Every so often whilst meandering through the
various articles and comments in the MSM surrounding the Independence
Referendum, I find something so negative, so insulting and so wrong that it
makes me despair for the supposed wit of the author or commentator.
One such column came across my radar this morning.
Dr Peter Jones, the renowned classicist, writes a column in The Spectator
called 'Ancient & Modern'. His latest is a doozy, which, I'll return to,
after I've given my by now obligatory speel about the classics and what they
mean to me.
I love 'em, I studied under the tutelage of a trio
of great academics at Glasgow University. Notably Chair of Greek, the somewhat
dry and intellectually intimidating Professor Douglas MacDowall, the beautiful
Elizabeth Moignard and the always dishevelled, mischievous scamp that was
Ronald Knox. They were people who took what the bean counters at the University
regarded as a dry, dead subject of little relevance to contemporary Scotland
and turned it into a passionate examination of the culture and philosophy of
the earliest recorded civilisations, which has wholly resonated with society at
every turn, down the ages. Through the combined expertise of the above, I
encountered Greek literature, history, philosophy and art for the very first
time. In many ways, I still see elements of Greek comedy, Athenian oratory and
law in the way that I view the world today.
My classicists were a rare breed of academic,
they'd return after every summer break with odd tan lines and tales of
examining the latest dig in Truva, stories of deciphering another parchment
that reveals long forgotten codes of Greek law or photographs of the most
intricate beautiful pottery kept in darkened Roman vaults. They were some of
the most memorable people I've ever met. Prof MacDowall, managed a delicious
piece of revenge on the University, who all too hastily abandoned the Chair of
Greek when he retired. He left £2.4 million from his estate to the University
to reinstall the Chair. A position he held for 30 years until his retirement in
2001. He had been the thirteenth Chair of Greek since it was first introduced
in 1704 (note that's prior to the Act of Union). I can't think of a better form
of ironic retribution against those University administrators who succumbed to
fiscal hubris, than to force them to reopen the chair whilst they slavishly
pursued his largesse.
I've always enjoyed Peter Jones articles whenever
I chance across them. He'll take a contemporary piece of news, crowbar in a
couple of precedents from the Greeks or Romans, et voila there's this month’s
column done, as he counts down the days until he's off on his next well paid,
retirement pot filling, luxury liner cruise, enlightening the sunburned obese
on the Trial of Socrates and how it like compares to, like, the Trial of
Michael Jackson...
His latest dispatch from south of the border,
however, is simply a rather ill thought out ad hominem attack on the Tartan
Overlord, based on the fact that the feller relishes knowing his way around the
outside of a pie,and has caught the cosy world of the likes of Jones in a trap
which has only one conclusion.
Here's what Jones says:
In
Aesop’s fable, mother frog threatened to explode by puffing herself up to a
size big enough to take on the ox that had accidentally trodden on one of her
young. It’s all so Alec Salmond, puffing himself up to save tiny but heroic
Scotland (5 million) and its plucky welfare dependents from being crushed by
its tyrannical neighbour (52 million).
In
a Politeia pamphlet, Lord Fraser has proposed that it would be better for
Scotland to become something like a Roman ‘client kingdom’. Such kingdoms were
monarchies or their equivalent, on the edge of the Roman Empire, serving mutual
interests. Rome would protect the monarch’s position against local rivals, and
the monarch provide manpower, resources and local knowledge if problems in
those difficult, distant outposts arose. But Lord Fraser rightly acknowledges
that Rome’s army ultimately held the whip hand over any client kingdom that
stepped out of line. So the relationship would not be equal. Mr Salmond would
self-inflate and ‘demand’ nothing less.
Mr
Salmond, in fact, looks more and more like a wannabe leader of those useless
Caledonian tribes that Romans decided were not worth the effort of flattening,
largely because they had nothing Rome wanted. Hence the various northern walls
Rome experimented with, to keep them out of their hair. Every time legionary
numbers fell, the tribes would attack, only to scurry back to their bogs and
dens when the legions returned, having achieved nothing. It never occurred to
any of them that since the Romans had no interest in Scotland, it might have
been worth seeing what advantages an agreement with them might offer.
It
was all bluster — just like the slippery Salmond, heroically ‘liberating’ his
country while threatening an ‘independence’ referendum he knows he will lose.
So to avoid having to call it, he is simply testing what further concessions he
can wring out of Westminster, while exploiting his free-at-last fantasy as an
excuse to centralise as much power as he can into his own hands in ‘readiness’
for ‘liberation’, cheered on by Scots hallucinating about free bags of gold.
Puff,
puff, puff — quick! Stand back! POP!
When I'd finished reading the article, I was
saddened at the absurd and insulting length which Jones goes to make a point in
defending Mother England as an Empire, whilst portraying the nation of Scotland
as a bunch of hairy arsed bog dwellers and our elected First Minister as an
overinflated frog. It's as if the growth of the democratic right to self-determination
has passed him by and is only really for proper people, not those subsidy
junkies to the North...
The article is ridden with inaccuracies, fantasy
conjecture and just a touch of the posturing and self-deceiving boaster that
defines Miles Gloriosus, the Swaggering Soldier, famed in Greek and Roman drama
and still evident in every comedic drama to this day.
The pomposity of the article reminded me of the
illustration below that demonstrates the reach and limitations of the Roman
Empire. The map below was created by those jolly folk at RCAHMS. It's somewhat
telling that the Romans almost managed to encircle the Highlands, but progress
was halted by the ferocity of defence from those 'useless Caledonian tribes
that Romans decided were not worth the effort of flattening, largely because they
had nothing Rome wanted' and of course our geography. The Romans were here for
the best part of 150 years, their footprints are everywhere south and east of
the line of camps and the walls which they would hide behind when the natives
got a little too restless. It's somewhat telling that Jones writes this piece,
safe behind Hadrian's Wall.
As to his assertion that Salmond is nothing more
than a mother frog inflating his slippery self to emulate a bloated unthinking
neighbour, If I recall correctly, the moral of Aesop's fable was the rather
defeatist ideal that, 'impossible things we cannot hope to attain and it is of
no use to try.' This would be perfectly valid were Salmond and the Independence
voters in Scotland trying to emulate an engorged England, we're not. An
Independent Scotland will emulate other smaller successful nations around the
world and have no concerns about a once mighty Empire living of the faded
memories of deeds past.
The title of this blogpost comes from the lines
attributed to Calgacus, chief of the Caledonian warriors who fought the Romans
at the battle of Mons Graupius via the imaginings of Tacitus, the son in law of
Agricola. As always history is interpreted by the winners to their own end,
there is however one section that I think resonates with contemporary Scotland
which to this day defies the mindset of Jones and his ilk and their British
Nationalist mindset.
"But
there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet
more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by
obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal
plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are
rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west
has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness
poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of
empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."
Posts
