Whenever someone asks me what my career prospects as a classicist are, I say that our current prime minister is a classicist, and I am usually met with a grimace or huff. Indeed, Boris Johnson is a less than desirable poster boy for classics. He exemplifies every bad stereotype about the field: he is priviliged for being ‘pale, male, and stale’ and a public school alumnus, and entitled and apparently out of touch with current social values. I am reluctant to use him as an example of a good career path for a classicist for these reasons, but also because he is, frankly, a bad classicist.
Johnson’s educators despaired of his work ethic. One of his teachers at Eton said of him in a school report that ‘Boris has something of a tendency to assume that success and honours will drop into his lap: not so, he must work for them.’ His tutors at Oxford thought similarly of him: Oswyn Murray called him ‘probably the worst scholar Eton ever sent us—a buffoon and an idler.’ Sir Antony Kenny said that ‘while Boris had the necessary intelligence, he lacked the appropriate diligence to achieve the first-class degree that he clearly felt was his due.’
Johnson is sloppy not only with his work ethic but with his memory. A clip recently resurfaced on the internet of Johnson reciting the Iliad in ancient Greek on the Australian television show Big Ideas. Twitter was divided between people lauding Johnson for his ‘intellectualism’ and people pointing out that this was a display of rote learning, and no more impressive than a recitation of something like a yellow pages directory or the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. Indeed, the Homeric epics were originally intended for recitation and composed in such a way to make this easy. Of course, ancient Greek bards would’ve been reciting in their native language, so some respect is due to Johnson. However, the debate as to whether or not reciting ancient Greek is impressive is irrelevant in the face of the fact that he recited it wrongly. He made several mistakes, even missing out large chunks. As well, he has been criticised for his poor poetic meter.
Johnson’s pseudo-intellectualism is especially clear in his Greece vs Rome debate with Mary Beard (which is available on Youtube and highly recommended by me). His argument for the superiority of ancient Greece over ancient Rome largely rests on the Athenian invention of democracy. It is trite and over-glorifying. Beard responds that while we have the Athenians to thank for the concept of democracy, we must be critical of its elitism, as only free male citizens were allowed to vote. Anyone who has learned even the smallest amount about ancient Athenian democracy knows that it was not democracy as we know and value it today. I’m sure Johnson is aware of this himself, but chose to make a simple argument he could easily emotionalise. Beard also points out that sixth century BCE Athens is a limited representation of ancient Greece, both geographically and temporally. Johnson does offer some points other than democracy, but it cannot be said that every error is a conscious choice. He gives ‘apocolocyntosis’ (rendered in Greek as ἀποκολοκύντωσις), ‘turning into a pumpkin’, as an example of ancient Greek having a richer vocabulary than Latin. This is not, in fact, an ancient Greek word, but was invented by the Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca for the title of a play. This information is easily found in a quick Google search of the word, so it is careless of Johnson to have forgotten this.
The Greece vs Rome debate exemplifies Johnson’s tendency to change his opinion as it suits him. When discussing the superiority of Greek literature, he concedes that Virgil is ‘probably the greatest verbal craftsman the world has ever produced’, but Homer sells more books today. He also claims that there couldn’t be a Hollywood adaptation of the Aeneid as there was of the Iliad, because Aeneas is not a romantic hero. He (rather wittily) says that ‘Italiam non sponte sequor’ (I do not seek Italy of my own accord) is ‘the feeblest breakup line anyone ever used…it’s not you, babe, I’ve just got this historic compulsion to go and found Rome’. However, Beard calls attention to Johnson’s book The Dream of Rome, where he claims that Book Four of the Aeneid, whence this quote came, is ‘the best book of the best poem of the best poet’. Johnson is further inconsistent on the topic of governance, criticising the Roman Emperor Augustus as ‘a chill and subtle tyrant’. Six years earlier, he had told BBC Radio 4 that Augustus was ‘the greatest politician the world has ever seen’. I too myself am guilty of classical inconsistency for personal gain: in the cold winter months of lockdown I tried to get out of going on walks by telling my parents that Plato (whom I disagree with on the vast majority of counts) believed that taking care of the body hinders the philosopher’s search for wisdom. However, the crucial difference between me and Boris Johnson (one of many, I hope) is that I am not doing this to bolster my public reputation in order to manipulate people into voting me into positions of national power.
As well as being inconsistent with his classical references, Johnson also makes them when they are irrelevant and inappropriate. Near the beginning of this year, he blamed COVID-19 on Chinese medical practice involving animal parts, saying ‘like the original plague which struck the Greeks, I seem to remember, in Book One of the Iliad, it is a zoonotic disease’. It shouldn’t even need to be pointed out that citing a fictional event of two and a half thousand years ago as if it were scientific fact is greatly irresponsible. Even if it had genuinely transpired that the god Apollo had inflicted illness upon the Greek fighters in the Trojan War, Apollo was known as a patron of foreigners and refugees, so would probably not approve of this event being used to further a xenophobic narrative.
Johnson’s classical references are as substanceless as the rest of his blustering speech, but there is no denying that they serve him. Stephen Fry notes in his brilliant article for the journal Antigone that it used to be a prevalent attitude that ‘an idea quoted in Latin had more value and authority than one spoken in English or any other living language’. We have started to move away from this in a postcolonial Britain, but clearly, vestiges remain in those who praise Johnson for his classical ‘intelligence’. This is not to say that classical knowledge should not ever be impressive, as the subject requires rigour and empathy in equal measures if it is to be studied properly. However, Johnson has been allowed to get away with his shoddy scholarship due to the reputation of classics. As the ancient Greek historian Xenophon wrote in his Symposium, there is no one more stupid than people who recite poetry, ‘for they do not know the inner meaning of the poems’.
