a world made of atoms would slowly decay and crumble into ruin – which he thought nature was doing in his own time – but would then renew itself. The evidence?

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. But the elite had little time for such goodwill towards men. For the plebs, there’s the rub. In the 40s bc, the historian Livy began writing a history of Rome from its foundation in 753 BC. It was first ruled by a series of seven kings (none actually Roman!) who were finally thrown out as tyrants in 509 BC.

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 Mediterranean. It remained the language of the liturgy until Pope Damasus I (d. ad 384) invited St Jerome to translate the whole Bible into Latin (the Vulgate: vulgatus, ‘widely used, common’). The Roman empire collapsed in the 5th century ad and local languages started replacing Latin, but the Roman liturgy remained standard in western Europe. It was not until 1546 that the Vulgate was declared the inspired word of God.

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 Roman forum and elsewhere, and left for a few days before being taken down and put into storage for future reference (no copies survive). It was Julius Caesar’s ‘very first act as consul (59 bc) to ensure that the proceedings both of the Senate and of the people should be published daily’.

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 comic writer Aristophanes (d. c. 386 bc) would have loved it. It was he who invented communism, after all, and had his audience in hysterics. His comedy Ecclesiazusae (‘Women Running the Assembly’) was produced in Athens in 391 bc. The women of Athens decide to seize power for themselves.

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 first beard in a golden box, possessed a golden fishing net, had a golden box of poisons and golden chamber pot, and shod his second wife’s mules in gold. When the king of Armenia visited, he had the theatre of Pompey – the stage, the walls, everything – somehow gilded. In 64 bc a devastating fire hit Rome (was Nero complicit?). Only four out of Rome’s 14 regions were untouched.

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 wrong, I feel aidôs to look my friends in the face’ (Agathon) is a typical example. This feeling is a major feature of Greek literature. In Homer’s Iliad, Hector the Trojan hero challenges the Greeks to single combat, but ‘they felt aidôs to refuse, but were afraid to accept’. They knew what society expected of them but were afraid to do it. On the other hand, in the heat of battle, it was often enough for the leader simply to cry ‘Aidôs!

Architects are thrilled about AI, confident that it will take us into an exciting new world at the flick of a switch. The Roman architect Vitruvius begins his ten-book De architectura (c. 25 bc) by describing an architect’s education. Craftsmanship – continuous and familiar practice – must go hand in hand with theoretical skill and method. He must be a man of letters so that he can draw on precedents; proficient in drawing and geometry; and a master of rule and compass. Optics will teach him how to use the sun to best effect in lighting rooms. He must also be good at arithmetic to cost his buildings. He must be a historian, to explain why columns and ornaments look as they do, and a philosopher, high-minded, urbane, cherishing a good reputation.

Whatever Prince Andrew has done, the succession to our throne is secure. How envious the Roman emperor Augustus would have been! In vain did he offer rewards for faithful marriage and punishments for adultery and such like. The mildest punishment was temporary expulsion from Roman territory; the harshest, banishment in perpetuity to an ‘island or oasis’, with loss of property and citizenship, and death for returning. But Augustus’s only child, Julia, who had five children, took advantage of her husband’s lengthy spells abroad and had (it appears) many lovers, and even assignations in the middle of the forum.

Since the UN does not provide a definition of the ‘just war’, it is interesting to see the ancient take on the matter. The Greeks contributed little. For Plato, war was necessary for the creation and survival of the city, but it was not its ultimate purpose: that was peace. For Aristotle, life consisted of three arenas of activity: war for the sake of peace, work for the sake of leisure, and necessary and useful activities to demonstrate one’s worth. But Cicero (d. 43 bc) understood war in ways that have shaped our own understanding. His starting point was that there were two ways of settling an issue: by discussion, or by force. As he said, ‘the former [is] appropriate for human beings, the latter for animals’.

Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain had come to a fork in the road. As usual, he took it – the fork between his words and his actions. Athenians of the 5th C bc were fascinated by the implications of logos (‘speech, reason, argument’, cf. ‘logic’) and ergon (‘action/results’, cf. ‘erg’). While Homeric heroes (8th C bc) were ordered to excel as ‘speakers of words’ and ‘doers of deeds’ because that made them winners in both the political and military arenas, the statesman Pericles emphasised the high importance of the interaction between word and deed: ‘We do not think logos is an obstacle to action; no, the issue is the failure to use logos before action has to be taken.