The Problem with Being a God: Robert Cioffi Reviews Demetrius the Besieger for the London Review of Books

Demetrius the Besieger seems like a biographer’s dream, says Robert Cioffi, assistant professor of classics, so why haven’t we seen more biographies of him? “He has often been dismissed as an ‘also ran’ among the big personalities of the Hellenistic era,” Cioffi writes in a review Demetrius the Besieger for the London Review of Books, “a mercurial general whose excesses got the better of him, or as nothing more than a ‘mirror’ of his time.” Pat Wheatley and Charlotte Dunn’s new biography of Demetrius, a “product of their two doctoral dissertations and years of scholarship,” is the first written in English. Beyond his eponymous reputation as a siege leader, Demetrius was also “a savvy manipulator of his own image,” being seen by some as a living god—a reputation that came with its own set of complications. “The problem with being a god,” Cioffi writes, “is that you have to live up to expectations.”

Post Date: 05-17-2022