We talk with acclaimed classicist James Romm about his new book "Since You’re Mortal …: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays."
“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 fifth century A.D., collected them as a way to instruct his son. Stobaeus’ quotes represent the only traces we have of countless lost plays of ancient Athens — pithy packets of wisdom expressed in eloquent verse and selected with a father’s discerning eye.
Some prompt “aha” moments, others offer wit or dark humor, and still others express penetrating moral insights. With this volume, James Romm becomes the first to translate these fragments as verse for English-language readers. "Since You’re Mortal ..." serves as an age-old but timeless guide to living a thoughtful, virtuous life.
James Romm is James H. Ottaway Jr. professor of classics at Bard College and editor of the Ancient Lives biography series from Yale University Press. He is the author of several other studies of Greek and Roman history, and his reviews and essays appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Review of Books.
