This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC wreath lectures.

This lecture in the series Government and the Governed, given by Douglas Was, was originally broadcast in 1983.

Ten days after I accepted the invitation of the governors of the BBC to give this year's wreath lectures,

I found myself almost my chance in the Palazzo Publico in Siena,

admiring two well-preserved frescoes painted by Ambrosio Lorenzetti.

In one, the very depiction of misery and punitive chastisement,

the people who inhabit the painting cringe in fear, bedraggled and impoverished.

The title, bad government.

In the other, entitled Good Government,

we see prosperity, blue skies, fields rich with crops,

the citizens going about their business

in the epitome of Arcadian contentment.

Why, I asked myself, did Lorenzetti entitle these murals as he did,

and not, for instance, poverty and prosperity? What is it about good government that he equated with

well-being? It may seem strange that the permanent secretary to the Treasury, as I then was, should be putting

this question to himself, for the identity of good government and prosperity has been taken

for granted for a long time. Herodotus tells us how Lycurgus, following an inspired visit to

the oracle at Delphi in the 7th or 8th century BC,

brought good government to Sparta, reorganised the army,

and introduced the new civil offices of Ephor and Elder.

Thereafter, the Lacedaemonians, as he put it,

soon shot up and flourished like a sturdy tree.

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