It has always struck me as curious that, in an age where fewer and fewer people read the great works of antiquity, classical literature still finds its way into the mouths of politicians. Like incantations spoken in a dead language, these references – often half-remembered, plucked from history like ripe fruit – are meant not to be understood, but to be felt. They are signals rather than arguments, tools of persuasion rather than meaning. And yet, in most cases, they fail to land with the weight their speakers intend. The orator conjures Cicero, Pericles, or Vergil, but the audience – adrift in a sea of modern distractions – simply hears the echo of something important, without quite knowing why.
This is hardly a new phenomenon. Classical literature has long been used, misused, and manipulated to serve political ends, but rarely have I seen it so sharply wielded as it was by Enoch Powell. Powell was a formidable statesman, a man of great intellect and military distinction who saw service in the Second World War, outmanoeuvring Rommel’s forces in North Africa with the kind of strategic cunning that would later define his political career. A scholar of immense classical knowledge, Powell did not pluck his references from antiquity idly – he knew their weight, their history, and their power.
Perhaps no moment in Powell’s career is as widely remembered as his Rivers of Blood speech, in which he invoked The Aeneid to lend gravity to his warning about the future of Britain:
“Bella, horrida bella,
et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.”
“Wars, horrid wars,
I see, and the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
Vergil’s words, spoken by the Sibyl in Book VI of The Aeneid, were a prophecy – one of struggle, sacrifice, and the turbulence that would accompany the birth of Rome’s greatness. Powell, with his historian’s mind, recognised the value of such a passage in articulating his own forebodings. His use of the line was not a casual flourish but a calculated invocation of history. He saw Britain at a crossroads, much as Rome had been – a nation standing on the precipice of great change, with the tide of history rising before it.
Critics of Powell have long argued that his use of Vergil was inflammatory, that he twisted the meaning to suit his own ends. But I think this does him a disservice. Powell was no mere politician seeking a dramatic flourish; he was a man deeply steeped in the classics, and he understood their lessons well. The Aeneid is not a simple tale of triumph but a meditation on the cost of destiny. The Tiber’s blood is not an image of inevitable destruction, but of conflict before order, of struggle before resolution. Powell, ever the scholar, saw Britain’s future in these terms.
Powell was not the first to use classical literature to frame a political vision, and he certainly was not the last. Politicians throughout history have turned to the ancients, often with far less understanding than he possessed. Take, for instance, the modern obsession with The Thucydides Trap, a phrase coined in 2017 by Graham Allison to describe the supposed inevitability of war between rising and dominant powers. It has since been used by statesmen and commentators, particularly in discussions of U.S. – China relations, as if Thucydides himself had laid out an iron law of history. But anyone who has actually read The History of the Peloponnesian War knows that Thucydides made no such claim. His work is a study of power, fear, and folly – not a deterministic model for future conflicts.
Then there is the case of Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations – a private journal of Stoic philosophy – has been plundered for inspirational soundbites. His thoughts on resilience and discipline are neatly repackaged into tweets and business seminars, stripped of their philosophical depth. Politicians, too, have borrowed from him – David Cameron once cited Meditations in an attempt to present himself as a statesman-philosopher, but the reference was as fleeting as it was hollow. There is something faintly absurd about a world leader quoting a man who cautioned against the corrupting nature of power while simultaneously wielding it.
And then, of course, there is Boris Johnson, whose fondness for the classics often felt like a party trick. He likened himself to Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, and quoted his Funeral Oration to rally the British public in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it was an empty comparison. Pericles’ speech, as recorded by Thucydides, is one of the most famous articulations of democratic values and collective sacrifice. Johnson reached for its grandeur but ignored its substance. The irony is that Pericles’ leadership ultimately led Athens into a ruinous war, his vision of Athenian supremacy ending in plague, decline, and eventual defeat. The echoes were there, but they were lost on most.
The effectiveness of classical allusions in political rhetoric does not rely on the audience understanding them; in fact, I think it is often more powerful when they do not. When a politician quotes Cicero, Vergil, or Thucydides, they wrap themselves in the legitimacy of antiquity. They do not need the public to grasp the finer points of Roman history or Greek philosophy; they merely need them to feel as though something profound has been said. It is the rhetorical equivalent of wearing a laurel wreath in the hope that people will mistake you for Caesar.
But there is a deeper tragedy here. Classical literature is not just a toolkit for grandiose speeches; it is a window into the human condition. The texts that politicians so often misquote or misuse contain far richer insights than the narrow, opportunistic interpretations they are given. The Aeneid is not a prophecy of decline, but a meditation on duty and sacrifice. The History of the Peloponnesian War is not a deterministic model of inevitable conflict, but a deeply human account of fear and ambition. Meditations was never meant to be cherry-picked for corporate leadership courses – it was a man’s private reckoning with mortality.
Powell, to his credit, understood this better than most. Unlike those who wield the classics with only a cursory knowledge of their depths, he had devoted his life to their study. His warnings, whether one agrees with them or not, were not the words of a demagogue grasping at ancient authority but of a man who had lived and breathed the lessons of history.
Perhaps the best response, then, is not to accept these references at face value but to question them – to turn back to the sources, to read what was actually written rather than what has been claimed. Classical literature, after all, is not a weapon to be wielded in political battles; it is a conversation across time, one that we are still invited to join. But to take part in that conversation, we must first be willing to listen. Powell, whatever else may be said of him, listened. And that, in itself, is rare enough.
Wording 