Demosthenes

Democracy's Defender

James Romm

$39.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Yale University
16 December 2025

Biography: historical, political & military; History; European history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Political leaders & leadership

Series: Ancient Lives

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.

By: James Romm
Imprint: Yale University
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780300269383
ISBN 10: 0300269382
Series: Ancient Lives
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 16 December 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including Demetrius: Sacker of Cities and Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece.

Reviews for Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender

“James Romm’s lively and informative biography of a great Athenian statesman is at once an insightful biography and a dramatic retelling of Athens’s doomed struggle with a rising imperial power.”—Josiah Ober, coauthor of The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives