Peter Jones

It is apparently an increasingly popular idea that we can ‘cosmically attract’ success to ourselves. Many ancients, with their beliefs in divination and so on, might well have agreed. Not Cicero. He published his two-book De Divinatione in 44 bc, soon after the assassination of Julius Caesar. In it he takes on his brother Quintus, who champions divinatio as ‘the foreknowledge and foretelling of events that happen by chance’. But who needs it, replies Cicero. In real life you turn to experts to deal with your problems: if you are ill you go to the doctor, if you want to know right from wrong you go to the philosopher. Besides, the diviner’s position makes no logical sense. How can something which happens ‘by chance’ be predicted? It is a contradiction in terms.

The government is supplying the obese with a slimming drug Wegovy. But the ancient world was dominated by the emaciated, and the fat were extremely thin on the ground. They were therefore the subject of considerable interest. A degree of corpulence was the sign of a rich, healthy and prosperous man. But obesity turned one into a figure of fun or ignominy: it demonstrated an inability to control one’s appetite for luxuries. The 8th Ptolemy of Egypt was so fat that it was impossible to put one’s arms around his stomach. His son was equally fat and incapable of walking without leaning on people, though loved dancing at drinking parties. Dionysius, the ‘gentle, reasonable’ tyrant of Heraclea, was so fat that he choked when he fell into a deep sleep.

Whatever the problems involved in building, let alone finishing, HS2, it is hoped that it will replicate what was ultimately achieved – prosperity, intentionally or not – by the 53,000 miles of roads with which Rome covered its empire (and so successfully that prosperity is now found wherever networks of Roman roads were established across Europe, including Cornwall). The first Roman road was the Via Appia (named after its proposer Appius Claudius), built in 312 bc. It connected Rome with the port of Brindisi 300 miles south; it also offered easy crossing to the wealthy Greek East. This became of great importance: travel by ship, far faster than by road, became vital for economic expansion.

The American firm B Corp offers businesses the chance to win a ‘kitemark’ by a box-ticking process showing that they are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, and Coutts decided to go for it. Given how that turned out, one wonders how they reached that decision. Had they followed Aristotle’s advice on decision-making, they might have come out better from the debacle. In dealings with other people, Aristotle argued, it was essential to pay close attention to the following criteria: a) What are the reasons for which you are taking action? b) What were the needs that prompted it? c) How do you hope to achieve what you want? d) Are you dealing with the right people on the matter? e) Is it the right time to act?

For most people in the ancient world, holidays meant local public festivals – in Rome there were 135 a year – when politicians staged extravagant games and theatrical shows. But the elite mostly spent summers in their own or their friends’ villas, well away from the stench, heat and mosquitoes of Rome. We tend to go abroad to ‘get away from it all’, though Seneca would have doubted that would do us any good – because it was ‘a change of character, not of air’ that people needed. He also quoted Socrates asking, ‘How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you and are saddled with the very thing that drove you away?’ For those who did travel abroad, as today, there was no escaping local guides.

SOCRATES: I was walking back from the gymnasium when I saw Keir Mather, the new MP for Selby, on his way there. I had been told he was young and good-looking and went to a world-famous Oxford College, so I have been very keen to meet to him. Hello, O Keir. MATHER: And you too, Socrates. But what, therefore? SOCRATES: Now that you are an MP, you must tell me what justice is. For that surely is a lawmaker’s main concern. MATHER: Enough verbal games. Justice is defined by the laws. My job is to solve problems in the real world. SOCRATES: Are Tory laws, then, just? MATHER: Of course they are not!

The ancients were as fascinated by rumour as, to judge by recent events in Russia and the BBC, we are. Homer called rumour ‘the messenger of Zeus’, with a fondness for racing through crowds. Virgil described it as a winged monster, with an unsleeping eye under every feather, a mouth and tongue never silent and an ear always pricked, combining truth with lies and distortions. Ovid saw it as a sort of clearing-house ‘from which the whole world is in view’ – a structure of echoing brass, with thousands of entrances and exits, echoing back, and so increasing the volume of, the ‘murmured whisperings’ it picked up. Roman politicians were well aware that rumour was an important force in creating public opinion.

It is encouraging to see Sir Keir Starmer taking a leaf out of the ancients’ book by putting oracy (from Latin orator) on the curriculum. Indeed, on the ancient curriculum, there was little else of such importance. State education did not exist. It was an entirely private operation, designed to supply the elite with the skills necessary to win arguments in political and legal forums. (They alone had the time for such an activity; our ‘school’ derives from scholê, the Greek for ‘leisure’). It began with the young relentlessly analysing language in minute technical detail, e.g.

Daisy Goodwin, a 61-year-old married novelist and TV producer, has alleged that ten years ago she was molested by Daniel Korski, and said she felt ‘entirely justified’ in describing the alleged incident a decade later. She claimed that other women had come forward with ‘very interesting stories’ on the topic. What would the Athenians have made of this? An Athenian woman was a precious asset, supplying children for battle but, being too weak to fight, denied political decision-making. She was integrated into society within the family unit, with female friends and vital religious functions, and certainly holding views of her own (as Homer’s epics make clear).

How secure is Vladimir Putin? His Presidential Security Service consists of 2,500 personnel, his Federal Protective Service of 50,000 troops and the National Guard, essentially his personal army, of 350,000. What could possibly go wrong? Roman emperors might have had a view. It was Augustus who invented the Praetorian Guard (27 bc), a personal, prestigious protection force of 9,000 men, based in Rome and accompanying him abroad. It did not start well. The second emperor Tiberius came within an ace of being displaced by his captain of the Guard Sejanus. The next (insane) emperor Caligula was murdered by conspirators, including a Praetorian, and the Guard hauled out a terrified Claudius from behind a curtain and made him emperor.

SOCRATES: I was walking through the agora after having had a discussion with an impetuous young man who argued that a good orator could win a debate on any subject, even though he knew nothing about it. This left me rather baffled, so it was a pleasure to fall in with the lawyer Lady Hallett, on whose good sense one could always rely... SOCRATES: Good morning, Lady Hallett. Whence, whither, and wherefore? LADY HALLETT: From home, O Socrates, to chair the inquiry into the Covid pandemic. S: Clearly, then, you are an expert in pandemics. LH: Far from it, O Socrates. S: Then where is your expertise? LH: In carrying out inquiries. S: Then could you carry out an inquiry into anything? LH: But of course. That is the job of a judge.

What does a king do when his privileged but dysfunctional son turns against him, flees to America and spends his time there attacking the monarch and his family? King Charles’s reaction has been to let him get on with it. But given what he might have done, the Stoic philosopher Seneca (d. ad 65), and adviser to Nero would have seen this as an admirable act of mercy. In his essay on that subject (De Clementia), Seneca discussed the case of Tarius, who discovered that his son was plotting to murder him. In such circumstances, it was customary for the father, who had the right of life and death over his whole household, to summon a private council of family and friends, which in this case included the emperor Augustus, to decide what action to take.

What would ancient Greeks have made of the current protests relating to the oil industry and identity reassignment? Very little indeed. The Greek invention of democracy (‘people power’) emerged in the late 6th century bc after strong popular demand for more political control over tyrants and oligarchs. The result was a system in which all male citizens over 18 debated and determined all political questions in the regular Assemblies. Most official posts were held, usually for one year, by citizens who presented themselves for selection by lot (voting was considered meritocratic, not democratic), with serious consequences for failure. Anyone who wished to wield power could do so only through his capacity to persuade a majority of the all-powerful Assembly.

Classical literature has the reputation of being pretty serious stuff, far removed from the world that Jeremy Clarke inhabited. But he would have felt perfectly at home in Pompeii. Take the conversation decorating the grave monument of the bar-owners Lucius Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas (beat that, Frankie Howerd!): ‘Innkeeper! The bill!’ ‘You’ve had a sextarius of wine, and bread: one as. Relish, two asses.’ ‘Right.’ ‘The girl, eight asses.’ ‘Right.’ ‘Hay for the mule, two asses.’ ‘That mule – it’ll be the ruin of me.’ Jeremy would also surely have admired the lifestyle and works of the scandalous author Petronius, whom the historian Tacitus described as follows: ‘He slept during the day and spent the nights in business and pleasure.

Last week’s column ended with a Roman funerary inscription: ‘I died of a surfeit of doctors.’ But where did this surfeit come from? Let Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) explain. Pliny devoted book 29 of his Natural History (a vast encyclopedia of Roman life) to the history of medicine. Claiming that no discipline ‘undergoes more frequent changes, and none is more profitable either’, Pliny pointed the finger at Greek doctors. These had been welcomed into Rome from the third century bc with their fancy philosophical ideas – all different – which their eloquence persuaded people immediately to adopt in place of the good, old, experience-based Roman herbal treatments, overseen by the trusty master of the house.

Research in the USA has shown that it is possible to do something about grey hair. But ‘grey hair’ stands for ‘old age’, and there is nothing we can do about that, except make it easier to live with. Modern medicine certainly helps. There was no such luck in the ancient world, where the playwright Sophocles described old age as ‘unregarded, powerless, unsociable, unfriended, where misery couples with misery’. Take Fronto, a close friend of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He died at the age of 60, and many of his more than 200 letters mention his physical ailments. Almost every limb was in pain at some stage or other, while he also suffered from gout, neuritis, rheumatism, sore throats, coughs, insomnia, stomach pains and perhaps cholera.

After much debate it was decided that the people would not be ordered to reciprocate the King’s oath of allegiance. This was wise. As ancient Greeks knew, oaths have serious implications. For them, to take an oath was in effect ‘to invoke powers greater than oneself to uphold the truth of a declaration, by putting a curse upon oneself if it was false’. The Trojan war – the subject of the West’s first work of literature – happened only because Tyndareos, stepfather of Helen, compelled all her Greek suitors, on oath, to go to war on anyone who seduced her from her husband – which the Trojan Paris proceeded to do. Betraying that oath (Achilles was too young to swear it) would have meant divine punishment in the future. But the practice was open to abuse.

Baroness Benjamin has suggested that King Charles’s choice of her to join the coronation procession demonstrates that he is in favour of ‘diversity and inclusion’. What would the ancients have made of that, let alone of ‘equality’ and ‘identity’? ‘Equality’ had little purchase. Politically, male citizens had a vote in democratic Athens and (of sorts) in republican Rome. Otherwise there were human experiences of ‘levelling’ or ‘belonging’ in e.g. the battle-line, at childbirth, at the games, religious festivals and initiations. For the rest, it is important to understand that the ancient world was an unforgiving place and took no prisoners.

Elon Musk’s Twitter motto is Vox populi, vox Dei (‘The voice of the people, the voice of God’). This obviously appeals to the lawyer in Sir Keir Starmer since Twitter (being the voice of God) cannot be sued and therefore gives him scope to sail close to the wind. There is much he can learn from the example of the Romans. The mob is in full song on the walls of Pompeii. ‘Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this’; ‘Phileros is a eunuch’; ‘Nero’s finance officer says the food here is poison’; ‘Secundus likes to screw boys’ and much else of this sort. Roman orators too went the full Starmer. Curio described Julius Caesar as ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’.

Refugees and asylum seekers are always with us. In the ancient world too, exiles, criminals, refugees, sometimes whole communities were on the move. There were three main conventions in place to help them. For an individual there was the act of supplication. If you knelt before someone – no Greek would willingly wish to appear so helpless – perhaps touching their knees, you would expect to be offered hospitality. Likewise, if there was a shrine nearby, putting yourself in contact with that would make you inviolable under the gods’ protection. Finally, one could appeal for asylum, derived from the ancient Greek word meaning ‘freedom from seizure’. There were even bilateral asylum treaties covering individuals (e.g.