Cicero
There was more to real-life gladiators than fighting
Many commentators have criticised the film Gladiator II on technical aspects of the fighting. But there was so much more…
Our new MPs should read Cicero
It would make a pleasant change if every elected MP was to make it their ambition to be honestus, Latin…
Cher options
The singer Cher, now 75, has announced that, because she refuses to appear old, she is not going to allow…
On liberalism
Certain parts of academia seem to wish to turn the study of classics away from a historical, language- and evidence-based…
Cicero, mutuality and BLM
The Black Lives Matter website (different from the new Black Liberation Movement) mostly presents an image of an organisation of…
Natural order
The ancients knew nothing about global warming, but they still reflected on the relationship between man and nature. In the…
The health of the people
The Prime Minister recently quoted Cicero’s famous dictum salus populi suprema lex esto, translating it as ‘Let the health (salus)…
The rejection of the people’s mandate – then and now
The Transport Secretary Chris Grayling may be quite right (not words one often reads) to warn that failure to deliver…
John McDonnell might soon regret handing out copies of Cicero
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has given all his cabinet a copy of Cicero’s advice on how to win arguments. This…
BBC2’s Civilisations seems unable to decide what civilisation is
The presenters of the BBC 2 programme on civilisations seem unable to decide what civilisation is. Socrates would therefore wonder…
Henry III vs EU law
It is no surprise that the laws imposed on the UK by a European parliament in Brussels should so infuriate…
Cicero on regulating MPs
As Sir Kevin Barron, chair of the MPs’ ‘Standards’ committee, steps down so that his own MP-packed body can adjudicate…
Governor Cameron and the Brussels empire
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU Commission, made a typically brilliant intervention in the EU referendum debate by arguing that…
Agony and ecstasy in the garden
I usually throw away dust jackets but Robin Lane Fox chose his for a reason. He originally encountered Augustine of…
Quotations
I couldn’t help laughing when I found that an Australian senator, Cory Bernardi, had deleted all his tweets from Twitter,…
What is written down
Marcus Tullius Cicero was the ancient master of the ‘save’ key. He composed more letters, speeches and philosophy books than…
Cicero on Labour taxes
Heidi Alexander, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow health secretary, has emphasised how important it is ‘to weave into [Labour’s] language, our narrative…
On Wimbledon grunters
What a pleasure it was to watch the men’s final at Wimbledon contested with a minimum of grunting, exclaiming and…
Cicero’s advice for election-losers
The great Robert Harris has defended the pollsters who got the elections so wrong by quoting Cicero on the electorate’s…
A neglected corner of Roman history
When Ovid was seeking ‘cures for love’, the most efficient remedy, he wrote, was for a young man to watch…
Caesar, Pompey and the SNP
Alex Salmond, the ex-first minister who proved incapable of making Scotland independent, has assured the world that he and his…
A Stoic among sadists
They lived in barrels, they camped on top of columns, or in caves: the lives of the sages are often…
Shades of the prison house
A few months ago I went to a lunch at Univ, my old college in Oxford, to celebrate the 95th…
Hyperides vs Jack Straw
In responding as they did to the Daily Telegraph ‘sting’, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind may well have done…
