Politics

Benjamin Barber, an eminent political theorist, once said, “I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . . . I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.”

Over the last century, a new power narrative has emerged that warps archaeological data into a specific shape the way a magnet affects iron filings. It is the unspoken belief that humanity is on a journey from worse to better, from primitive to complex, uncivilised to civilised. Our civilisation of perpetual war, total surveillance, obesity,

but if political rewards are indeed our goal, then we should never tire of courting the voters

A citizen defined himself by the fellowship of others, in shared joys and sorrows, ambitions and fears, festivals, elections, and disciplines of war

Every five years a citizen had to register himself there. He also had to declare the name of his wife, the number of his children, his property and his possessions, from his slaves and ready cash to his wife’s jewels and clothes. The state had the right to know everything, for the Romans believed that even ‘personal tastes and appetites should be