Boris Must Learn From History And Resist Mob Rule

As a classical scholar Boris Johnson is fond of his Greek and Latin allusions and will often turn to tales of antiquity to make his point. So after his most tumultuous political week since December’s election, he may today wish to reflect on an anniversary which highlights the catastrophic danger of allowing the angry mob to get its way.

- David Maddox

On May 31, AD 455, the civic career (and indeed life) of Emperor Petronius Maximus, leader of the Western Roman Empire, came to a bloody end when a crowd – egged on by his political opponents – stoned him to death in Rome.

Petronius had previously been an impressive Consul of Rome and a star turn in the Senate. But his part in the assassination of his disastrous and ineffective predecessor Valentine III had proved to be too controversial.

Within two days of Petronius’s death the Vandals swept unchecked into Rome, wreaking havoc for two weeks, destroying buildings and smashing works of art before shipping a large part of the city’s population off into slavery.

The word vandalism for mindless destruction stands as a memorial to the episode and within 21 years the Western Empire had dissolved.

Roll on 1,565 years and the angry mob looks like ranters on social media, pontificating media personalities, Remainers seeking revenge, politicians from opposition parties and Left-wing activists laying siege to a home in north London.