James Romm | The New York Review of Books

The Magnificence of the Medicis

To the Florentine dynasts, art patronage was power expressed in pigment, but as a new show at the Met highlights, it left a legacy of incalculable value.

July 17, 2021

What Happened at Masada?

We know the Roman conquest of Masada only through the account of the enigmatic Jewish historian Josephus, whose shifting allegiances make his motives hard to discern.

A History of the Jewish War, AD 66–74

by Steve Mason

Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth

by Jodi Magness

January 14, 2021 issue

The Battle of the Hydaspes, in what is now Punjab, between the troops of Alexander the Great and the Indian king Porus, 326 BC; illustration from the Faits du Grand Alexandre, circa 1470

What Did India Learn from the Greeks?

The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks

by Richard Stoneman

April 9, 2020 issue

Joyce DiDonato as Agrippina and Matthew Rose as Claudio in Handel’s Agrippina at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2020

The Winking Satire of ‘Agrippina’

Agrippina, the Handel opera now premiering on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage, may have been written as a satire on the politics of its own time, but in the hands of producer Sir David McVicar, and set in the present day, it offers a timely paradigm of hypocrisy, corruption, and sexual manipulation in the halls of power.

March 1, 2020

Harold Bloom, 1930–2019

We were Bloom’s only company that morning in June, apart from his caregivers; his wife, Jeanne, was out shopping, and he seemed lonely at his table, a king without a court. Perhaps his stream of well-wishers had dried up, frightened by his extreme frailty.

October 15, 2019

Marie Spartali Stillman: Antigone Giving the Burial Rites to Her Brother’s Body, 1871

The Happy Tragedian

Sophocles: A Study of His Theater in Its Political and Social Context

by Jacques Jouanna, translated from the French by Steven Rendall

Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

by Simon Critchley

October 24, 2019 issue

Yilin Liu as Lyssa and Darcy Krasne as Iris, in Herakles, 2019

Euripides, with Notes

Greek tragedy survives today as words on a page, but ancient performances were distinguished as much for music and dance as for speeches and dialogue. But the tragic poets were composers as well as playwrights.

April 21, 2019

Aristogiton and Harmodius, Roman copies in marble after Greek bronze statues, circa fifth century BC

Loving Assassins

The Tyrant-Slayers of Ancient Athens: A Tale of Two Statues

by Vincent Azoulay, translated from the French by Janet Lloyd, with a foreword by Paul Cartledge

The Transformation of Athens: Painted Pottery and the Creation of Classical Greece

by Robin Osborne

August 16, 2018 issue

Peter Paul Rubens: The Death of Seneca, circa 1612–1613

A Stoic in Nero’s Court

The Cambridge Companion to Seneca

edited by Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro

Seneca: The Complete Tragedies, Volume 1

edited by Shadi Bartsch; translated from the Latin by Shadi Bartsch, Susanna Braund, Alex Dressler, and Elaine Fantham

Seneca: The Complete Tragedies, Volume 2

edited by Shadi Bartsch; translated from the Latin by Shadi Bartsch, Susanna Braund, and David Konstan

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December 21, 2017 issue

Red-figure bell-krater showing Ganymede, described in the Iliad as the most beautiful of mortal men, Greek, Attic, circa 500-490 BC

An Unknown Master

The master referred to as the Berlin Painter, who lived in Athens in the early fifth century BC, was an artist whose name and nationality remain unknown, but whose distinctive and confident illustration in the red-figure style stands out as clearly as any signature.

May 24, 2017

Abdel Kader Haidara in Timbuktu with ancient manuscripts from Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria, September 2009. Haider was instrumental in saving the manuscripts during the militant Islamist takeover of Timbuktu in 2012.

The Great Rescue in Timbuktu

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts

by Joshua Hammer

July 14, 2016 issue

Openwork plaque with a striding sphinx, Nimrud, Neo-Assyrian period, South Syrian style, ninth-eighth century BC

Great Aspirations of the Iron Age

“Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, presents a vast panorama of the Iron Age and an exploration of the commerce and connections between its major civilizations.

December 16, 2014

Octadrachm, reverse: jugate portrait of Ptolemy I and Berenice I, Alexandria, 260–240 BCE

When the Greeks Ruled Egypt

How did the Greeks, outnumbered by their subjects ten to one, maintain rule in ancient Egypt?

October 31, 2014