Peter Jones

The recent return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for five living Hezbollah prisoners exemplifies one of the most deep-rooted human feelings: that the dead must come home. At one level, it seems irrational. What do the dead care? But as the ancients knew, it is not the dead who count in this matter, but the living. In some respects, ancient Greeks were fairly relaxed about death. Corpses were not regarded as objects of horror. The prospect of death did not seem to fill them with terror. But while Greeks often expressed doubts about whether the dead possessed any faculties of perception, they equally often spoke as if they valued the goodwill of the dead and feared their disapproval.

We are happy that terrorist suspects be held for 28 days without charge. So there is no problem about the principle. But the government now wishes to extend this to 42 days, and all hell breaks loose. But on what grounds? Since the principle of holding without charge has been established, the time-scale is neither here nor there. Or is it? Though there was no such thing as a state-controlled prosecution service in the ancient world — all actions were brought privately — there was intense discussion about what the law was for and how it should be applied. As we saw two weeks ago, Cicero was in no doubt about what its main purpose was — security. ‘Our ancestors wrote laws whose sole aim was the stability and interests of the state.

Hamid Karzai’s government is said to control a mere 30 per cent of Afghanistan. The rest is in the control of tribal leaders and the Taleban. As David Miliband says, we will ‘win’ only by diplomacy. The long-term stability of the Roman empire depended on the Romans’ ability to rule through local elites. That was fine where the culture was largely urbanised i.e. with administrative structures conducive to governance and taxation, as it was in the Mediterranean and the Greek East where Alexander had been.  But tribal north-west Europe was generally different. True, where tribes were centralised and hierarchical, as in southern England, Romans could get to work.

Boris Johnson has vowed as mayor to emulate his hero Pericles, turning London into ‘an education to Britain’ as Athens was (Pericles claimed) to Greece. In one sense this will be difficult since the mayor has limited responsibilities, mainly transport and police, none of which feature in any known Periclean policy document. But if Mr Johnson is referring to a generally Periclean tenor to his period in office, there is much he could usefully achieve. First, Pericles (like every other Athenian citizen) wielded power over the decision-making Assembly (all Athenian males over 18) only by his ability to persuade it that his policies were best. He was, in other words, a master orator. But he did not try to fine-tune the Assembly.

Peter Jones investigates whether the Olympic Games have always been political. The sight of Chinese thugs invading the streets of our capital in the name of the Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit (OHFPU — most people’s thoughts exactly) should banish once and for all the idea that the Olympic Games are not ‘political’. Since the Olympic Games do not do God either, the idea that the flame is ‘holy’ is also rather rich, especially coming from China. The ancient Greeks did do god in a big way at the Olympic Games, since the Games were held in honour of Zeus, god of Olympus (not that Mount Olympus was anywhere near the site).

According to Mohamed Al Fayed, the Princess of Wales was murdered on the orders of Prince Philip working in cahoots with some 30 named individuals, the Home Office, the CIA, the Inland Revenue and the French intelligence and emergency services, judiciary and police. Ancient Athenians would have loved it. They saw conspiracies everywhere. Let there be the slightest suggestion, for example, that someone might be at work to (say) destroy the democracy, and panic ensued, ranks closed and politicians would rush to say that Athens was safe in their hands. Take the famous affair of the mutilation of the Hermai (good-luck statues of Hermes) and the profanation of the Mysteries.

Macavity-like, Brown was never there when he was Chancellor, and rarely seems to be there now he is Prime Minister. When he is, he is always blaming someone else or avoiding the question. This is highly reminiscent of the second Roman emperor Tiberius who, like Brown, was following someone, Augustus, who had revolutionised the whole system. But there is a significant difference between them. Emperor was the last thing Tiberius wanted to be. Brown has been dreaming of nothing else. The Roman historian Tacitus could not believe that at Augustus’ death in ad 14 Tiberius was so antipathetic to the idea of assuming power. He therefore considered him duplicitous, cloaking ambition under the image of diffidence.

Last time we saw that the currently fashionable buzz-word ‘change’ was anathema to the Romans, because they looked for stability and permanence, and change implied failure. Romans reinforced this perspective by using the past to act as a guide to the present. The technical term for any particular instance was exemplum. Romans had always seen the old Roman family as the great exemplum, reliable, solid, held together by bonds of affection, the foundation of the stable society; and the key to that bonding was pietas, the respect for man and god that created those bonds and the duty that nourished them.

‘Change’ is the latest buzzword of contemporary politics. Change is, of course, quite meaningless until one knows what (precisely) is being changed and to (precisely) what; and, for a government in power for ten years, it leaves hanging in the air the objection, ‘If you want to keep on changing things, it rather suggests that you have kept on getting things wrong.’ The Romans had a terror of change. ‘Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque’, /intoned the epic poet Ennius — ‘Rome’s foundations are its tried and tested values and its men’ — and even when the going was at its roughest, Romans went out of their way to deny that change had happened at all.

One moment laws against ‘religious hatred’, the next against smoking in cars, now mobile phones. What next? But then, law-making has been expanding ever since the Romans drew up their XII Tables, c. 450 bc, which were themselves originally a mere X until they decided they needed II more. In ad 533, when the Roman empire in the West was no more, the eastern emperor Justinian published a Digest of Roman law. It was condensed from some 2,000 volumes. Romans despaired of the problem. Julius Caesar decided to reduce the statute book to a manageable size but was assassinated in 44 bc before he could begin. The great Roman historian Tacitus took up the theme, commenting that there seemed to be no end to law-making, and with his usual sharpness put his finger on an exquisite paradox.

One moment laws against ‘religious hatred’, the next against smoking in cars, now mobile phones. What next? But then, law-making has been expanding ever since the Romans drew up their XII Tables, c. 450 bc, which were themselves originally a mere X until they decided they needed II more. In ad 533, when the Roman empire in the West was no more, the eastern emperor Justinian published a Digest of Roman law. It was condensed from some 2,000 volumes. Romans despaired of the problem. Julius Caesar decided to reduce the statute book to a manageable size but was assassinated in 44 bc before he could begin. The great Roman historian Tacitus took up the theme, commenting that there seemed to be no end to law-making, and with his usual sharpness put his finger on an exquisite paradox.

Mission statements and codes of practice are all the rage today among business communities. Everyone has to have one. The trouble is, they are all the same, and consist mostly of strings of platitudes about ‘best practice’ and ‘personal integrity’. ‘Investors in People’ is a favourite example, invented (probably) by the CEOs of the 17th-century slave trade. Had Aristotle been asked to do better, he might well have come up with the following approach. Discussing what the good man needs to do to produce good results, Aristotle says that of any action we undertake we need to ensure that we have got it right in relation to: 1. The time at which we are acting; 2. The issues on which we are acting; 3. The people with whom we are engaging; 4.

Time, now, for a slightly different tack, to point out another great advantage of the Athenian model towards which Prime Minister Brown might even appear to be groping. It has to do with the party system. When Athenian male citizens over the age of 18 gathered on the Pnyx to take decisions about whatever matters of state confronted them, they must have brought with them a raft of prejudices on any number of matters, including their bias towards one or other of the influential, big-name speakers (like Pericles) who would be almost certain to address them. But what they did not bring was any preordained commitment to a party line imposed from above — unlike MPs, who for the most part know what the right answer is before what is laughingly called ‘debate’ is ever joined.

In AD 212, partly to raise tax, Caracalla made citizenship automatic for all free peoples within the empire. But even though many foreigners/barbarians (e.g. Germanic peoples such as Goths, Visigoths and Vandals) settled within the empire to serve in the Roman army (etc.) after that date, we know of very few granted full citizenship. What was going on? The answer lies in Rome’s most brilliant, and certainly influential, invention — a public, structured and codified system of civil law (ius civile). Access to this guarantor of civilised dealings between men was eagerly sought, but it all depended on one’s status. Various disabilities (e.g. being a slave, or a freedman, or guilty of certain crimes) debarred one from all or some aspects of it.

Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have ‘too much’ money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve the problem. Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have ‘too much’ money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve the problem. Roman finances under the emperors had two destinations: the Aerarium and the Fiscus.

As globalisation of business and communications grows, to what extent will we see globalisation of values? The experience of the ancient world suggests it could be to quite a large extent. Greek and Roman society was, at one level, notoriously conservative. With a social structure that privileged the (very) few at the top of the scale against all the rest, slave-labour, an education and religious system that looked to the past for its justification and continuation, and the absence of technological or economic advance, change was never going to be top of any agenda. Yet Greeks and Romans never ceased to absorb foreign influences and turn them to their advantage. Greeks happily adopted Persian customs in fashion.

Grammar schools? Comps? Sec. mods? City academies? Faith schools? Selection by race? Background? Locality? The argument about education is now, in fact, an argument about the social mix of schools for children between the ages of 11 and 16. What has this got to do with education? In the ancient world, education was run not by the state — though Aristotle thought, in principle, it should be — but by teachers offering their services to anyone who had the leisure and could afford the fees. Since childhood was seen not as an end in itself but a transitional stage leading to manhood, the purpose of education was not to develop the child but to turn him into a functioning adult.

Cinematically fascinating, historical tosh, eye-goudgingly tedious and designed for boys of a mental age of about 13 — such was the general judgment of 300, the film about the holding operation of the Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae against the massive Persian army (480 bc). But how the Spartans would have loved it! First, Spartans are presented in the film as the only Greeks prepared to take on the advancing enemy. In fact they were the leaders of a coalition of Greek states, who had long debated where to attempt to hold up the Persian advance, only finally settling on Thermopylae. Second, the Spartans are portrayed as upholders of freedom and reason.