Socrates
The many Jesus-like figures of the ancient world
Early Christianity positively welcomed comparisons between Jesus and Socrates, Asclepius, Emperor Vespasian and Apollonius of Tyana, according to Catherine Nixey
All work and no play is dulling our senses
Ancient Greek philosophers reckoned that life was all about free time, but 16th-century puritanism dealt a blow to the old festive culture from which we’ve never fully recovered
Can the ancient Greeks really offer us ‘life lessons’ today?
Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky
Joyously liberating: Tony! [The Tony Blair Rock Opera] reviewed
Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…
The Socratic approach to Covid
Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions,…
Let’s choose our politicians by random selection
Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…
What did the ancient Greeks believe?
It is a curious fact that the modern Hebrew for ‘atheist’, Tim Whitmarsh notes in passing, is apikoros. The word…
Ancient Greeks and modern entrepreneurs
There is much talk today of the enthusiasm with which young entrepreneurs are setting up businesses. One reason why this…
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…
Sebastian Faulks returns to the psychiatrist’s chair in Where My Heart Used to Beat
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
John Gray’s great tour-guide of ideas: from the Garden of Eden to secret rendition
You can’t accuse John Gray of dodging the big questions, or indeed the big answers. His new book The Soul…
Old age is not for sissies
The secret of eternal youth, according to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, is arrested development, and the penny dropped last week. The…
Socrates, Aristophanes and Charlie Hebdo
What would the ancients have made of Charlie Hebdo? The First Amendment tolerates the expression of opinions, however offensive, but…
Nicky Morgan vs Socrates
After the Philae space-lab’s triumph, one can see why Education Secretary Nicky Morgan should have hymned the ‘Stem’ subjects (science, technology, engineering…
Horace still understands happiness better than the LSE
So here comes another book about how to be happy, written by Professor Dolan, an ‘internationally renowned expert’ at the…
Socrates on Maria Miller
Our former culture secretary, Maria Miller, is still apparently baffled at the fuss created by her fighting to the last…
The Prince of medicine, by Susan P. Mattern - review
In the first draft of the screenplay for the film Gladiator, the character to be played by Russell Crowe (‘father…
Ancient and modern: Socrates on TV election debates
Lord Hennessy has been arguing that, as a result of TV debates between party leaders prior to elections, ‘the plausible…
