In Since You’re Mortal: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays (W.W. Norton; May 5, 2026), Bard College classicist James Romm, PhD. gathers newly translated passages from ancient tragedies and comedies preserved because a fifth-century compiler, Stobaeus, excerpted them as moral guidance for his son.
The result is not a philosophical treatise but something arguably older and sharper: dramatic ethics in short, concise, witty statements that hold a universal observation about life. Organized by themes such as courage, love, luck, grief, justice, and public life, these brief, powerful passages read like timeless commencement counsel. Honest about hardship yet clear about character, this is a humanities-rooted gift for graduates stepping into an uncertain world.
James Romm is available for interviews starting April 28, 2026. If there is interest, please respond with a date/time for the interview and a mailing address to send the book in April when it is available. We will send a PDF immediately.
The excerpts are brief, memorable, and discussion-ready, ideal for commencement reflections, graduation gift guides, or end-of-year reading lists.
Passages and fragments include lines such as:
• “The mind sees and the mind hears; all else is deaf and blind.”
• “Seeing you’re human, don’t ask for a painless life… ask instead for surpassing courage.”
• “If Fortune exists, there is no need of gods.”
The advice invites graduates to wrestle with resilience, self-knowledge, responsibility, and the unpredictability of adult life. Because these lines come from plays originally performed before the citizens of Athens, where drama served as a public forum for ethical and political debate, they offer a natural bridge to conversations about civic responsibility, intellectual humility, and entering public life.
Dr. Romm has spent decades immersed in Greek and Roman culture and civilization and is one of today’s most respected classicists in America. He is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and the author of numerous acclaimed books, including Plato and the Tyrant, Ghost on the Throne, and Dying Every Day. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The London Review of Books.
About James Romm: https://www.
James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He specializes in ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization and is the author of numerous acclaimed books, including Plato and the Tyrant, Ghost on the Throne, and Dying Every Day. In addition to writing narrative history, he has edited and translated major works of classical literature for modern readers, helping bring the ancient world into contemporary conversation.
Romm’s reviews and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, The Daily Beast, and other publications. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Birkelund Fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library, and a Biography Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York.
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