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Spectator
25-06-2025
- General
- Spectator
The hidden value of notes
'You asshole,' was my friend's cheery greeting when we met in Ludlow. I'd mucked up the time. Reconciled, we walked to his place and on the door was a note he'd left me, scrawled on a card with an image of him mimicking Philip Larkin proudly sitting on a border stone: 'Just a note that you are an asshole. Call.' Stuart, a collector of manuscripts, showed me a recent acquisition, a note by Sir Edward Elgar, graced with a self-portrait featuring, my friend is sure, an immodestly large penis. I think it's his coat tail. We debated the iconography while listening to 'Nimrod'. Notes are often discarded – who hasn't inherited, in the bottom of a trolley, a forlorn shopping list? But they have a long history. Their ephemerality was generally guaranteed on ancient wax tablets, scraped down for reuse. A fair few survive, however, bearing the abandoned sums or grammar of some bored Etruscan child from as long ago as the 7th century bc. An Etch a Sketch is more fun, perhaps, with its erasable text. Ironically, Keats's epitaph, 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water', is inscribed in obdurate stone in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Notes that endure often do so when they are associated with something else of value. Exeter College, Oxford, has a fine scribal manuscript of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. Bonus: its owner, Petrarch, has carefully composed his notes in the margins. There is a strong academic interest in 'scholia' – not just annotations in important early texts but layered commentaries on the annotations themselves. If everything has been plumbed in the canonic texts, look to the edges. The hurried informality and often surreptitious nature of a note written on the hoof can tell us much about a particular historical moment. During the first world war it was forbidden to record cabinet discussions. Lewis Harcourt did it all the same, jotting down, under the table, character sketches of Winston Churchill, among others. Notes are not always penned. Printed notices are a form never meant to endure beyond the immediate purpose of laying down some edict or announcing the start or end of a life, but usually flogging something. The Bodleian has the earliest example of print advertising in English. Dating from 1477, Caxton's jobbing piece was intended to gee up enthusiasm for a less than thrilling priest's manual. It promises that the buyer will have a copy 'good chepe'. It's worth a few bob. The note can have a degree of scholarly credibility. The journal Notes and Queries, established in 1849 and dedicated to 'readers and writers, collectors and librarians', is still going strong. Entirely devoid of theoretical nonsense, it invites short observations on, and responses to, points of influence and other marvellously arcane literary niceties. These days we still occasionally scribble stuff down on trusty paper – tomatoes, loo roll, milk, 1 btl Tia Maria, 8 btls wine – but we commit most of our scraps to the digital realm. I am writing this note for Notes On…on the Notes app on my tablet while glancing at my phone for a note from my daughter. Snapchat is the only way I can reach her and she's made sure her laconic observations vanish soon after I have read them. Etruscan kids, modern kids. Plus ça change.
Otago Daily Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Smoke rising for the American empire
Donald Trump and Nero have, worryingly, much in common, William J Dominik writes. Donald Trump is not just following in Nero's footsteps — he is resurrecting some of the dynamics that damaged the stability and prosperity of the Roman empire. Like Nero, the possibly demented emperor chronicled by the biographer Suetonius and the historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius, Trump uses spectacle, manipulation and lies as tools of power. What is more chilling is that the lessons of ancient Rome are playing out in real time in the United States today. Suetonius, in The Twelve Caesars, describes Nero as a ruler obsessed with public admiration. He appeared in the guise of a singer, an actor, a dancer and a charioteer — as if his role as emperor was nothing more than a performance. Trump's rallies, filled with rhetorical flourishes, chants and self-congratulation, mirror this obsession with the stage. The difference? While Nero performed on the Roman stage, Trump now commands the media stage 24/7 by cultivating a cult of personality that thrives on spectacle. Tacitus, in his Annals, paints a far darker, more sinister portrait. He portrays Nero as a master of manipulation and fear to keep both the Senate and the people in line. When the Great Fire of 64CE ravaged Rome, Nero's response was typical: self-preservation over leadership. While Dio Cassius claims in his Roman History that Nero sang and fiddled with his lyre while Rome burned, the reality is that he focused on consolidating his power even as the city smouldered. In the midst of a crisis, he shifted blame to scapegoats (namely, the Christians) allowing him to maintain control while stoking division. Fast forward to Trump. When the Covid-19 pandemic ravaged the nation during his first term, Trump followed Nero's script. He downplayed the threat, attacked the very experts tasked with saving lives and diverted attention away from his administration's failings by fuelling conspiracy theories and attacking "enemies of the people". When the Capitol was stormed on January 6, he performed other familiar acts from the Neronian play script: shifting blame, stirring up violence and offering no real leadership. Like Nero, Trump played to his base by offering it a version of reality that suited his narrative even as the Capitol teetered on the edge of chaos. Dio Cassius critiques Nero for his cruelty and his ability to manipulate the masses. He writes that Nero, though once beloved for his populist rhetoric, grew increasingly tyrannical and distrustful of the Senate as his rule progressed, thereby gradually alienating all who were of any worth. Trump, too, has waged war on institutions and attacked the press, the judiciary and anyone in the political establishment who dares to challenge his perspective and agenda. His war on institutions and the media mirrors Nero's attacks on those who disagreed with him. In both the Roman and American contexts, Nero and Trump, respectively, have viewed the control of information as the key to maintaining effective control and power. Both Nero and Trump are known for employing loyalists who carry out their whims without question. Nero's advisers were hand-picked for their ability to flatter, not challenge. Dio Cassius recounts that those senators who listened attentively to Nero and loudly cheered him were commended and honoured; the rest were denigrated and punished. Trump, too, surrounds himself with sycophants who serve his interests, even when it means sacrificing integrity or competence and seeks retribution against those who speak out against him. The parallels are uncanny: a leader who demands unwavering loyalty, punishes dissent and puts personal power above the good of the state. Perhaps the most striking similarity comes from Nero's final days. Suetonius famously records that as Rome burned around Nero, he declared, "What an artist dies in me!" His sense of grandeur and self-worth was such that, even in his destruction, he saw himself as a misunderstood genius. Trump, too, sees himself as both martyr and saviour. He is not just a politician: he is the sole voice of the "forgotten" people, misunderstood and persecuted. His defiance against legal accountability, his false claims of a stolen election and his relentless pursuit of revenge all point to a narcissistic sense of self-importance — just like Nero's. The most terrifying lesson from Rome is that the republic does not fall in one dramatic act. It dies slowly, from within, as the pillars of societal and institutional norms are eroded by a leader who sees them as obstacles to personal glory. Nero's reign left a legacy of division, cruelty and distrust. The United States risks the same fate under Trump. He does not just challenge the norms of democracy — he subverts them in an attempt to remake them entirely by rewriting reality to fit his vision. Rome survived Nero, but it did so at a cost. The empire was never the same after his reign. We are at a crossroads now, with Trump's rise threatening the same kind of moral and political decay. America has a choice: It can wake up to the lessons of Rome or continue down the path of political, social and economic decline. The flames are here — and they are being fed by the very leader who claims to "drain the swamp". The pillars of the American republic are still intact despite the assault on the Capitol, but the foundation is eroding. America may not yet be the Rome of 64CE, but with the smoke on the horizon looking strikingly similar, the fiddling has already begun. ■William J Dominik is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Otago.
