Peter Jones

Dieting with Hippocrates

There is, apparently, an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the UK, such that two million people could benefit from weight-loss surgery. Ancient Greeks would have argued that they would benefit much more from a dose of self-control. The ancients associated fatness with a lazy lifestyle. No change there, then. The doctor Hippocrates, well aware that sudden death was

Sorry, Rory Stewart, but you don’t understand the Greeks

In last week’s Spectator, Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith, was reported to be proposing that we should create in Britain ‘1,000 little city states, and give power right down to all the bright, energetic people everywhere who just feel superfluous’. What did they teach him at Eton? The ancient Greek city-state (polis, source of our

Ancient and modern: Ovid on selfies

A ‘meme’ is ‘an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture, often by mimicry’. If selfies, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, tweets and all the other means of drawing attention to oneself are anything to go by, rampant narcissism (derived from the mythical figure Narcissus) is the current, dominant meme. The

Why does the year start in January?

The ancients were an inquisitive lot, a characteristic shown to best effect in works like Aristotle’s Problems (‘Why do sex-maniacs’ eyelashes fall out?’) and Plutarch’s Greek and Roman Questions. Among much else, Plutarch asked, ‘Why do Romans adopt the month of January as the beginning of the new year?’ He began by doing the maths:

While shepherds watched, civilisation was born

‘And lo, there were shepherds in the fields, watching over their flocks by night…’   Reading recently that it was the 25th anniversary of the invention of the world wide web, I reflected (yet again) on the difficulty of creating in any of our minds that sense of the world as experienced by the Greeks

Master charlatans at work

To watch the Revd Paul Flowers being grilled by the Treasury Select Committee on his role in the demise of the Co-op Bank is to watch a master charlatan at work: dignified, polite and supremely self-assured, even as he is stripped to the bone by Andrew Tyrie. The ancient world boasted plenty of such, and

The age of consent according to Aristotle

Prime Minister Cameron has rejected the proposal that the age of sexual consent be reduced from 16 to 15, arguing that it was needed to ‘protect children’. In the ancient world, there was no such notion. Girls were to be protected from rape and seduction, but that was because they were destined for marriage, whose

What are you doing for ‘Live like a Stoic’ week?

On 21 November The Spectator is hosting a discussion about addiction — disease or choice? — and how we should best treat it. This neatly coincides with ‘Live like a Stoic’ week (25 November–1 December), which culminates in academics and doctors discussing how far problems of everyday life can be solved by the Stoic practice

Why did Athenians resort to arbitration by hedgehog? 

Since trial by jury is so expensive, government is keen to cut costs on legal aid by ‘alternative dispute resolutions’ (ADR) and settle e.g. family disputes before they ever come to court. The situation in classical Athens was similar. Though jurors were paid by the day, enabling money to be saved by cramming in as

Gaddafi and the greatest sex tyrants in classical history

A new book about Colonel Gaddafi goes into shocking detail about his monstrous sexual appetites. He used rape as a political weapon and instrument of blackmail. Viagra was on constant supply for himself and his soldiers. His harem travelled with him under the guise of ‘delegations’ or ‘journalists’ (‘Hi, girls,’ Tony Blair greeted them). It

Livy on Ed Miliband

What should we make of Ed’s support for his father Ralph against the Daily Mail? Livy’s life of Torquatus suggests two possible responses. Torquatus was the obtuse, inarticulate son of the vicious and overbearing consul Manlius who, wanting to disown him, sent him off to work in the fields. But in 362 bc Manlius was

Aristotle on winning the centre ground

Party conferences always provide the most agreeable spectacle of politicians desperately trying to appeal to both the diehards among the party faithful and the soft underbelly of the general public. Aristotle (384-322 bc) lived at a time when democratic and oligarchic groupings within any polis (city-state) were regularly in conflict to impose their system of

Plebs rule!

Momentarily banish thoughts of policemen on duty at the House of Commons, and picture a Roman pleb. You will probably visualise a toothless peasant howling for ‘bread and circuses’ (i.e. chariot races), and rioting if refused. But if you were then told that the Roman statesman Cicero and Caesar’s rival Pompey the Great were both

Herodotus in Sochi

As a result of Russian laws against propagating homosexuality, there are calls to boycott the 2013 Winter Olympics in Sochi and 2018 Fifa World Cup due to be held there. The West’s first historian Herodotus (5th century bc) would not have sympathised. Herodotus’ magnificent Histories of the wars fought between the Persians and the Greeks

Notes on…Classic cruising

We arrive at the tiny Greek island of Sikinos on a blustery day, making landing rather difficult. Is there transport to take us to the extraordinary, now deconsecrated, perhaps 6th-century church of Episkopi inside a 3rd century AD Roman mausoleum/temple? The mayor appears: yes, we can use the island’s one bus, and off we go

What the Roman general Vegetius could teach Obama about Syria

So the USA must launch its onslaught against Syria without the Brits. Well, if Obama will make public announcements of what he is going to do, more fool him. The Roman military tactician Vegetius (c. AD 400) would be shaking his head in despair. Vegetius was writing after Rome had suffered a devastating defeat against

Cicero on Prince Harry

Personal privacy in the modern sense became a cause in the USA in the late 19th century, with the massive expansion of newsprint and the development of cameras and professional snappers. Prince Harry clearly has not quite caught up yet. Even the Romans knew what the problem was: privacy was very hard to come by.