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The Howard Staunton Memorial Chess tournaments were staged for several years at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, the traditional home of British Chess. At one of these august events, Professor

Michael Crawford, in his persona as Director of The Institute for Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, based at London’s Imperial College, delivered an opening speech, and one deliberately

aimed at the players in the event. His point was that the consumption of marine based nutrition was beneficial for the brain. Listening in the audience was the Grandmaster Nigel Short,

Britain’s only challenger for the World Chess Title in the 20th century. Emulating Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson after the successful denouement of the short story, _The Dying Detective_,

Nigel went to Simpson’s dining room for “something nutritious” — a giant Dover sole. Nigel persevered with his piscatorial, brain-enhancing diet throughout the competition and duly turned in

a superb performance. Professor Crawford does not just confine his dietary advice to fish and related aquatic delicacies. He is also a keen apiarist and advocate for the health benefits of

honey, in particular raw honey, that retains the vital pollen, which the EU would so like to remove. In his guise as a beekeeper, Professor Crawford has now challenged me to write a column

for TheArticle, linking bees and chess. The solution to this conundrum is, in fact, relatively simple, in that both bees and chess have famously been invoked as models for exemplary social

structures. There is a vase by Exekias in The Vatican Museum, as indeed another in The British Museum, which depicts the heroic warriors Ajax and Achilles absorbed in a board game, one of

the hallmarks of a civilised society, during the siege of Troy. The game involved was almost certainly not chess, but Achilles himself definitely figures in Homer’s use of bees to delineate

the harmonious running of society. In his bee similes, Homer underscores the reciprocal dependency of the collective, the individual, and the household, extolling unity within diversity.

Homer describes the Greeks gathering for a council of war, writing in his _Iliad_ circa 700 BC, and , in this instance, they resemble a cloud of bees:  “…_as when of frequent bees __Swarms

rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees __Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new __From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew, __And never

would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring, __They still crowd out so…_” (Homer’s _Iliad_, Book II, lines 87-93. Translated by George Chapman, first published in 1598). This simile

emphasises the unity of the individuals who make up the Greek army, illustrating the ideal dynamic, in which neither the interests of the individual, nor those of the collective, take

excessive precedence. According to Homer, a fully functioning society will, therefore, maintain a balance between unity and diversity.  “_Yet they, as yellow wasps, or bees (that having made

their nest __The gasping cranny of a hill) when for a hunter’s feast __Hunters come hot and hungry in, and dig for honeycombs, __Then fly upon them, strike and sting, and from their hollow

homes __Will not be beaten, but defend their labour’s fruit, and brood; __No more will these be from their port, but either lose their blood_” (_Iliad_, Book XII, lines 167-170). Thus, each

Greek warrior is actually promoting his own personal interests, whenever he defends the collective. It is at the tipping point where individuality exceeds its bounds and proper discipline is

abandoned, that disaster strikes, as when Achilles sulks in his tent and his soul mate, Patroclus, is inadvertently slain, by the Trojan hero, Hector. Shakespeare encapsulates this problem

in his tragedy _Troilus and Cressida_, when the wily Odysseus (identified by his Latin name Ulysses in the play) explains that order, or degree, has broken down: “_Take but degree away,

untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!_” Bee similes also figure prominently in Virgil’s _Aeneid_, appearing first in Book I, then in Book VI, and finally in Book XII. Their

studious arrangement suggests that, like Homer, Virgil regarded bees as significant, in order to fully comprehend his entire magnum opus. Indeed, Virgil’s other works support this inference,

because they prove that Virgil considered bees to exemplify a well-organised, homogenous, and dutifully obedient society. In his poem _Georgics_ (Book IV) Virgil discusses bees and their

habits at length, using bees as a paradigm for his vision of the perfect society: a hardworking, patriotic, thrifty, disciplined community, all striving towards a single, noble end. Each of

the four references to bees in the _Aeneid_ provides an insight into this model community, especially emphasising the collective, renascence, and the future foundation of Rome itself. In

Virgil’s time (writing in the late 1st century BC), it was still believed, following Aristotle’s lead, that the hive was ruled by a king bee (rather than a queen) which makes the deployment

of the bee simile/metaphor of precise relevance in the transition period between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. In fact, it was not until 1609, with Charles Butler’s _The Feminine

Monarchy, _that the Queen was correctly identified, not so much as a leader, more as a _fons et origo_ of the hive. “_Such is their toil, and such their busy pains, __As exercise the bees in

flow’ry plains, __When winter past, and summer scarce begun, __Invites them forth to labor in the sun; __Some lead their youth abroad, while some condense __Their liquid store, and some in

cells dispense; __Some at the gate stand ready to receive __The golden burthen, and their friends relieve; __All with united force, combine to drive __The lazy drones from the laborious

hive: __With envy stung, they view each other’s deeds; __The fragrant work with diligence proceeds._” (Virgil’s _Aeneid_, Book I, lines 430-436. Translated by John Dryden and first published

in 1697.) Virgil’s bees are not a “clustering swarm,” like Homer’s, but a homogenous mass, divided only by their varying tasks, which they perform faithfully and mechanically. Such a

devoted and focused society, in Virgil’s mind, represents the ideal human template for civilisation. The poet illustrates the importance of the collective, but dismisses individuality

altogether, a shift that distinguishes him from Homer. It is easy to see the direction in which the poet is leading us. In sharp contradistinction to the poet Ovid, who was banished by the

Emperor Augustus far from Rome to Tomi on the Black Sea, Virgil is composing state-sanctioned, if subtly disguised, propaganda, where one emperor and one unified compliant imperium are the

order of the day. In actual bee society, this is stretching the metaphor, but as a refined political message within human society, it is highly persuasive. It is a feat of legerdemain, not

lost on contemporary environmental advocates, to imply that the path to paradise for humans lies in a direction imposed by nature itself. As Alexander Pope put it in his _An Essay on Man_:

“_All nature is but art, Unknown to thee; __All chance, direction which thou canst not see_.”  Virgil emphasises the paramount importance of society and the need for people to have their

appointed place in it, implying that the collective must take precedence over the individual. Roman society was, indeed, highly stratified, and, again, Shakespeare points the way in the

opening lines of _Julius_ _Caesar: _ “_Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a holiday? What! Know you not. Being mechanical, you ought not walk. Upon a labouring day,

without the sign of your profession. Speak, what trade art thou?_” Liberal arts or professions in Rome were those practised by free men and included rhetoric, law, politics, poetry, medicine

and architecture. Opposed to these were those considered sordid, such as _portitor_ (the boatman or carrier), _fenerator_ (the usurer), while lowest of the low were craftsmen who worked

with fire, such as smiths and potters, known as _banausic_ in Greek and _mechanical_ in Latin. Virgil understands a beehive to be an illustration of human civilisation. Though the individual

will pass away, the legacy of the community will endure. Over and over again, the hive is reborn as a new generation of insects rises to take the place of the old one, defying and surviving

various crises, such as… “_Thus, when the swain, within a hollow rock, Invades the bees with suffocating smoke, They run around, or labor on their wings, Disus’d to flight, and shoot their

sleepy stings; To shun the bitter fumes in vain they try; Black vapors, issuing from the vent, involve the sky_.” (_Aeneid_, Book XII, lines 587-592). This simile introduces a significant,

final aspect of Virgil’s ideal society: the shepherd, or leader of the people. According to Virgil, the ideal society must have a ruler. Again, _Georgics _Book IV provides an explanation,

using the bees’ devotion to the ruler, which the Romans, as we have seen, interpreted as a king, although due to more modern science we now know to be a queen. The bees labour intensively

and selflessly, because of the ruler; but when that ruler eventually expires, the hive degenerates and the bees annihilate their own work. Likewise, a ruler’s wise guidance unifies the Apian

way and thus preserves the people’s purpose. It is impossible, once again, to avoid inferring a reference here to the rise of Augustus. In particular, his _soi distant necessary_ slaughters

of the opposition on his way to the top, such as the proscriptions of the second triumvirate, and the cauterisation of the wounds caused by fanatic republicans, such as Brutus and Cassius. 

In Virgil’s vision of the perfect Roman society, such harsh measures are justified, if order and universal peace, the Pax Augusta and the closing of the doors of the temple of Janus, are to

be the beneficial outcome. Now we come to the chess element of the equation, proving unequivocally that chess, in common with bees, has been adapted as a social model, one singularly popular

in the late Middle Ages. At that time, chess was already recognised as one of the seven liberal arts, supposedly promulgated by Aristotle, no less, the sage described by Dante as “_il

maestro di Collor che sanno_” (“the Master of the men who know”). These were meant to be the common attributes of knights and their ladies, embracing, _inter alia_, equestrianism, toxology,

pugilism and _de arte venandi cum avibus_ (“the art of hunting with birds”, or in other words falconry). Around 1300, the northern Italian Dominican Friar, Jacobus de Cessolis published his

moralising book about chess, _Liber de Moribus hominum et officiis nobilium super ludo scacchorum_. Packed with entertaining stories and material ripe for sermons, this book proved

inordinately popular, even appearing as the first book ever published in English, in England, by Caxton in the late 1470’s, _The Game and Playe of the Chesse. _ One turns to Cessolis in vain

for instruction on how to win at chess, instead the descriptions of the pieces and pawns stratify and reinforce the prevailing social order. Although a hierarchical social model is by no

means inherent in the game of chess _per se_, it is no surprise that such a self-perpetuating template was so popular with kings, dukes and other members of the ruling nobility, whose

libraries often contained multiple copies. The ranks of society, according to the Cessolis template, began with the King and Queen, at the apex, followed by the Alphins, aka bishops or

judges, then knights and rooks, or royal messengers, followed by the common people, in other words, the pawns. Indeed, the eight pawns on each side were actually credited separately with

their trades, much as in the antique Roman classification mentioned both by Shakespeare and the Lewis & Short Latin dictionary. The trades included labourers, tillers of the earth,

drapers and makers of cloth, merchants, money changers, physicians, taverners and the banausic or mechanical trades of smiths and other workers in iron and metal. The word Alphins (bishops)

requires some explanation. The concept still survives in Spanish (_Alfil_) and Italian (_Alfiere_) where the “L”/”F” sound is more important than the meaning, signifying a reference to the

word elephant, the root of which is “Aleph Hind”, or Indian Ox. Since most Western Europeans would never have seen such a pachyderm, it was the phonetic representation, rather than the

meaning, which travelled with the expansion of chess. Traces of Alphin can also be found in other languages, where the word for a chess bishop embraces _Le Fou_, “the jester” in French, 

_Loper_ in Dutch, _Läufer_ in German, both meaning “runner” and _Lovac_  (“hunter”) in Serbo-Croatian. As one journeys further East, however, the modern mammoth reclaims its own, as in the

Russian for Bishop,_ Slon _which_ _translates as the “elephant”. The book of Cessolis drew on and strengthened the late mediaeval mind-set that chess was a symbolic representation of society

and imparted to that notion much greater force and precision. At one point it was, though still a distant rival, second only to The Bible in terms of popularity, and thus merits its place

alongside the bee metaphors of Homer and Virgil, as a genuine attempt to describe an ideal social structure of civilisations which have long since fallen into desuetude. Fascinating, as it

is, to excavate mediaeval views about chess, the modern game still continues apace and two chess news items of note occurred this past week. The first was the 87th birthday of Dr. Jonathan

Penrose. He won The British Chess Championship a record ten times and was subsequently awarded the Grandmaster title Emeritus. His doctorate is in Psychology. His brothers are Oliver

Penrose, as well as prominent author and physicist Professor Sir Roger Penrose, who was honoured with the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, for his discovery that black holes are a robust

confirmation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The second momentous item of note was the first loss by World Champion Magnus Carlsen in classical chess for two years, two months

and ten days. Carlsen suffered this rare setback against Jan-Krzyztof Duda last Saturday in Stavanger, Norway, where the first over the board elite event for many months has been taking

place, in spite of Covid 19 restrictions. Here is a link to the game, with commentary. Carlsen’s 125 game unbeaten streak is a World Record and in next week’s article I shall be looking at

world records, including Carlsen’s unbeaten run in chess, as well as two in other sports, which occurred recently, in both tennis and Formula 1.