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In Since You’re Mortal…: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays (W. W. Norton & Company; May 5, 2026, hardcover, $24.99), Romm revives fragments of Greek drama that nearly vanished from history to preserve a tradition of moral reflection forged in times of war, political upheaval, and social change. Drawn largely from quotations compiled in the fifth century AD by the scholar Stobaeus, these sharp, poetic lines confront the same dilemmas we face today: how to live well in an uncertain world governed as much by fortune as by reason.

Across topics ranging from luck and injustice to virtue without reward, the Greek playwrights, among them Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Menander, offer an unsentimental view of human life. They warn that good people do not always prosper, that power often favors the shameless, and that politics rarely rewards the just. Yet they also insist that ethical restraint, self-knowledge, and loyalty to friends remain essential, even when the world does not reciprocate.  Their insights feel especially resonant today, as democracies strain under polarization, public trust erodes, and debates rage over whether moral behavior still “pays.” The Greeks’ answer, Romm shows, is bracingly modern: virtue is not a guarantee of success, but it is the only defense against becoming monstrous.

In passages addressing fortune and chance, the plays dismantle the comforting myth that success is earned purely through merit. In reflections on friendship and loyalty, they ask who stays true when luck turns. And in their treatment of power and freedom, they expose how tyranny flourishes when fear replaces conscience, a theme that echoes across contemporary political landscapes worldwide. Rather than offering comfort, the Greeks offer clarity: life is unstable, suffering unavoidable, and death final. What remains within human control is judgment, how one acts, whom one stands by, and what one refuses to become.