2nd June 2012

Culture minister Jeremy Hunt’s special adviser Adam Smith landed the minister in the soup by his too-cosy texts to News Corp about the proposed BSkyB takeover. He resigned, and Labour smells Hunt’s blood. What can Hunt do? The buck stops with him, but Cicero would argue that if Smith had had no criminal intent, but just became over-excited, Hunt is in the clear. The Murena defence shows how.

In 62 bc Cicero was defending Lucius Murena on a bribery charge. He concentrated his fire on the prosecutor Cato’s refusal to compromise his Stoic principles and acknowledge human weakness. Cato is one of those people, Cicero says, who believes ‘that the wise man never allows himself to be influenced by favours and never forgives wrongdoing; that only fools and the weak show mercy; that a real man does not yield to entreaties or prayers; that all sins are equal, and all are serious crimes, so that he who unnecessarily strangles a cock commits no less a crime than he who strangles his father; that the philosopher guesses at nothing, repents of nothing, is never wrong, never changes his mind.’ Most men, Cicero goes on, treat such things as an academic exercise, but Cato has embraced it as the rule for life. So, when a grief-stricken suppliant comes to ask for help, Cato will say you are acting criminally and immorally if you allow yourself to be swayed by compassion. If someone admits he has done wrong and asks for forgiveness, Cato will say it is a crime to forgive a wrong. If you make an assertion, Cato will not let you take it back. ‘But it was only a conjecture.’ Philosophers do not offer conjectures, comes the reply. You make a genuine mistake: no, you did it on purpose. Cicero concludes by calling this all good, debating club stuff, but in fact to make concessions to human failings is a proper philosophical position. Cicero won the case.

By defending his adviser, Hunt would defend himself. Further, if the former Cabinet secretary Lord Butler of Brockwell is right that Hunt committed a technical, not a sacking, offence, he might still wriggle clear.

26th May 2012

So: Angela Merkel proposes a Greek referendum on the euro, David Cameron says the forthcoming election there is the equivalent of a referendum. But as ancient Greeks knew, what is needed at this point is an ostracism.

An ostrakon (pl. ostraka) was a piece of broken pottery. It cost nothing (unlike papyrus) and was widely available. On it, Athenian citizens wrote the name of the individual whom they wanted removed from the political arena in Athens and sent into honourable exile for ten years.

It worked like this. Once a year, Athenian citizens in Assembly were asked if they wanted to hold an ostracism. The reason for it can be understood only in the context of real democracy, i.e. where citizens made all the decisions after listening to the arguments for this or that course of action put forward in the Assembly. If two diametrically opposed courses of action were so evenly supported that deadlock ensued, it made sense to remove one of the speakers. So the purpose of ostracism was essentially administrative, to clear the air. It could always be revoked.

If the Assembly voted for an ostracism, it was staged two months later. This gave plenty of time for Athenians to debate among themselves the pros and cons of getting rid of one or other turbulent politician. On the day of the ostracism, there was no debate in the Assembly on the matter; each citizen simply scratched on an ostrakon the name of his chosen candidate, and as long as 6,000 ostraka were cast, the man with the most votes was given the order of the pot. 

If an ostracism did not automatically improve things, at least it made them, for a time, less confusing. Since Greek politics have always been a nightmarishly tangled Medusa’s hair of spitting snakes attacking their own side as much as the opposition, a pro- vs anti- bailout ostracism might achieve some clarity. But what to do with the losers? Exile might be rather too appealing. So remove them instead from the Greek political scene by sending them off to the European Commission. ‘Irony’ is a Greek word, after all.

21st April 2012

As local councils seize more power from central government, with more to come if e.g. Osborne’s plan to link salaries to location comes good, Labour MPs are already giving up on the Miliband Miracle and deciding to satisfy their control instincts by seeking election as mayors or police commissioners. This is no surprise. Power, on any terms, is in MPs’ DNA, as it was in Julius Caesar’s.

The essayist Plutarch (c. AD 100) provides two telling stories about Caesar that neatly make the point. In 67 BC, while serving in Spain, ‘he was reading some part of the history of Alexander when, after sitting for a long time lost in thought, he burst into tears. His surprised friends asked him the reason. “Don’t you think”, he said, “that I have reason for regret, when I reflect that at my age [33] Alexander [who died age 33] already ruled so many peoples, while I have not enjoyed a single brilliant success - yet?” ’ These were not tears of self-love, however, like those Ken gushed at some actors’ declarations of his indispensability. Rather, they expressed Caesar’s resolve to achieve that ‘brilliant success’.

In the second story, ‘he was crossing the Alps when he came to a small, sparsely inhabited native village, an altogether miserable-looking place. His friends, shrieking with laughter, said “No doubt here too you’d find men ambitious for high office, scrapping to come out on top, and jealous rivalry between the great and good.” Caesar then said to them - and he meant every word: “I would rather be first man here than second in Rome.” ’ Indeed, even in death he was determined to stay on top. His last words to Brutus – not et tu, Brute but Greek kai su, teknon ‘You too, son’ – far from being a cry of despair or disbelief or plea for sympathy, meant ‘And the same to you, kid’.

So if parliament cannot fulfil these MPs’ thirst to crack the whip over us, councils will have to satisfy their strange urges. The difference between them and Caesar, of course, is that Caesar did not intend for one moment to be top man anywhere other than Rome.

31st March 2012

As vicars, traditional or trendy, assert that God is or is not in favour of something, one is reminded that there were cultures for whom divinely inspired scriptures did not exist. Poor old Greeks and Romans! How on earth did they get by?

The 5th C BC thinker Protagoras argued that men must by definition possess a sense of standards, otherwise they could not live in communities at all. In the absence of holy books, tradition played the main role in determining what those standards were, which is why attacks on tradition from radical thinkers like Socrates and Diogenes generated such mistrust. Fables like Aesop’s – which Quintilian, the Roman professor of education, said particularly appealed to ‘country boors and the uneducated’ – popular stories and sayings all reinforced the cultural message.  

Taken together, they depicted a society dominated by inequality, hostility and fear, in which hierarchy came naturally, justice was all about maintaining the social order, and harmony was a utopian dream. Their morality focused on the public and social (not private) sphere (in particular, on mitigating conflict) and the importance of the relationship between the human and the divine (especially in ensuring justice). They opened up a world of materialistic glory and opportunity, where wealth was desirable, education could transform your chances and friendship was important. Stories about gods argued that (bad) Fortune could be overcome – courage was vital - but moral responsibility lay with humans, as individuals, groups and states, states in particular. Respect for family, state and ritual (pietas) was of great significance. The general conclusion was that gods were committed to justice and good faith while, with luck, success bred success. But life was still fragile, harsh and short. The ‘good’ life depended largely on making decisions that would enable you to survive, whatever life threw at you, and even (with luck) thrive. Being good at something was usually the key to success.

All strongly reminiscent, in fact, of the Rev. Giles Fraser on Thought for the Day, though with rather more spiritual depth.

3rd March 2012

Humanists are breast-beating about the wicked influence of Christian practice on civil life. Julius Caesar would have put them straight.

There were no pagan scriptures underpinning creeds, belief in one true god, or moral and ethical standards. Polytheistic religion was simply a system of cult practice: performing ritual - doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time - taking auspices, and interpreting portents. It was performance-indexed piety, designed to help men keep gods onside and understand their will. Further, since worshipping one god did not prevent you worshipping any other, and morality did not come into it, only in very exceptional circumstances did the Roman state intervene in any individual’s choice of deity.

The big, public rituals were run by state-appointed priests. These were not trained professionals. Julius Caesar, a virtual atheist but knowing the political importance of the role, was elected (at vast personal expense) to the top priesthood, pontifex maximus, in 63 BC, spent ten years conquering Gaul, defeated Pompey in a civil war, made himself dictator and was assassinated. He gave no moral or spiritual guidance, laid on no coffee mornings. He just performed the rituals for all to see.

Romans never publicly questioned the validity of this religious system, based as it was on unchanging, constantly repeated, traditional rituals, linking past with present and future, for ever. That is what made it a religion, and them Roman. Almost every aspect of institutional life had some ritual protocol wrapped round it. Caesar may not have believed a word of it, but he was not so thick as to underestimate its human and political importance.

Romans would see the C of E serving precisely the same vital function for us, though in quite different, and to them baffling, terms. That is why Julius Caesar’s example is so telling. Christianity has a ritual part to play in many aspects of civil life as a human communal force, creating cohesion, lending gravity to proceedings, recalling the way things have ‘always’ been done, making us what we are. Humanists, live up to your name.

18th February 2012

While it is obviously the case that every university wants to teach bright students, it is statistically probable that Oxbridge fails to pick up a number of students who are bright, but poor. It must be a huge relief to them that a government is to appoint an expert in ‘fair access’, Professor Les Ebdon, of the University of Bedfordshire.

                

‘Expert’ has the same (Latin) root as our ‘experience’, the basic meaning of which is ‘try out’, and thus ‘have experience of’. Our ‘empirical’ likewise comes from the Greek empeiros, ‘practised in, skilful’. Expertise in any matter was a subject of great interest to the ancients because (as Socrates argued), while it obviously applied to technical matters, like temple-construction and ship-building, it was not so clear that there was such a thing as expertise when it came to e.g. goodness or politics. He famously pointed out that any non-expert spouting away on technical matters in the Athenian assembly would be shouted down, but when it came to making good judgements on policy, anyone could have a say – ‘carpenter, smith or cobbler, merchant or ship owner, rich or poor, high born or low born, and no one objects’. Socrates thought the reason was that technical matters could be taught, but things like ‘goodness’ could not. So if one wanted to be ‘good’, it was not clear at all to whom one would go for solid instruction. Even fathers could not teach their own sons: look, he said, at Pericles’ children, who had all the technical know-how in riding, music, athletics and so on, but were in other respects no credit at all to their illustrious father.

                

So presumably Professor Ebdon can define what ‘fair access’ means and how it can be ensured. Likewise, he must know what it is that Oxbridge has to do to attract poor but outstanding students. Clearly, the University of Bedfordshire must be stuffed to the gunwales with them as a result of the Professor’s expertise. Otherwise, why appoint him? Of course, if Oxbridge does succeed, it will at once be accused of ‘creaming off the poorest’ – but not by Professor Ebdon!

P.S. ‘Expert’, obviously, does not derive from Latin expers, ‘completely ignorant’.

7th April 2012

Any appeal to the electorate that the coalition may once have had seems to be fading fast. If the decision to put VAT on a hot pasty turns out to have been the turning point, the Gang of Four who run the Cabinet have only themselves to blame for not paying enough attention to Plutarch, the great Greek essayist (ad 46–120), whose ‘Tips on Statecraft’ would have kept them straight.

Entering public life not for gain but out of honourable conviction, Plutarch argued, the politician must make it his first task to understand the character of the citizens with whom he was dealing. So he had to start by working with the grain of public opinion in order to win a good reputation and public confidence. Here lifestyle was an important ingredient of a politician’s appeal: ‘It is not just their words and deeds that will be held to account by the public, but also their dinners [got that, Mr Cameron?], affairs, marriage, pleasures and interests.’

That confidence won, said Plutarch, the politician stood a chance of bringing about the changes he thought necessary, but he must also bear in mind that it was always the big picture that counted. Here Plutarch quoted the monarch Jason of Thessaly: ‘Those who wish to do right overall must be ready to do wrong in unimportant matters.’ No, said Plutarch: that was the act of a tyrant. Rather, one should say: ‘Win the favour of people by giving way in small things in order to stand your ground on the big issues.’ If not, he said, you will get a reputation for unbending, unfeeling intransigence which accustoms people to opposing you. Show flexibility, he advised, ‘as we do with errant behaviour in the young, so that we do not lose our authority by constantly banging on and can be firm on matters where it really counts’.

And so Her Majesty’s government solemnly legislates on hot and cold pasties. Only politicians with no comprehension of the British character could possibly consider tinkering with such small, inexpensive, everyday pleasures. If the Gang of Four wants to lose the people — and the big arguments — this is the way to do it.