GREEK TRAGEDY? Hubris? Pride? Blunkett? Please, commentators, read a few Greek tragedies before you draw these ludicrous analogies.

At the end of a Greek tragedy, the protagonist usually ends up dead — torn apart by his mother and her chums (Pentheus), murdered by his wife (Agamemnon), murdered by her son (Clytaemnestra), or having committed suicide (Antigone, Ajax). They do not end up voluntarily retiring from office and weeping buckets.

Nor does hubris mean “pride”. It means aggressive, often violent, self-assertion, and is nearly always used of the behaviour of one man towards another. That is how it is almost universally used in Greek tragedy, and is hardly ever (some would say never) given by the poet as the reason for the downfall of the hero.

David Blunkett did not behave hubristically, aggressively, violently or self-assertively against anyone else. As Bob Marshall-Andrews, the turbulent Labour backbencher, has pointed out, he acted like Caligula, who once said to his grandmother Antonia: “Memento, omnia mihi et in omnes licere” (“Remember, I can do anything to anyone”). In other words, Mr Blunkett did what he did simply because he was able to. Not that Mr Marshall-Andrews was right to say that Caligula demonstrated this by making his horse Incitatus (“Flyer”) a senator. Caligula, Suetonius tells us, was said to have considered making Incitatus a consul, but this was clearly a joke, since the horse already had a marble stable, ivory stall and jewel-encrusted harness.

All Mr Blunkett did was to take advantage of his political position to help a friend. No Greek or Roman would have blinked at that. For pity’s sake, what is the point of being in high office if you cannot help your chums? It was one of the main purposes of getting into power in the ancient world.

Mr Blunkett does, though, lay himself open to the charge of behaving like a fool — because he behaved under the influence of lurve. This was an emotion the Greeks deeply mistrusted because of its power to derange judgment. And sure enough, at chubby little Cupid’s command, Mr Blunkett lost all sense of propriety and started spraying round visa applications and rail tickets. Tragedy? Comedy, more like.

Dr Peter Jones has just revised E.V. Rieu’s Iliad for Penguin Classics