FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN
CLASSICAL CORNER
I have a soft spot for Boris. Wearing my classical hat, I must pay tribute to his Etonian prize-winning Greek verses, his sparkling book on the Romans, and his (albeit losing the audience vote) stalwart performance in that great Greece v. Rome debate (on YouTube) against the redoubtable Mary Beard.
Of course, having reached his apogee with the electoral crushing of Corbyn, Boris’ star has dimmed to a nadir. He has been repeatedly flayed in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins (also on YouTube). A typical headline reads ‘More Demagogue than Demi-God’. Mary Beard in her ‘A Don’s Life’ columns likens him to the infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher, who will conclude this survey.
‘Demagogue’ is an anglicised version of the Greek noun ‘Demagogos’ (literally ‘leader of the people’.) Originally neutral in sense, it later acquired a pejorative sense (as did ‘Tyrant’). In American usage, the word also functions as a verb.
A typical dictionary definition (there are many online) is: “A political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.” Wikipedia offers a long list of demagogues throughout history. Choose your own: I imagine Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump would top many collections.
Boris fancies himself a modern Pericles. The latter, being upper-crust, is not usually reckoned amongst these ranks. Such classifications were as much governed by class considerations in Athens as in Britain. Of the three Greeks featured here, Cleon was a leather tanner, Hyperbolus an unilluminating maker of lamps, Cleophon of musical instruments.
I covered these characters respectively in Acta Classica 11 (1968. 211-14), 14 (1971), 151-6, and 17 (1974), 35-47 – available online. For a valuable inventory, see MI Finlay, ‘Athenian Demagogues’, Past and Present 21 (1962), 3-24.
Just as Boris is now the butt of biographers and political commentators, these Athenians were flayed by the stage comic writers of their day. Pericles (as seen) was and is differently treated from the others, but did not get off scot-free, being (e.g.) mocked as ‘the Olympian’ and ‘Squill-Head’ and indirectly attacked through the brutal onslaughts on his blue-stocking consort Aspasia – see various websites for such attacks on Carrie Johnson; she has been likened to Lady Macbeth an
