James Romm’s Book Plato and the Tyrant Reviewed in the Washington Post

Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece, a new book by James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College, has been reviewed in the Washington Post. The work is “a deft and engaging work of history, philosophy and biography, as well as a meta-commentary on the perils of regarding canonical thinkers as disembodied minds,” writes Becca Rothfield for the Post. In his book, Romm draws on personal letters of Plato―documents that have long been kept in obscurity―to show how a philosopher helped topple the leading Greek power of the era, the opulent city of Syracuse, where Plato encountered two authoritarian rulers and tried to steer them toward philosophy all while writing his masterpiece, Republic. “Romm relates this history—and introduces readers to a colorful cast of sycophantic courtiers, eccentric philosophers and defiant poets—with flair. He is an equally admirable guide to the many controversies in which the affair is mired.”

Post Date: 07-01-2025