They make a desert and call it peace.

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."