Ancient Rome
Tacitus and the hypocrisy of cancel culture
The delicious hypocrisy at the heart of today’s cancel fraternity is that it is strongly opposed to censorship. Romans grappled…
Roman cancel culture didn’t stop at statues
The mob is at work again in Oxford, protesting against the existence of Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes. But this…
The art of the asparagus
Manet’s ‘Botte d’asperges’ are probably the most famous asparagus in the world. The artist painted the delicious white- and lilac-tinged…
How to eulogise the Duke of Edinburgh
The reason why Greeks and Romans would have found it difficult to eulogise the Duke of Edinburgh was that he…
How a Roman emperor would handle Navalny
A Roman emperor would consider the tyrant Putin’s treatment of Alexei Navalny’s supporters as foolish but, looking at Russia as…
What would BLM make of Cicero’s views on mutuality?
The Black Lives Matter website (different from the new Black Liberation Movement) mostly presents an image of an organisation of…
The ancient belief in the power of words to protect us
In his 37-book Natural History, Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) wondered why we wished people ‘Happy new year’ (primum…
Will we end up with a Paphlagonian Brexit deal?
Freed from the bonds of the European Union, Britain is now in a position to sign whatever trade deal it…
Modern historians take a Roman approach to history – whether they admit it or not
To what use does one put history? Romans thought it provided ‘lessons’. Modern historians rather sniff at the idea, but…
Rome’s collegiate system was more logical than America's
So Humpty Trumpty has had his great fall. But how democratic or logical was his election in the first place…
Tiberius and the ‘phantoms of liberty’
Word has it that ministers already do not bother to argue their corner with the government’s inner ring, while a…
Boris is taking an emperor’s approach to briefings
The PM is insisting that the briefings he finds in his red box every evening should be, well, brief, and…
The Romans liked a stylish death
World Mental Health day raised again the issue of suicide, still regarded as happening only among those ‘whose balance of…
Where does authority really lie in the UK? The ancients would have known
Forget David Davis, Boris, the cabinet, the commentariat. It’s time to concentrate on the big picture and the central question:…
If Trump seems bad, remember Caligula
Whatever one makes of the accuracy of the journalist Michael Wolff’s depiction of President Trump, it cannot all be the…
When armies take over democracy dies
While the military is running Zimbabwe, there is no hope of anything resembling a functioning democracy replacing the tyrant Robert…
The wily courtesans who won more respect than modern-day feminists
Some MPs have been exploiting their power by their sexual fumblings with the lower ranks. The result is that when…
Silent films
On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…
The treasures of Alexandria revealed: British Museum’s Sunken cities reviewed
It was not so unusual for someone to turn into a god in Egypt. It happened to the Emperor Hadrian’s…
The best guide to being an EU politician – from 1,900 years ago
Boris Johnson argues that the current European Union is yet another failed attempt to replicate the golden age of a…
Why confront the ugly lie of Islamic State with a tacky fake?
Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries
On immigration, are we doing as the Romans did?
Last week it was suggested that the questions asked of London mayor Sadiq Khan had nothing to do with racism,…
Romans, racism and Sadiq Khan
‘Racism’ refers to the belief in racially determined inferiority, most often recognised in body-type, about which, by definition, nothing can…
Elephants are special – the Romans knew it too
In order to deter poachers, hundreds of tons of elephants’ tusks are being incinerated in Kenya. But even for Romans,…
The Camerons of the ancient world boasted about the tax they paid
As Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell whinge away about how rich David Cameron’s family is, they might consider that in…
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