Friends of Classics

Ancient and Modern: 2002

12-1-2002	Many newspapers have recorded the sad demise of Europe’s oldest coinage, the drachma, ‘handful’ (ancient Greek drattomai, ‘I grasp’).
19-1-2002	The term ‘hero’ these days is commonly used of large numbers of people: those engaged in dangerous work (soldiers, firemen), those engaged in demanding work (nurses, teachers) and those simply doing a conscientious job, whatever that job is.
26-1-2002	The ‘Nomenclature’ Committee of the European Union is wrestling with the tricky problem of the number of lumps that a sauce can contain in order for it not to be classified as a ‘vegetable’.
2-2-2002	So Ivan Massow (chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts) thinks conceptual art is rubbish. Oh dear.
9-2-2002	Last week’s column described how, according to the Natural History of the Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder (ad 23–79), the famous 4th-century bc Greek artist Apelles offered a useful subject for next year’s Turner-prize entrants — three lines on a panel.
16-2-2002	As the rail system disintegrates before our very eyes, it is some comfort to know that the Romans had the same problem. With them, it was the roads.
23-2-2002	The two main political parties have announced that they are jointly going to attack cynicism. So that’s the end of Prime Minister’s Question Time, then.
9-3-2002	An ancient Athenian witnessing the lying of government and its hangers-on over the Stephen Byers affair would have been no more or less surprised than any of us at the sight of someone trying to save his skin.
16-3-2002	Some disquiet has recently been expressed about the Today programme’s ‘Thought for the Day’.
23-3-2002	As tribal warfare extends all over Afghanistan and the job of the peace- keepers becomes more and more impossible, the example of the late Roman empire in the West comes to mind.
30-3-2002	As Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat continue their murderous assault on each other’s people, an Aristophanic image comes strongly to mind.
6-4-2002	An Oscar-winning film about the Nobel-Prize mathematician John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) concentrates on his really important achievements, i.e. falling in love and going potty. Plato (429–347 bc) would have thoroughly approved of the whole package.
13-4-2002	One of the Israeli soldiers surrounding the Palestinian gunmen claiming asylum in the (exquisite paradox) church of Christ’s nativity in Bethlehem said that they would not ‘attack’ it ‘because it is a holy place’.
20-4-2002	David Triesman, New Labour’s general secretary, is complaining that the BBC’s Today programme not only insists on asking all sorts of ‘howwid’, hard questions, but also expects answers! Diddums!
27-4-2002	Israel blitzes Palestinian territory while America tries to get a stranglehold on al-Qa'eda's mountain hideouts.
11-5-2002	There are some problems that can be solved just by throwing money at them (e.g., an overdraft) but there is no indication that the NHS is one of those.
1-6-2002	Those who normally enjoy games often feel nothing but distaste for monstrous international foulathons such as Formula One racing and the impending World Cup.
8-6-2002	The world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis believes that women weaken a boxer, and therefore avoids sex for three weeks before a big fight. The theory is a hoary one.
15-6-2002	In contradiction to the linear theory of time — i.e., that the universe started with a Big Bang about 15 million years ago — two leading cosmologists have proposed that the cosmos in fact undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction, so that it endlessly dies and rises from the ashes.
22-6-2002	The mathematician Stephen Hawking wants engraved on his tombstone not an epitaph but a formula relating to his work on black holes. He is not the first to have thought in this way.
29-6-2002	It has been claimed that beards are now back in fashion. Pogonic fashion certainly changed in the ancient world.
6-7-2002	At the Austrian Grand Prix last month, the Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello was ordered to pull over and let his world champion team- mate Michael Schumacher win.
13-7-2002	The territorial fence which the Israelis are building is structurally and functionally a dead ringer for Hadrian’s Wall (started 122AD).
27-7-2002	Mr Paul Kelleher, who demonstrated his free-thinking credentials by knocking the head off a statue of Lady Thatcher in the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, will never know how close an escape he had.
3-8-2002	Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbeard of Canterbury elect, has been unfolding his thoughts on abortion. He has gratifyingly little that is new to say on a debate which is at least 2,500 years old.
17-8-2002	Tom Stoppard has written a trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, and the critics are reeling with amazement that the National can put on a nine-hour marathon, lasting all day, involving 30 actors playing 70 roles.
24-8-2002	‘Anger-management consultants’ have been appearing all over the papers in the past few weeks discussing how the footballer Roy Keane might learn to control his foul temper.
31-8-2002	As the USA considers its impending assault on Iraq, von Rumsfeld would do well to ponder Thucydides’ Melian debate.
14-9-2002	It is, apparently, a problem for many males that when they retire they feel dissatisfied because ‘society’ does not value them any more.
21-9-2002	The USA and the Middle East are quite content to engage in commercial exchange, but seem incapable of using such transactions to realise any deeper cultural understanding, let alone interaction.
5-10-2002	Stinker Pinker’s latest book has caused a furore by arguing that nature has a much greater effect than nurture on human behaviour. Or was it the other way round?
13-10-2002	British youth has every right to be angry about the A-level grading fiasco, but their self-pitying sobs — ‘What of the effect on our future careers, income, quality of life and happiness?’ moans one tragic whinger — have not impressed.
27-10-2002	Lord Archer, now serving four years for perjury, has been shocked to find that jails are full of criminals, living in cells fitted with bars and steel doors.
2-11-2002	Julian Horn-Smith, second-in-command to Sir Chris Gent at the mighty Vodaphone, has been extolling the virtues of being vice-admiral rather than admiral.
16-11-2002	How delightfully Roman the Tory party seems at the moment! One would hardly know a 'party' exists at all.
23-11-2002	The prime minister has been sounding off about the importance of 'respect', which he does not define but clearly thinks is a vote-winner.
30-11-2002	What a fuss everyone is getting into about the funding of universities! If ministers would only sit back with their Aristotle and Plato and think about results, all would become clear.
7-12-2002	Talking about wills, St Augustine remarked on the paradox that ‘while the dead man lies, insensible, under his tombstone, his words retain their full legal validity’.
14-12-2002	Tragic fun for all the family: the Fall of the House of Archer
28-12-2002	As the argument over firemen's pay and conditions rumbles on, Mr John Scorer reminds me of the correspondence on the subject of a fire service between Pliny the younger, governor of Bithynia-Pontus in north-western Turkey, and the emperor Trajan.

Every week in the London Spectator, Peter Jones compares something that has happened in the week's news with the way things were done in the ancient world.

Responses to the columns and further articles from the current Spectator are contained in the Spectator's website, to which you can travel by clicking the logo below: