Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity.The story of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire is known to many readers, but the dramatic and consequential saga of the empire’s collapse remains virtually untold. It is a tale of loss that begins with the greatest loss of all, the death of the Macedonian king who had held the e...

From classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating” (Booklist) deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes—and the saga of the greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.The story of the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recruited from pairs of lovers, highlights a chaotic era of ancient Greek history, four decades ma...

Acclaimed classicist James Romm translates surviving pieces of timeless wisdom from the lost plays of ancient Athens.“The truly happy man ought to stay at home.”“Hunger, and lack of coin, put a stop to love.”“Hades, alone of the gods, does not enjoy bribes.”These quotes and many others from the great Greek dramatists, including Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Menander, were preserved long after they were written—when a man called Stobaeus, in the ...

From acclaimed classical historian, author of Ghost on the Throne (“Gripping . . . the narrative verve of a born writer and the erudition of a scholar” —Daniel Mendelsohn) and editor of The Landmark Arrian:The Campaign of Alexander (“Thrilling” —The New York Times Book Review), a high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale.At the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preemine...

A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back againThe life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces.Capitalizing on good looks, youth, and sexual...

The tragic story of ancient Greece’s last democratic leader and his doomed fight to save Athens from Macedonian dominationIn the spring of 340 BCE, news arrived that Philip of Macedon had seized a town in central Greece, a base from which he could march on Athens. In the fierce debates about how to respond to the rising threat in the north, Demosthenes, the greatest orator of his day, convinced the Athenian Assembly to confront Philip on the field of battle. Though...

Timeless wisdom on death and dying from the celebrated Stoic philosopher Seneca"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death ...

**From the leading scholars behind The Greek Plays, a collection of the best translations of the foremost Greek historians, presenting a sweeping history of ancient Greece as recorded by its first chroniclers“Just the thing to remind us that human history, though lamentably a work in progress, is always something we can understand better.”—Sarah Ruden, translator of The Gospels and author of The Face of Water**The historians of ancient Greece were...

A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back againThe life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces.Capitalizing on good looks, youth, and sexual prowess, ...

The tragic story of ancient Greece's last democratic leader and his doomed fight to save Athens from Macedonian dominationIn the spring of 340 BCE, news arrived that Philip of Macedon had seized a town in central Greece, a base from which he could march on Athens. In the fierce debates about how to respond to the rising threat in the north, Demosthenes, the greatest orator of his day, convinced the Athenian Assembly to confront Philip on the field of battle. Though...

**“Excellent.… A deft and engaging work of history, philosophy and biography.… A kind of intellectual thriller.” —Becca Rothfeld, Washington PostFrom an eminent historian and classicist, an incisive portrait of the philosopher Plato, showing how the ideas in his masterwork, Republic, were tested by violent events in the most powerful Greek city of the era.**Plato is one of history’s most influential thinkers, the “sublime philosopher” whose writings remain...

Acclaimed classicist James Romm translates surviving pieces of timeless wisdom from the lost plays of ancient Athens."The truly happy man ought to stay at home." "Hunger, and lack of coin, put a stop to love." "Hades, alone of the gods, does not enjoy bribes." These quotes―and hundreds of others from the great Greek dramatists, including Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Menander―were preserved in the fifth century AD, when a man named Stobaeus compiled an anthology to ins...