So, togas are back in fashion. And their Greek equivalent, the chiton. In London, you can currently pad around in your sandals between a whole assortment of classical shows, including Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides and 100 Fahrenheit, a reworking of the Oresteia. Meanwhile, horse-drawn chariots, slaves, courtesans, and enough leather skirts to satisfy the most ardent Russell Crowe fan, are heaving across the Olivier stage at the National for Stephen Sondheim's rewriting of Plautus, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which, as the programme firmly reminds us, is set "200 years before the Christian era".
At a preview of the show, I was wondering what it is that makes references from the classical era so readily available to the modern audience, even to those who haven't seen Gladiator ten times. A lot of people have been jumping up and down recently about the links between contemporary politics and Greek tragedy. Well, yes, if the play is good, as the existing classical dramas obviously are, and timeless, you can make connections between one era and almost any other, as anyone who has seen productions of Shakespeare with actors in anything from cowboy boots to space suits will rapidly concur.
Frankly, you can make quite a few links between Iraq and A Funny Thing if you are determined to forge them; all that chat about what it is to be free, and tyrants slaughtering thousands, would do quite well in a Baghdad setting. It's a bit fey, though, and it would be a brave (or mad) director who would organise a line of US soldiers bellowing out the great opening number, "Tragedy Tomorrow! Comedy Tonight!", between a giant mock-up of Saddam Hussein's fists wielding those arched swords.
Obviously, Plautus himself is responsible for A Funny Thing's many good gags; and indeed, this autumn, my former classical drama tutor Mike Walton is speeding down from Hull University to deliver a lecture on "Plautus's class-bound comedies" at the National. I confess that I am not a Plautus expert, but I am sure his jokes are not quite the whole answer as to why we all can grasp the details of middle-class classical life and its goings-on so readily; Desmond Barrit (in the Frankie Howerd role of Pseudolus) needs only to recline on a sofa, eating grapes straight from the bunch, and we all know he is being "decadent", while references to slaves, baths, seven hills, Roman coinage and the eponymous Forum are bandied about with no difficulty whatsoever.
Perhaps it is because we still compel small children to study Roman history; Latin has largely died out, but pupils still do at least one project on Hadrian's Wall and know what happened at the Colosseum. Or maybe the Roman empire stamped its regime so firmly across Europe that its legacy and that of Athens, "the world's first democracy", are both even now only a scratch beneath the surface of life.
Of course, these thoughts echo those of Neil MacGregor, head of the British Museum, when he describes the Parthenon (ie, Elgin) Marbles as part of our heritage as well as Greece's. You have only to go on a bus ride through the cities of Britain to see Roman columns, Greek architraves and Corinthian pediments all over the place. And now here is the National Theatre reminding us that the Romans also invented the wonderful world of farce.
