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The original Olympic Games established a basic canon of seven games unchanged over some 900 years: foot, horse and chariot races, boxing, wrestling, pankration, and pentathlon. This year's Olympics feature [...]

The Sentencing Council, consisting of various legal authorities, has told judges and magistrates to consider, when sentencing the young, their 'difficult and/or deprived backgrounds or personal circumstances'. To what end? [...]

Club rules What fun to mock the elite in the Garrick! But there were no Garricks in Rome: clubs were for those lower down the scale. They were called collegia [...]

SOCRATES: I was talking with some handsome young men in St Andrews University when the vice chancellor appeared, keen to discuss her new student 'training module'. It would include ticking [...]

Accounting systems have apparently existed since the Mesopotamian period (c. 5000 BC). But what about 'budgets'? Early Romans had no such concept because, in the absence of a welfare state, [...]

After 14 years in power, the Tory party still does not seem to know how to serve everyone's interests, even its own. After 14 years out of power, the Labour [...]

Golden Globes, Baftas, Emmies--here we go again with the annual rituals of self-worship to which actors are so addicted. The ancient Greeks are to blame: they staged plays in competition, [...]

Ian Hislop's genial radio series on the earliest English jokes got off to an odd start since the joke in question - Pope Gregory's description of the Angli being more [...]

Last week in a piece on populism, Pericles' and Cleon's methods of persuading the Athenian assembly to do their bidding were analysed: Pericles calm and persuasive, Cleon taking to court [...]

As elections approach and arguments become more strident, the term 'populism' becomes more and more thrown about, as if it is a bad thing, a form of demagoguery. But what [...]

Given the failure of all political parties to deal with the Post Office's wrongful conviction of so many postmasters, ITV's re-enaction of the story has been a triumph for democracy [...]

The Baroness Mone-ing about allegations of fraud and bribery no doubt thinks everyone 'has it in for me'. They do indeed. So would the ancients: it was standard practice to [...]

Cicero's statement salus populi suprema lex esto ('Let the security of the people be the ultimate law') has been the motto or guiding principle of any number of institutions and [...]

Next year there will be an election, and all the talk is of strategies for winning power. But for the elite Romans who thought about politics, the debate was not [...]

At this time of year the Romans, too, enjoyed a celebration, called the Saturnalia. It was a time of licence, the one day when slaves were free to eat, drink [...]

More and more people are giving up work on the grounds of their mental-health problems, allowing them to live off state benefits. That raises the question: is there something about [...]

Elon Musk has predicted that AI will prevent anyone needing to work and will raise worldwide incomes at the same time. But will it rustle up a quick lamprey a [...]

To judge from current events in the Middle East, the god of Israel appears to be battling the god of the Palestinians, even though they both seem to be the [...]

The Hamas charter does not mince its words: 'The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight [...]

Roman refugees To protect Gazan civilians (used as shields by Hamas), Israel has told them to leave their homes. When in 665 BC Romans forced the people of ancient Alba [...]

After the scrapping of the HS2 link to Manchester, private investment may be needed to build the Old Oak Common to Euston section. Romans would have invited private investment and [...]

Scientists at Cambridge University have made the astonishing discovery that repressing your emotions might have something to be said for it. The ancients turned their analytical minds to that, and [...]

Excited crowds of youth, encouraged by adults who should know better, take the view that opinions with which they disagree should not be debated but subject to control by the [...]

It is apparently an increasingly popular idea that we can 'cosmically attract' success to ourselves. Many ancients, with their beliefs in divination and so on, might well have agreed. Not [...]

The government is supplying the obese with a slimming drug Wegovy. But the ancient world was dominated by the emaciated, and the fat were extremely thin on the ground. They [...]

The American firm B Corp offers businesses the chance to win a 'kitemark' by a boxticking process showing that they are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the [...]

For most people in the ancient world, holidays meant local public festivals - in Rome there were 135 a year - when politicians staged extravagant games and theatrical shows. But [...]

SORATES: I was walking back from the gymnasium when I saw Keir Mather, the new MP for Selby, on his way there. I had been told he was young and [...]

The ancients were as fascinated by rumour as, to judge by recent events in Russia and the BBC, we are. Homer called rumour 'the messenger of Zeus', with a fondness [...]

It is encouraging to see Sir Keir Starmer taking a leaf out of the ancients' book by putting oracy (from Latin orator) on the curriculum. Indeed, on the ancient curriculum, [...]

Research in the USA has shown that it is possible to do something about grey hair. But 'grey hair' stands for 'old age', and there is nothing we can do [...]

After much debate it was decided that the people would not be ordered to reciprocate the King's oath of allegiance. This was wise. As ancient Greeks knew, oaths have serious [...]

Elon Musk's Twitter motto is Vox populi, vox Dei ('The voice of the people, the voice of God'). This obviously appeals to the lawyer in Sir Keir Starmer since Twitter [...]

The Scottish solution Refugees and asylum seekers are always with us. In the ancient world too, exiles, criminals, refugees, sometimes whole communities were on the move. There were three main [...]

The Guardian is worshipping at the shrine to its own piety with even more self-satisfaction than usual because it is paying millions in reparations to African-Americans based in Georgia and [...]

Charlie Mackesy's bestselling and Oscar-winning stories about a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse deal in apercus such as 'Nothing beats kindness. It sits quietly behind all things'; [...]

Boris Johnson wants to give his father a knighthood. How very classical of him! Xenophon said that it was 'the mark of a man to excel his friends in benefaction [...]

Persuaded by tripe Our brave comedians spend much of their time fearlessly attacking politicians, to little or no effect. So did the comic playwright Aristophanes (5th century BC), but he [...]

Rising from the ashes In AD 115 Antioch (Antakya) was destroyed, as today, by a huge earthquake, described dramatically by a historian 100 years later. In ad 178, Smyrna (modern [...]

He who will be obeyed If Dominic Raab has been bullying, he must think it was to his advantage. Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition to Troy, thought so too. [...]

A fast-food restaurant in Wrexham will play classical music during the evenings in a bid to stop antisocial behaviour. While some ancient Greeks denied that music per se provided anything [...]

One MP pays a tax fine, one borrows money from a relation and one is accused of bullying staff. More 'corruption and sleaze'? Romans might have seen it as a [...]

Where should the Elgin marbles be on show? Their display in the Duveen gallery of the British Museum is not impressive. To put it crudely, a Greek temple consisted of [...]

Google provides information easily, which the ancients did as best they could. But what would they have made of ChatGPT? Ancient education drew on information about the past to help [...]

As Vladimir Putin's war grinds on, how does one make the case for peace? Around ad 100, the ancient Greek orator Dio Chrysostom ('golden-mouthed'), persuaded the citizens of Nicomedia in [...]

Christmas is a time of feasting. So too was the Roman festival of Saturnalia, held in honour of the god Saturn, which took place between 17 and 23 December, when [...]

Gary Lineker has unfolded his thoughts on the World Cup in Qatar (Romans called them Catharrei). 'It's a delicate balance between 'sports-washing' and trying to make change,' he intoned. Actually, [...]

The charity Classics for All staged its annual moot in the Supreme Court on the question of Alexander the Great: hero or war criminal? (Search for 'Classics for All Moot [...]