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Ancient and Modern: 2009

24-1-2009	President-elect Obama is preparing his inaugural, and it will doubtless display the same persuasive charm and intelligence that has characterised all his speeches.
14-2-2009	It is not often that an American president so immediately, so publicly and so thoroughly trashes his predecessor.
28-2-2009	To general disapproval (and in direct contradiction to Chancellor Darling), Lord Mandelson has suggested that the government should not be too hasty in removing bonuses from (presumably) ‘hard-working’ bankers. How very ‘New Roman’.
7-3-2009	Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman ‘famous’ for appearing on‘Big Brother’ should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant.
14-3-2009	Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster.
21-3-2009	Pupils, we are told, must be kept ‘happy’ at all costs. It is a surprise, therefore, that the educational potential of drunkenness has not been recognised by Mr Balls, or by government adviser Professor Sir Liam Donaldson who has proposed that the price of drinks be increased in order to cut drunkenness.
4-4-2009	As the true depth of the recession emerges, and fury increases against bankers for the massive bonuses they have demanded, effectively from the tax-payer, for creating it, Roman generals might set an unexpected example.
18-4-2009	Damian McBride, the latest spawn of the Campbell, has notable forebears in the infamous delatores, or informers, of the Roman empire. They too worked with passionate servility to suck up to the emperor of the day by bringing to his attention those who might be considered dangerous to him.
25-04-2009	Paeans of praise are being heaped on US President Barack Obama for being able to speak well in public, while commentators trace his skill back to the rules of rhetoric invented by Aristotle and Cicero. Plato would be spitting.
16-05-2009	To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). The root of this word was financial – what you were worth. And what you were worth was judged not so much by your own values (note ‘value’) as by other people’s assessment of you.
23-5-2009	The general public, never having felt politicians can be wholly trusted, already believe any discreditable rumour about them that comes their way.
30-5-2009	The saga of MPs’ allowances brings to mind the depredations of Gaius Verres, Roman governor of Sicily 73-71 BC.
4-7-2009	Train guards and underground drivers are planning to amuse passengers with a range of thought-provoking apophthegms.
25-7-2009	The moon has been hitting the headlines briefly, for something that happened forty years ago. It was in the ancients’ minds (and sights) all the time.
8-8-2009	Following the diktat of the European Court, Law Lords have ruled that ‘control orders’ are illegal, because they allow terrorist suspects to be placed under curfew without the evidence against them being made available to their lawyers.
15-8-2009	Robert Harris has dedicated Lustrum, the second of his planned trilogy on the Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 BC), to Baron Mandelson, commenting on the two men’s resemblances. There are indeed some.
29-8-2009	Al-Megrahi, the being partly responsible for the murder of 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, has been released by Scottish justice secretary MacAskill ‘on compassionate grounds’. Ancient Greeks would have smelled a rat.
15-9-2009	The question-mark hanging over the very existence of newspapers raises the question: is there a future for the written word?
19-9-2009	‘What is “progress”?’ asks President Sarkozy, and answers ‘happiness and relationships’. One looks forward to his ‘progressive’ policies. The ancients would have thought him mad.
3-10-2009	In the current financial predicament, everyone seems much keener to cut government spending than raise taxes. This is most unimaginative.
31-10-2009	Should the Tories follow Frank Field’s lead and, in the light of their ‘broken society’ campaign, make it their policy to produce ‘the good citizen’?
7-11-2009	As part of a revolution in higher education, Lord Mandelson is requiring information about universities to be modelled on a food-labelling system that will treat students as paying customers.
14-11-2009	Girls at Cambridge are, apparently, insulting feminism by allowing themselves to be photographed in bikinis.
21-11-2009	In a new survey on ‘dating’ (the romantic rather than temporal kind), it was revealed that 91% of women and 86% of men would not marry someone ‘who had everything you looked for in a partner, but whom you were not in love with’.

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.

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