Latest news with #Juvenal
Arab News
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: ‘State of Ridicule'
Author: Dan Sperrin Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime's perception of itself. Although satire has always been a primary literature of state affairs, and although it has always been used to intervene in ongoing discussions about political theory and practice, there has been no attempt to examine this fascinating and unusual literature across the full chronological horizon. In 'State of Ridicule,' Dan Sperrin provides the first ever longue durée history of political satire in British literature. He traces satire's many extended and discontinuous trajectories through time while also chronicling some of the most inflamed and challenging political contexts within which it has been written. Sperrin begins by describing the Roman foundations and substructures of British satire, paying particularly close attention to the core Roman canon: Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.
Spectator
25-06-2025
- General
- Spectator
The cunning meanings of quant
The FT headline said: 'Man Group orders quants back to office five days a week.' I didn't know what quants were and all my husband could say was: 'Complete quants', as though it were funny. Of course I kept thinking of Mary Quant, and I suppose her name was French in origin. There was a Hugo le Cuint in 1208 and a Richard le Queynte in Hampshire in 1263. The name would relate to quant or quaint, meaning 'clever' or 'cunning', and derived from Latin cognitus. The varied spelling overlapped with the word Chaucer used for a woman's private parts, which comes from a completely different Latin word. Such is the elasticity of language, where words of distinct meaning can have exactly the same form, that another word quant has been in use for 600 years to mean a sort of punt pole with a flanged end to avoid being caught in the mud of the Norfolk Broads. The same pole-like element called a quant is found in windmills to transmit drive to the upper millstone. This all sounds like something from Call My Bluff, but the funny thing about the pole-like quant is that in Latin, as Thomas Shadwell noted in his translation of Juvenal, contus means a bargepole, as kontos does in Greek. Yet today's etymologists refuse to fall for the casual resemblance. I would like to imagine that, in the context of the FT headline, City workers were to be punted by quant-power down the river every working day. But the City quants are nothing but quantitative analysts, no doubt given to fits of quantitative easing. Quant as an abbreviation of quantitative was first observed among chemical scientists in the 19th century, but was applied to financial analysts only in the late 1970s. The abbreviation has something of the flavour of cit, popular from the 17th century as a name for an inhabitant of a city – 'in an ill sense' as Samuel Johnson put it, 'a pert, low townsman'. But be they never so high, they'll be coming in five days a week.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
A message to the major parties: Embrace reform or end up like the Romans
With both parties having announced their flagship policies, it appears that Australia today is following the path of the late Roman Empire: tired, overextended and ruled by an elite political class more interested in voter appeasement than real reform. The ancient Roman poet Juvenal called it panem et circenses, or 'bread and circuses' – a strategy of appeasing the public with necessities and entertainment to distract them from the real issues and maintain social order while selling future generations up the river. My home state of Victoria now resembles the Roman province of Britannia in its final years— overburdened with debt, mismanaged by its rulers. But the parallels with ancient Rome are not just rhetorical. As Professor Frederik Vervaet of the University of Melbourne explains, 'the fall of the Roman Republic could easily have been avoided if the senatorial aristocracy had supported moderate reformers instead of brutally repressing them'. Vervaet calls it 'reform aversion', the conscious refusal on the part of powerful segments of the senate to embrace undesirable reforms, however pressing the need or justified the cause. 'The aristocracy's reform aversion put the Roman republic on the road to authoritarianism,' he writes in his recent essay How Republics Die. If our politicians think tinkering around the edges instead of engaging in meaningful reform is enough, well – et tu, delulu. 'Roman politics became marked by escalating polarisation and a rise in factionalism, with the ensuing political deadlocks causing interest groups to divide and lose faith in the traditional political process.' We see this occurring today, with voters abandoning major parties in favour of more extreme minor parties.
Sydney Morning Herald
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
A message to the major parties: Embrace reform, or end up like the Romans
With both parties having now announced their flagship policies, it appears that Australia today is following the path of the late Roman Empire: tired, overextended, and ruled by an elite political class more interested in voter appeasement than real reform. The ancient Roman poet Juvenal called it panem et circenses, or 'bread and circuses' – a strategy of appeasing the public with necessities and entertainment to distract them from the real issues and maintain social order while selling future generations up the river. My home state of Victoria now resembles the Roman province of Britannia in its final years— overburdened with debt, mismanaged by its rulers. But the parallels with ancient Rome are not just rhetorical. As Professor Frederik Vervaet of the University of Melbourne explains, 'The fall of the Roman Republic could easily have been avoided if the senatorial aristocracy had supported moderate reformers instead of brutally repressing them.' Vervaet calls it 'reform aversion', the conscious refusal on the part of powerful segments of the senate to embrace undesirable reforms, however pressing the need or justified the cause. 'The aristocracy's reform aversion put the Roman Republic on the road to authoritarianism,' he writes in his recent essay How Republics Die. If our politicians think tinkering around the edges instead of engaging in meaningful reform is enough, well – et tu, delulu. 'Roman politics became marked by escalating polarisation and a rise in factionalism, with the ensuing political deadlocks causing interest groups to divide and lose faith in the traditional political process.' We see this occurring today, with voters abandoning major parties in favour of more extreme minor parties.
The Age
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Age
A message to the major parties: Embrace reform, or end up like the Romans
With both parties having now announced their flagship policies, it appears that Australia today is following the path of the late Roman Empire: tired, overextended, and ruled by an elite political class more interested in voter appeasement than real reform. The ancient Roman poet Juvenal called it panem et circenses, or 'bread and circuses' – a strategy of appeasing the public with necessities and entertainment to distract them from the real issues and maintain social order while selling future generations up the river. My home state of Victoria now resembles the Roman province of Britannia in its final years— overburdened with debt, mismanaged by its rulers. But the parallels with ancient Rome are not just rhetorical. As Professor Frederik Vervaet of the University of Melbourne explains, 'The fall of the Roman Republic could easily have been avoided if the senatorial aristocracy had supported moderate reformers instead of brutally repressing them.' Vervaet calls it 'reform aversion', the conscious refusal on the part of powerful segments of the senate to embrace undesirable reforms, however pressing the need or justified the cause. 'The aristocracy's reform aversion put the Roman Republic on the road to authoritarianism,' he writes in his recent essay How Republics Die. If our politicians think tinkering around the edges instead of engaging in meaningful reform is enough, well – et tu, delulu. 'Roman politics became marked by escalating polarisation and a rise in factionalism, with the ensuing political deadlocks causing interest groups to divide and lose faith in the traditional political process.' We see this occurring today, with voters abandoning major parties in favour of more extreme minor parties.
