Jones Peter. Vote for Caesar: How the Ancient Greeks and Romans Solved the Problems of Today

Orion Publishing, 2008. — 265 p.We begin in the cities of Rome and London, each with seemingly intractable problems of congestion. Juvenal tells us about the crowds in front, crowds behind, elbows poking us in the ribs, a soldier’s boot stomping on toes. Rome had one million people crammed into seven square miles—but without a transport system or “commuters,” this seething cauldron of humanity lived where it worked, in small tenements crammed into an unplanned maze of narrow streets. In contrast, the seven and half million Greater Londoners are spread over six hundred square miles. The Romans lived at perhaps ten times this density, and had to deal with the fires and floods that threatened to collapse seven-story residential buildings, violence in unlit alleys, and seven hundred tons of daily excrement. The city had its own “Ken Livingston moment,” a reference to the Mayor of London’s vehicle congestion charge, which for the Romans meant strict restrictions on vehicles entering Rome by day. Despite this density and the immigration that caused it, Rome, like London, was no parasite. Its artisans and shopkeepers added value to their wares, and they had a sense of pride in their city. Jones thoroughly debunks a popular view of Rome as a city of villas, and of citizens bathing in calm repose amid luxury. Roman entertainments, roads, buildings, aqueducts, brothels, and food distributions, are the concerns of the second chapter, while the Millennium Dome and the BBC—which the government should “throw out” in favor of private initiatives—are his modern targets. Chapter Three tells us how the Roman authorities paid for all this—they focused not on extorting Roman citizens, but rather on bleeding other people dry using the army. Jones’ Mediterranean world “was in a fairly constant state of conflict either for self-protection or in order to extract the wealth” of others.