{"title":"Books by James Romm","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781917226059","title":"The Illustrated Meditations","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA curated selection of the most significant life lessons from the iconic work of Stoic philosophy\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThat which is not good for the hive, neither is it good for the bee\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Renowned Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius compiled his \u003ci\u003eMeditations \u003c\/i\u003enearly two thousand years ago, as a personal collection of reflections and reminders to help him lead a good life. As one of the greatest works of spiritual contemplation ever written, it continues to be revered for its timeless instruction on living stoically and in pursuit of the common good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This beautifully illustrated edition is introduced by classicist James Romm and features a curated selection of the most significant life lessons, making it the perfect Stoic starting point.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54926144504181,"sku":"9781917226059","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781917226059_a264aac6-a067-4740-93f8-217935ee1b6c.jpg?v=1786030754"},{"product_id":"9780300274165","title":"Demetrius – Sacker of Cities","description":"A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back again   “This colorful biography of Demetrius . . . explores his rich inner life and reveals an ancient world of violence and intrigue.”—New York Times Book Review   The 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 prowess, Demetrius sought to weld those pieces together and recover the dream of a single world state, with a new Alexander—himself—at its head. He succeeded temporarily, but in crucial, colossal engagements—a massive invasion of Egypt, a siege of Rhodes that went on for a full year, and the Battle of Ipsus—he came up just short. He ended his career in a rash invasion of Asia and became the target of a desperate manhunt, only to be captured and destroyed by his own son-in-law.      James Romm tells the story of Demetrius the Besieger’s rise and spectacular fall but also explores his vibrant inner life and family relationships to depict a real, complex, and recognizable figure.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232181596533,"sku":"9780300274165","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300274165_4e36f20a-01c9-4296-9563-2fa7e4aaf498.jpg?v=1786012784"},{"product_id":"9781501198021","title":"The Sacred Band","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating” (\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e) 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.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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 marked by battles, ideological disputes, and the rise of vicious strongmen. At stake was freedom, democracy, and the fate of Thebes, at this time the leading power of the Greek world.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe tale begins in 379 BC, with a group of Theban patriots sneaking into occupied Thebes. Disguised in women’s clothing, they cut down the agents of Sparta, the state that had cowed much of Greece with its military might. To counter the Spartans, this group of patriots would form the Sacred Band, a corps whose history plays out against a backdrop of Theban democracy, of desperate power struggles between leading city-states, and the new prominence of \u003ci\u003eeros\u003c\/i\u003e, sexual love, in Greek public life.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAfter four decades without a defeat, the Sacred Band was annihilated by the forces of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander in the Battle of Chaeronea—extinguishing Greek liberty for two thousand years. Buried on the battlefield where they fell, they were rediscovered in 1880—some skeletons still in pairs, with arms linked together.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom violent combat in city streets to massive clashes on open ground, from ruthless tyrants to bold women who held their era in thrall, \u003ci\u003eThe Sacred Band \u003c\/i\u003erecounts “in fluent, accessible prose” (\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e) the twists and turns of a crucial historical moment: the end of the treasured freedom of ancient Greece.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302117847413,"sku":"9781501198021","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781501198021_67b653ba-ed45-45af-ad93-a054b8f885ae.jpg?v=1786021941"},{"product_id":"9780300269383","title":"Demosthenes – Democracy`s Defender","description":"The tragic story of ancient Greece’s last democratic leader and his doomed fight to save Athens from Macedonian domination   In 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 that effort failed and Athens fell into the grip of Alexander the Great, Philip’s son and successor, Demosthenes had established himself as one of history’s most eloquent defenders of democracy.      In this thrilling biography of the man who led the charge for Greek freedom, James Romm follows Demosthenes from his early career as a legal speech writer through his rise in politics, his fall from grace in a corruption scandal, and his desperate flight to the island of Calauria—where he took his own life rather than submit to Macedonian forces. As he brings to life the bare-knuckle, insult-filled verbal brawls of Athenian orators, Romm not only explores the mind of the man who took on the challenge of saving Greek freedom but also shows how democracies can be destroyed by infighting and internal division.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56367751561589,"sku":"9780300269383","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300269383.jpg?v=1791212758"},{"product_id":"dying-every-day","title":"Dying Every Day","description":"From acclaimed classical historian, author of \u003ci\u003eGhost on the Throne \u003c\/i\u003ea  high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preeminent writer and philosopher, beginning with banishment in his fifties and subsequent appointment as tutor to twelve-year-old Nero, future emperor of Rome. Controlling them both, Nero’s mother, Julia Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress, great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus, sister of the Emperor Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius.\u003cbr\u003e     \u003cbr\u003eJames Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRomm writes that Seneca watched over Nero as teacher, moral guide, and surrogate father, and, at seventeen, when Nero abruptly ascended to become emperor of Rome, Seneca, a man never avid for political power became, with Nero, the ruler of the Roman Empire. We see how Seneca was able to control his young student, how, under Seneca’s influence, Nero ruled with intelligence and moderation, banned capital punishment, reduced taxes, gave slaves the right to file complaints against their owners, pardoned prisoners arrested for sedition. But with time, as Nero grew vain and disillusioned, Seneca was unable to hold sway over the emperor, and between Nero’s mother, Agrippina—thought to have poisoned her second husband, and her third, who was her uncle (Claudius), and rumored to have entered into an incestuous relationship with her son—and Nero’s father, described by Suetonius as a murderer and cheat charged with treason, adultery, and incest, how long could the young Nero have been contained?\u003cbr\u003e            \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDying Every Day\u003c\/i\u003e is a portrait of Seneca’s moral struggle in the midst of madness and excess. In his treatises, Seneca preached a rigorous ethical creed, exalting heroes who defied danger to do what was right or embrace a noble death. As Nero’s adviser, Seneca was presented with a more complex set of choices, as the only man capable of summoning the better aspect of Nero’s nature, yet, remaining at Nero’s side and colluding in the evil regime he created.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDying Every Day\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book to tell the compelling and nightmarish story of the philosopher-poet who was almost a king, tied to a tyrant—as Seneca, the paragon of reason, watched his student spiral into madness and whose descent saw five family murders, the Fire of Rome, and a savage purge that destroyed the supreme minds of the Senate’s golden age.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466649903477,"sku":"9780307743749","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780307743749.jpg?v=1785654708"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-james-romm.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}