Since You're Mortal . . .: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays

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 fifth century AD, collected them as a way to instr...