public services, they should be prepared to accept
the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous
fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker: whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly
condemned.’
This was no straightforward party political issue.
Looking back at the full text of Powell’s speech, you will find it springs a number of surprises. Not least, Powell never
used the phrase ‘rivers of blood’. He actually quoted a line from the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid : ‘I see the river Tiber foaming with much blood’ (‘ Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno ’, line 86). These are the words of the prophetic Sibyl, uttered to Aeneas, the refugee from Troy and ancestor of the Romans,
on his way to re-establish his ancestral line on Italian soil.
Uncharacteristically, Powell seems to have overlooked the way the quotation might contradict his own arguments. True, the
Sibyl was referring to the bloodshed that would result from Aeneas’ attempt to found his new city in Latin territory, integrating
his own line into that of the native population. But that bloodshed would lead to a strong and proudly mixed community of
Trojans and Latins. And Aeneas’ Rome in due course would become the most successful multicultural society of the ancient world
– granting full citizenship to the inhabitants of its imperial territories, and eventually seeing Spaniards, Africans and
others on the Roman imperial throne.
Sikh turbans or not, Powell should have thought a bit harder about the implications of his clever classical allusion.
Comments
An analogy from a different epoch offers other morals: When the king of Hungary was doing badly in the then war on terror
(aka crusade against the Ottomans) in 1463, he tried to divert attention by accusing his neighbour the prince of Wallachia
of cruelty. The famous bit is that this guy (known to posterity as Vlad the Impaler) impaled his victims on stakes; a lesser
known piece of spin against him was that when Italian ambassadors came to see him they took off their hats but not their turbans
– yes, Italians wore turbans back then – and that Vlad, angered at this discourtesy, allegedly nailed them down to their wearers’
heads. Back then, intolerant response to strange customs was something shameful to accuse your rival of doing, not something
to be boasting about to the press.
SW FOSKA
Where is your spleen?
13 October 2006
This week I started my lectures on Ancient History to first year students. Following a tradition invented by one of my colleagues
20 years ago, I kicked off the very first lecture by handing round a skeletal map of the Mediterranean – and asked them to
mark several key places (including Athens, Sparta, Troy, Crete, Rome and Pompeii). The results are collected in for scrutiny,
but entirely anonymously. No names are required.
The idea is to demonstrate to the freshers that they really do need to get an atlas out before they start sounding off about
the Peloponnesian War, or whatever. The accuracy this year was no better or worse than usual. Most of my 100 or so clever
first years could place Rome and Pompeii, but Sparta wandered dangerously (from time to time popping up in modern Turkey)
while Alexandria was a mystery to many, and one at least appeared not to know that Crete was an island. Are they pulling my
leg? I wondered ...
Over the decades this little exercise has given the new students a wonderful feeling of shared ignorance. The dons, on the
other hand, have enjoyed shaking their heads at the very idea that a student with straight (classical) As at A level still
doesn’t know where Sparta is.
We don’t of course blame the students – but the government or the National Curriculum. Our students are, we believe, the crème de la crème . The trouble is that they have been let down
the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous
fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker: whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly
condemned.’
This was no straightforward party political issue.
Looking back at the full text of Powell’s speech, you will find it springs a number of surprises. Not least, Powell never
used the phrase ‘rivers of blood’. He actually quoted a line from the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid : ‘I see the river Tiber foaming with much blood’ (‘ Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno ’, line 86). These are the words of the prophetic Sibyl, uttered to Aeneas, the refugee from Troy and ancestor of the Romans,
on his way to re-establish his ancestral line on Italian soil.
Uncharacteristically, Powell seems to have overlooked the way the quotation might contradict his own arguments. True, the
Sibyl was referring to the bloodshed that would result from Aeneas’ attempt to found his new city in Latin territory, integrating
his own line into that of the native population. But that bloodshed would lead to a strong and proudly mixed community of
Trojans and Latins. And Aeneas’ Rome in due course would become the most successful multicultural society of the ancient world
– granting full citizenship to the inhabitants of its imperial territories, and eventually seeing Spaniards, Africans and
others on the Roman imperial throne.
Sikh turbans or not, Powell should have thought a bit harder about the implications of his clever classical allusion.
Comments
An analogy from a different epoch offers other morals: When the king of Hungary was doing badly in the then war on terror
(aka crusade against the Ottomans) in 1463, he tried to divert attention by accusing his neighbour the prince of Wallachia
of cruelty. The famous bit is that this guy (known to posterity as Vlad the Impaler) impaled his victims on stakes; a lesser
known piece of spin against him was that when Italian ambassadors came to see him they took off their hats but not their turbans
– yes, Italians wore turbans back then – and that Vlad, angered at this discourtesy, allegedly nailed them down to their wearers’
heads. Back then, intolerant response to strange customs was something shameful to accuse your rival of doing, not something
to be boasting about to the press.
SW FOSKA
Where is your spleen?
13 October 2006
This week I started my lectures on Ancient History to first year students. Following a tradition invented by one of my colleagues
20 years ago, I kicked off the very first lecture by handing round a skeletal map of the Mediterranean – and asked them to
mark several key places (including Athens, Sparta, Troy, Crete, Rome and Pompeii). The results are collected in for scrutiny,
but entirely anonymously. No names are required.
The idea is to demonstrate to the freshers that they really do need to get an atlas out before they start sounding off about
the Peloponnesian War, or whatever. The accuracy this year was no better or worse than usual. Most of my 100 or so clever
first years could place Rome and Pompeii, but Sparta wandered dangerously (from time to time popping up in modern Turkey)
while Alexandria was a mystery to many, and one at least appeared not to know that Crete was an island. Are they pulling my
leg? I wondered ...
Over the decades this little exercise has given the new students a wonderful feeling of shared ignorance. The dons, on the
other hand, have enjoyed shaking their heads at the very idea that a student with straight (classical) As at A level still
doesn’t know where Sparta is.
We don’t of course blame the students – but the government or the National Curriculum. Our students are, we believe, the crème de la crème . The trouble is that they have been let down
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