11th September 2010

September 11 2010

Public life for politicians does not seem to get any easier. Have, as a male, a close male companion, and if the tabloids are not after you, the posh papers will attack you for your insensitivity in pointing to your marriage and desire for a family to demonstrate that you are not gay—disgusting! Enter a coalition, and all disagreements will be disasters. In his ‘Rules for Politicians’, the Greek essayist Plutarch (c. AD 46-120) gives sensible advice about all this.

Any decision to enter public life must not be based on ‘an inability to think of anything else to do’; nor must one do it to make money, or with emotional urges to do good or a desire for fame. If that turns out to be the case, the politician will find himself like someone who sails in boats for the fun of it and finds himself swept out to sea, hanging over the side being seasick. Rational conviction that the work is noble and right for you is the one reason for entering politics. For politics is like a well: if you fall in thoughtlessly, you will regret it, but if you descend gently and under control, you will get the best out of it.

Once in, the politician must first get to know the character of his fellow citizens and adapt to it; otherwise, he cannot hope to shape and change them. Since he is living on an open stage, he must also modify his own behaviour: ‘men in public life are responsible for more than their public words and actions: their dinners, beds, marriages, amusements and interests are all objects of curiosity…since people think highly of government and authority, you must be entirely free of eccentricity or aberration.’

Plutarch is especially good on the usefulness of disagreement. It carries conviction among the voters, he argues, when in large policy matters party members should at first disagree and then change their minds. It looks as if they are acting from principle. In small matters, however, they should be genuinely allowed to disagree, because then their agreement in important matters does not look pre-concerted.

So there is something to be gained from controlled party splits. The coalition is surely in prime position to exploit this advantage.

4th September 2010

Only time will tell whether Tony Blair was wise to publish his memoirs. The first Roman emperor Augustus, who came to power in 31 BC after a bloody civil war, abandoned his.

Its purpose seems to have been to answer his critics, who were accusing him of being a merciless, criminal, cowardly, jumped-up nobody. But in 23 BC he discontinued it. Instead, he concentrated on refining his Res Gestae (‘My Achievements’), which was inscribed on two bronze plaques and placed outside his mausoleum in Rome. In other words, Augustus was interested in posterity’s judgement. He realised that an autobiography which merely refought yesterday’s battles achieved nothing except keeping the muck fresh and re-usable. But a bald statement of what he had actually done—let his enemies, and more importantly posterity, chew on that.

This c. 350-line document is a stupendous list of honours, titles, and achievements (‘I restored these buildings, built these temples, put on these shows, conquered these lands, took these offices’) interspersed with occasional comment emphasising his conservatism (e.g. ‘I did not accept office contrary to our ancestors’ customs’). And Blair?

Further, the private expenses which Augustus lists as ‘having devoted to the state and the people’ run to billions. The Roman legionary earned 900 sestertii (ss) a year. Augustus lists hand-outs to every single Roman of three hundred ss in 44 BC (under Julius Caesar’s will) and four hundred ss in 29, 24 and 11 BC. He bought land for troops in Italy and the provinces to a sum of 860 million ss; and gave another 400 million ss in ‘rewards’ to soldiers later on. He transferred private funds of 320 million ss to the treasury; he paid for grain distribution among the people when treasury funds ran short; built temples; laid on games. But this was what an emperor was supposed to do—serve the people. And Blair? Let us hope, for his sake, the donation to the British Legion’s ‘Battle Back Challenge’ for wounded soldiers is just a start.

One of Augustus’ proudest boasts was to have found Rome brick and left it marble. Blair’s may well be to have found Baghdad concrete and left it rubble.

28th August 2010

Will the Coalition fall apart, as Lib Dems not in government attempt to bring their influence to bear on policies ‘for which they were not elected’? If the Cameron-Clegg relationship is anything like the Roman patronus-cliens relationship, it is unlikely.

All Roman political big shots surrounded themselves with political supporters in the shape of voluntary ‘clients’, but the relationship between the two was not symmetrical. The reason is that, while the cliens offered the patron political support, the patronus in return controlled access to vital resources and services which his cliens was not in a position to get himself—legal, financial, social, military and so on.

The problem was that the resources and services which any cliens might so desperately need at any stage were themselves available in only limited supply. So it was impossible for the *patronus* to do the business for everyone. This may seem to strike at the heart of the system (why should a cliens stay with someone who did not deliver?), but far from being a weakness, it was its great strength, and the source of the patronus’ power. Since resources were limited, and the patronus alone controlled access to them, the only hope the cliens had was to hang in there, fingers crossed. So the satirist Juvenal complains that, for all your services to a patronus, you’ll never get even a dinner out of him, and if you do, it will be toadstools and a rotten apple.

In other words, as the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (late 1^st C BC) shrewdly saw, the relationship was in fact a means of social control—keeping the lower orders in their place. Being in a position of dependency on the great patron himself, clientes spent most of their time grovelling at the master’s table, grovelling all the harder the less they got thrown.

Clegg is in a position of debilitating weakness. The purpose of politics is to hold power. He can achieve that only as cliens to a larger party; and then only if there is a hung parliament. So the Lib Dems have far more to lose than Cameron does. Better the devil you know.

21st August 2010

Universities warn that even those with top A-levels may not get in, such is the pressure on places. But are A-levels the right criteria for university entrance?

In his Metaphysics Aristotle begins by arguing that memory is the means by which humans acquire experience (empeiria). From this they learn that something is the case. But they can then go on to gain epistêmê—‘knowledge’ based on logical reasoning—and technê—the ‘skill’ to produce something with an awareness of the principles underlying the process. Such people know why and how something is the case and thus, he concludes, can draw general conclusions from specific experiences.

But applying this requires phronêsis, ‘practical wisdom’—the capacity for intelligent deliberation about putting one’s ‘knowledge’ and ‘skill’ to the best possible use, including ensuring that morally acceptable ends are achieved by moral means. From such beginnings Aristotle goes on to speculate on fundamental questions of ‘being’, ‘cause’, and ‘gods’.

The first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics makes a famous assertion: ‘All humans instinctively reach out/hunger for knowledge’, though with different degrees of success. Plato makes this hunger the goal of his higher education system which he insists should be restricted purely to those with an unquenchable passion for active engagement in the search for ultimate knowledge. This he brilliantly contrasts with passive learning, espoused by the great majority, for whom being educated is ‘like acquiring a sun-tan’—the entitlement culture to a T.

Oh dear. How elitist. Is the ‘Big Society’ ready for this? It is the last thing A-levels seem designed for. But is it not in all our interests to produce people who are the very best at what they do, whether it is rocket science, media studies or ancient Greek? If universities were to select only those with a burning desire to be, not seem, the best (Aeschylus), the country would save a very great deal of money and could justifiably boast that it offered ‘the best education in the world’. For education is a quid pro quo. Without total commitment from the student, as Plato saw, forget it. But what can one not achieve, with it?

14th August 2010

Romans were always sensitive to the controllability of any territory that abutted their empire. What on earth would they have made of Afghanistan? Let alone its army?

Rex sociusque et amicus, ‘king, ally and friend’ was the honorific term applied to the ruler of people on the edge of their empire who agreed to come on board. The relationship was a delicate quid pro quo: Rome ensured that their new best friend remained securely in power, as long as he had a grip on his people, remained loyal to Rome and jumped when asked. The push-pull between Rome and the Parthian empire over Armenia offers a good example, both sides keen to have ‘their man’ in charge and make it look as if they were in control—for propaganda purposes if for nothing else—but without actually threatening the peace.

Economics came strongly into it. The point is that Roman soldiers living on the borders needed supplying, and it did not matter much where supplies came from. Further, such exchange helped to cement relationships on both sides. So networks of highly-respected ‘friends’ were in place even across what looks like the natural barrier of the Rhine-Danube. Another advantage was maintaining military strength. There was a good living to be made in the Roman army, and Romans knew the fighting worth of other armies, especially if they were German. But there was no point in playing these games if the stability of such kingdoms could not be relied upon or it had nothing to offer. It was then a matter of cutting losses (Scotland is a good example) or moving in full time.

President Karzai barely controls Kabul, let alone the country. An ‘economy’ hardly exists. And even if the West could bring prosperity to such a poor region, what would that guarantee? As for training up an army in a congenitally unstable region in the hope that it will remain on ‘our’ side when we are gone, Romans would have thought us deranged. Had they wanted a local army, they would have drafted Afghans, Gurhka-style, into the British army and sent them for training far away (as they often did to captives). As it is, we are merely creating mercenaries for hire by anyone who will want them.

7th August 2010

So we are all going to have to work longer, and everyone is thrilled? The ancients would have thought us barking.

The 7thC BC Greek farmer-poet Hesiod laid down the marker when he lamented that he lived in the age of iron, when men ‘will never cease from toil and misery by day and night’. The reason is that, in the pre-industrial ancient world, there were, effectively, no such things as ‘jobs’. Virtually everyone, bar the rich, lived off the soil. So ‘work’ was not a matter of choice. If you did not work, you died, though an epitaph highlighted the benefits: sweet repose, no fear of starvation, permanent, rent-free accommodation—so never in debt! Popular morality rammed home the point. Aesop contrasted the ant who worked to prepare for the winter with the grasshopper who sang the summer away and paid the price.

Further, if you did work for a wage, you would be working for others. That implied you could not stand on your own two feet. You were dependent on someone else, i.e. no longer free. It was as if you were the lowest of the low—a slave. In other words, you were not regarded as a free man, freely and proudly selling your labour: you were in fact selling your person. Better to see yourself as a noble, hard-working, self-sufficient farmer—an image Romans keenly polished—than that.

A Roman word for ‘work’ makes the point with a terrible precision: negotium (cf. negotiate), from nego ‘I deny’ and otium ‘leisure’. Far from being dignified or positive, work was a denial of everything man longed for—leisure to enjoy himself as he chose. That was a privilege reserved only for the wealthy, the most enviable of all consequences of being rich. The Greek for leisure is *scholê/*/, origin of our ‘school’ and ‘scholarship’. Only the well-healed could afford the time off to indulge in such luxuries. By the same token, the man who did not have to work but put himself out of behalf of the community was greatly to be praised. Celebrations of the Great and Good regularly highlight their industria and diligentia—a pleasing paradox.

‘The dignity of labour’: dancing to someone else’s tune. What slave-driver thought up that con-trick?

31st July 2010

The French may legislate to ban the all-enveloping burka/niqab worn by some Muslim women, but Claudius, Roman emperor AD 41-54, would no more have banned them than he did trouser-wearing Frenchman.

In AD 48, Gallic chieftains who had long-standing treaties with Rome and were of citizen status decided they wanted the right to enter the Roman Senate. Fierce debate ensued. Some Romans opposed it. They argued that there were enough properly bred Romans to fill the Senate, and enough non-Romans had been admitted anyway. The Gauls who came in would be descendants of people traditionally hostile to Rome, who had fought Julius Caesar and earlier still (390 BC) even sacked the city. Let them be citizens, but they must not cheapen Rome’s high office.

Claudius was having none of this and addressed the senate on the matter (The official record of the original speech survives on a bronze tablet put on display at the time in Lyons; Tacitus’ version elaborates on its main points). Claudius argues that he wants men of excellence in the Senate wherever they come from, and reminds his listeners that Romulus welcomed in enemies wholesale the day after defeating them. The fatal weakness of Sparta and Athens, he goes on, was to refuse conquered subjects any citizen rights. As for past battles, he points out, Rome has lost to many tribes who were now fully integrated, and the loyalty of Gallic peoples is now unquestioned. They have assimilated Roman customs and culture and married into Roman families. Let them spend their wealth here rather than keep it to themselves! All ancient institutions, he concludes, change over time. Innovations become the norm, and so will this one.

The Senate approved the speech, and the Gauls were granted the new right. The key point here is that the Gauls were already assimilated to Roman ways: they had given up their breeches (bracae) and were fully togaed up. Under those circumstances, there was no reason not to admit them. In that light, the minister Damien Green was right to reject the French approach. If Muslim women refuse assimilation to our ways, their children and grandchildren who wish to remain here and succeed will pay the price. In the tolerant British way, let our culture and tradition do their silent work.