Ancient greece
How ancient Athens handled immigrants
Among all the arguments about how many non-EU immigrants we should let in, campaigners are proposing a scheme for private…
Egypt: where gods are born and go to die
Tom Holland on Egypt, where the deities were born and history itself began
Jeremy Corbyn and Pericles: spot the difference
Whatever else one can say about Jeremy Corbyn, one thing is clear: he is a leader who does not believe…
Adventures on the isle that seduced Odysseus
Gozo — Malta’s tiny island neighbour — was once rather a crucial spot in the Mediterranean. The Knights of Malta…
Socrates and Galen on the Great British Bake Off
As the national girth expands by the second, Auntie, never backward about lecturing us on the topic, continues to glory…
The Globe's Oresteia lets Aeschylus speak - the Almeida's muzzles him
To examine an ancient text requires an understanding of the ancient imagination. The Oresteia is set in a primitive world…
Finally James Delingpole gets why women are so angry
Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa…
Does Labour need a new name? Let’s ask Plato
In order to make a sensible choice of new leader, the Labour party is trying to work out what its…
Harry’s Homer — a humorous history
It was a certain unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Harry Mount confesses — named only as ‘S’ in his dedication — who came…
Alexis Tsipras is just doing what an ancient Athenian would
The EU finds it difficult to understand what drives the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Quite simply, he is a…
How Solon would have solved the Greek crisis
The combination of terror and outrage with which Brussels has greeted Greek Prime Minister Tsipras’s referendum tells us everything we…
Why Hesiod would have gone for Grexit
Why do Greeks want to keep the euro, or remain in the European Union? The combative, creative, competitive, mercantile classical…
What Aristotle would have made of Cambridge’s Lego-sponsored professor
So Cambridge University has accepted £4 million from the makers of Lego (snort) to fund a Lego chair (Argos sells…
Pliny the Younger on Fifa
In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a…
The northern powerhouses of ancient Turkey
Government claims that it will ‘free’ northern cities to turn themselves into ‘powerhouses’. Since most of them are held by…
Athenians didn’t need coalition negotiations. We should learn from them
Whatever the result of the election, it has become clearer by the day that our ‘democracy’ is run by politicians…
The ‘start-up cities’ of Ancient Greece
Honduras wants to establish start-up cities to experiment with alternative economic, regulatory, and legal systems. Could this concept help stop…
Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon
Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon’s claim that Ed Miliband, having practised on his brother, would also stab his…
How to vote like Hercules
To judge from elections, the purpose of politics is to win power by promising to make people better off. Plato,…
Reimaging the lost masterpieces of antiquity
Martin Gayford visits two new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. Reimagining what’s lost is as much of an inspiration as what remains
The Green party isn’t nearly tough enough on Ancient Greece
The Green party’s manifesto appears to make saving the planet only a small element in its otherwise painfully unoriginal agenda.…
Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers
Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall…
Cicero’s advice for Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw
In responding as they did to the Daily Telegraph ‘sting’, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind may well have done…
Today’s TV debates are pointless – here’s the real thing
Ancients would have been astonished that parties never debate against each other in open, public forum except on the telly…
Syriza could have learned from Aristophanes. Instead it's headed for Greek tragedy
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed her desire for Greece to remain part of the European ‘story’. Since Greeks…
