Peter Jones

Last week, we observed ancient attitudes to wanting to live for ever. Being against it, the ancients developed many ways of dealing with death. Since there were no scriptures or creeds in the pre-Christian world, there could have been as many beliefs about death as there were believers. What generally emerges from ancient Greek literature

A personal catastrophe strikes, and the cry goes up ‘Why me?’ and ‘Not fair’. The ancients knew all about this, and the 5th-century bc Greek historian Herodotus supplies an answer — of sorts. But first, back to Fronto. Marcus Cornelius Fronto (c. ad 95–166), orator and public servant, was a close friend of emperors, being

American interventions in the Middle East have led many commentators to regard the USA as a new imperial power. But there are many ways to control an empire, as the Romans knew. It is automatically assumed that Rome controlled its empire through its provinciae (a word whose origin is unknown, unless Mrs Wordsworth has been

Philip Pullman, author of the apparently anti-Christian His Dark Materials, and the Archbishop of Canterbury debated the significance of religion, and both enthusiastically agreed that ‘myth’ was an important feature of it. But why? The Greek word muthos originally meant ‘word, speech, message’. It gradually came to mean ‘significant story’. At the one extreme, these

Statistics show that in the United States more people die in hospital because of medical blunders than from Aids, breast cancer and car accidents combined. But who carries the can? Ancient Greek doctors are remarkable for being prepared to describe their failures as well as their successes. We read of one Autonomus who ‘died from

The Gender Recognition Bill plodding its way through the House of Commons does not deal with hermaphrodites. Bad mistake. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid tells how the nymph Salmacis fell madly in love with him when she saw him strip and dive into a pool. She did the same, wound herself

However one regards Mrs Gun after her betrayal of the Official Secrets Act — selfless heroine of Antigonean stature, or self-important, sanctimonious little twerp — her actions raise an important question: the security of the written word. In classical Greece, inter-state politics were usually carried out verbally, either by well-briefed ambassadors or by messengers with

If atheism is now to be taught in schools in the RE slot, the Greek essayist Plutarch (46–120 ad) would want to teach superstition as well — to warn against it even more vehemently. In the ancient world, atheism was associated with the fifth-century bc Greek intellectuals known as the sophists. Claiming to be able

Parents who find the state education system unsatisfactory but cannot afford private schooling are getting together to hire tutors to teach their children at home. The Roman public servant Pliny the Younger (AD 61–112) would have applauded. Pliny was visiting his native town of Comum (modern Como) when he found out that the young son

How would the ancient Athenians have handled the Hutton inquiry? They would not have needed one. Real democracies get to the nub with indecent haste. In the first place, the decision to go to war had to be agreed by the people’s Assembly (all male citizens over 18). It would have been ferociously debated. That

Iain Duncan Smith, ex-leader of the Tory party, is evidently in a state of some depression at his humiliating rejection. Ancient philosophy must spring to his aid. Greek and Roman philosophers were primarily concerned with ethics: that is, they wanted to show their adherents what the good life was and, at a practical level, how

Since Christmas is the season of good cheer but seems to leave millions squabbling, resentful and as miserable as sin, it is an appropriate time to consider what the key to happiness is. The ancients provided two distinct but highly practical theories, easily condensable into the average cracker. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc)

As WMDs fail to surface in Iraq, it looks more and more likely that we went to war on false pretences. This is no new phenomenon. According to the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 490-425 bc), the first war of Western literature was fought on equally illusory grounds — though that did not stop Herodotus justifying

What should men pray for? The Roman satirist Juvenal (writing c. ad 120) famously answered mens sana in corpore sano, ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. One wonders what he would have made of today’s men and women in search of the corpus sanum, lurching along the fume-filled roadsides in their huge fluorescent trainers,

Cheque-books have been sharpened in America to lure top professors to top universities, and the ones attracting the most attention are those ‘great communicators’ with a reputation based only loosely on specialised knowledge: e.g. those who have released ‘rap’ records, or undergone sex-change operations, or achieved something of comparable intellectual value. The ancient Greek sophists,

So Gordon Brown’s Treasury has overspent its budget by 40 per cent – all on itself! No wonder the officials didn’t know where the money had gone. What fun if they had had to account for it in classical Athens …. One of the most extraordinary innovations of Athenian democracy was the appointment of executive

Commentators are expressing shock at the Hutton inquiry’s ‘revelation’ that Tony Blair consults a private cabal of chums about policy. Excuse the Roman historian while he stifles a yawn. The Greeks had a word for ‘a monarch’s court’, and Roman writers adopted it (aula) to describe the imperial ‘court’ that emerged with the advent of

The death of Dr David Kelly has raised questions about justifications for suicide. The ancient Greeks were equally interested in the issue. Greeks, like Romans, tended to take the view that humans were, for the most part, in full control of what they chose to do. The concepts of ‘mental imbalance’ or ‘unconscious motivation’ were

Year by year at exam results time, every Candice in the world points to her sheaves of A-grade A-levels and from the depths of her Pot Noodles ululates her indignation at the manifest injustice of her rejection by Oxbridge. Greeks would have thought such youths deranged: did they not know what it meant to compete?