I have a strange relationship with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I am no longer a Stoic and whenever I pick it up, I get the impression that, were there to be some odd kink in the space-time continuum, and I met the Emperor, I would not have particularly liked him. There is a sort of gloomy priggishness to the writing which I find faintly off-putting. Notwithstanding that, it is never far from my side and it is, almost certainly, the book I have read most often. I have not yet read it this year, but I am fairly sure I will at some point. It is one of those books which, although short, always seems to have something to say.
As such, it should be no surprise that bits of it frequently float through my mind, and not just the passages the internet has invented. One, in particular, makes regular appearances. “Look back to the time of Vespasian, everything the same” Marcus says, before outlining a series of quotidian activities – marrying, having children, falling ill etc.- which were still occurring in his day, one hundred or so years later. “Pass on again to the time of Trajan. Again, everything the same.” However many emperors they had got through, Romans were still doing the things they had always done.
What Marcus could not obviously have known is that 1,850 years after his death, his list still holds up. With the technical exception of “longing for consulships”, people are still doing all the things he saw his contemporaries do, and all the things he knew their ancestors did.
As we have established, Marcus has a slightly jaundiced view of humanity and it is no surprise that many of the things he saw in his fellows were negative – fighting, flattering, suspecting, plotting. Even “praying for the death of others”.
A bit extreme. And not really our modern way. But only because we do not really pray anymore, and even if we did, Christianity makes praying for someone’s death a bit of a no-no. But, do we still hope for others’ downfall? Of course we do. Do we still rejoice when it happens? Guilty again.
The revelations in the Epstein files have led to Prince Andrew transitioning to Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and leaving his palatial Windsor lodgings for a Norfolk farmhouse. Lord Mandelson has lost his position as Ambassador to the United States, is (at the time of writing) about to undergo a similar nominative shift and may, in the fullness of time, lose his liberty.
And it is hard not to sense a certain satisfaction in certain quarters over these facts, every twist and turn being reported breathlessly as the scriptwriters of the national soap opera excel themselves. Andrew had a reputation for arrogance, being one of the few people believed to have said, “Don’t you know who I am?” and meant it. Mandelson had numerous enemies across the aisle. Having sent many to the political hospital, their colleagues are rejoicing that he has been sent to the political morgue. All is fair in love and war.
Similar things could probably have been said by the old women who took their knitting to the Place de la Concorde to see Mme Guillotine go about her bloody business. Those on the cusp of becoming dramatically shorter were arrogant. They had not earned their privileges. They had hurt the poor folk. They had it coming. All in all, a good day’s work.
Justice must be done and justice must be seen to be done. In a world in which it has become commonplace to assume that the rich and powerful can get away with it, Andrew and Mandelson are, perhaps, a welcome sign that the system still works, that justice really is blind. But neither has had formal justice. Neither has, at the time of writing, been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. This may, of course, change.
Epstein committed terrible crimes. It is right that he was punished. Andrew and Mandelson may have committed crimes. If so, it is right that they be punished. But the correct operating of the justice system should be a source of satisfaction, not glee or rejoicing or schadenfreude. For while what happened to the girls was a horror, the story of Andrew and Mandelson is a tragedy.
One, born to the highest privilege the country offers, was, briefly, a military hero. He will spend his declining years as a pariah. The other, even his opponents would admit, a political maestro, well, who knows where he will end up? Both might have had more to give, neither will ever get to give it. A waste. And a waste of their own making. Just as the death of King Pentheus at the end of The Bacchae is a waste of his own making – his arrogance leading him not to recognise Dionysus. But Euripides did not expect his audience to be gleeful when the proud mortal is torn limb from limb. There would be no dancing in the aisles. No glee at his downfall, just pity that he had brought it on himself. And shock when his mother appears carrying his head – severed by her and her friends in their divinely-inspired madness.
It is easier to be objective in a Greek tragedy. We have no stake in the outcome, save a desire to be entertained. It is a single, separate event, no connections to our everyday lives. We have no filters through which we view it, we do not relate it to our other views and concerns. Not so the news. We relate it to our existing worldview, to the tribes we claim membership of, to the ideas we have had all along. In a paradoxical way, we treat the characters of drama as people and people as the characters in our drama, our out-group offering no end of villains to boo and hiss as they get their come-uppance.
But they are every bit as real as we are. Their suffering every bit as real as ours would be, their tragedies every bit as tragic as ours would be.
During Marcus’ reign, a rumour swept through the Empire that he had died. Seeing his chance, an ambitious general raised his standard, making a bid for the purple. For a while, everything seemed fine, his troops buoyed by the thought of the booty they would win for installing the emperor. But only for a while. For news arrived that the earlier story had been false. Marcus was hale and hearty. Fearful of his reaction, the rebel’s soldiers turned on him, hoping that executing the pretender might persuade the emperor to overlook their insurrection.
When the whole, sorry saga finally reached him, Marcus wept, saying “I wanted to forgive him”. Perhaps the gloomy old Stoic had a point.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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Sick to death of all things Epstein and now the whole thing has become a convenient distraction from things that do affect normal people. As for Andrew and Peter, well what did anyone expect – the British love a pile on when it’s someone that only recently was a hero (usually undeserved as a hero or heroine, just like these two dodgy characters).
All orchestrated by MSM or at least the flames fanned by them.
Am I alone in thinking this is all just hypocrisy? I haven’t read the detail of Epstein Island (not one of my priorities) but the gist of it all was that females, some as young as seventeen, God forbid, were the sexual partners of some very rich men. They were not there without their own consent, apparently. They were not drugged. They went into activities knowing what they were doing with the expectation of being well remunerated for their time. This has happened since time immemorial and will continue to happen because men like young females and rich ones have the means to buy their favours by the hour, by the day or whatever. And some females in turn like rich men – wealth is the biggest source of attraction. We see it in the marriage market as well.
Contrast that with the industrial rape industry run mostly by gangs of Muslim men who use drugs and alcohol to render their victims helpless. And what has happened there? Govt has avoided a national enquiry with large scale prosecutions and jail and deportations to follow. Politically inconvenient. It has been left to a private individual (Rupert Lowe) to conduct his own enquiry, funded by public donations. It is currently hearing testimony from the victims – or some of them. The scale is too vast for a private enquiry to cover it all. Why not headlines day after day on this scandal, these crimes, this stain on our honour?
I have no time for the likes of Mandelson, Price Andrew or Epstein. Corrupt people, no doubt, and immoral. But one person’s immorality is another’s way of living. It ain’t necessarily illegal. Unlike rape and trafficking. And don’t start on about underage age girls (seventeen year olds) in the Epstein case. The legal age of consent has always varied across countries and across time. In the UK it is currently sixteen years, but girls are maturing much earlier these days and many (most?) lose their virginity before this. The legal age is higher in the US but does that make it any more sensible?
The furore over Epstein is a convenient distraction for the mainstream media. They can hold up their hands in horror at this and gloss over the real atrocities that have and are continuing to occur. THAT is the the real problem – a corrupt and biased media (led by the BBC) supporting a corrupt Establishment – central and local government, judiciary, police and academics – that determines the narrative in the newsprint, on our screens and in our airwaves.
Very well expressed. I couldn’t care less what Epstein did or didn’t do, sexually, on foreign soil years ago. It has absolutely no relevance to those of us (the majority) who were not members of the elite club – it is however a useful distraction and an opportunity for the chattering classes to rail against ‘prostitution’ whilst simultaneously still sneering at the white working class female trash abused in the UK by a certain demographic.