In Demosthenes: Democracy’s Defender, James Romm tells the tragic story of ancient Greece’s last democratic leader. In this Q&A, we talk with the author about his writing process and what today’s world leaders can learn from Demosthenes’ successes and failures.

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How do you, as a historian, ensure that you objectively cover all aspects of a historical figure, equally portraying both triumphs and defeats? Do you ever find yourself wanting to take sides when narrating ancient histories?

JR: I think one must take sides but do so fairly. That is, in assessing historical actors, moral questions inevitably come into play—“Was so-and-so right to do X? Or wrong? What sort of motives were driving this or that choice?” One tries to be generous in one’s judgments, but judgments have to be made, or history becomes a much less interesting field.

What could today’s world leaders learn from Demosthenes based on both the successes and failures of his legal career?

JR: The tragedy of Demosthenes’ career is that his campaign of opposition to Philip—the father of Alexander the Great—was launched too late; in the competition for domination of Greece, Philip had too big a head start to be overtaken. It’s hard to call this a failure however, since democratic nations have always had trouble recognizing emergent threats. Demosthenes was ahead of many others in Athens yet still behind the curve in terms of his ability to marshal an effective response. The lesson to be drawn is one we already know:  democracies can’t be complacent and let autocratic threats gather steam.

Given that Demosthenes’ political career ended in condemnation and his death by suicide was widely known, what underlying factors do you believe drove Demochares’ lifelong efforts to idealize his uncle’s legacy?

JR: Demochares seems to have looked to Demosthenes as an inspiring model of political virtue. He watched his uncle’s reputation get trashed in a bribery trial, but subsequent events in Athens made Demosthenes seem a prophet—a Macedonian warlord, Demetrius (profiled in another volume of mine in the Ancient Lives series), took charge of the city after starving it into submission, and Athenian politicians became his simpering sycophants. Demochares could justly claim that his uncle had been dead right about the Macedonian threat.

What role do you believe speech and rhetoric play in today’s democratic sphere compared to that of the Athenians?

JR: In the Athenian Assembly, where public speakers vied to win majority votes, there were no rules of propriety and no opportunities for fact-checking. Demosthenes and others told whatever lies and slung whatever mud they felt would sway the audience to their side. The result was not unlike what we see in today’s internet-dominated public discourse, where rumors and slanders can go viral and even our most revered leaders can lie with impunity. The parallels are all too clear, and distressing.

The bronze statue made in honor of Demosthenes reads “Demosthenes, if you’d had strength to equal your judgment, / Macedonian Ares would never have ruled the Greeks.” Do you believe that this is an accurate portrayal of Demosthenes’ strengths and weaknesses as a leader?

JR: The point of the epigram is that Demosthenes, unlike the great Athenian leaders who preceded him, had no military expertise or experience. He often pushed for war and gave advice as to how to win it, but he never actually led troops into battle and was widely suspected of cowardice on the one occasion we know of when he went into combat. He could not command the allegiance of Athens in the way that Pericles had, or Themistocles, or Cimon. Had he been more well rounded—a hero of actions as well as of words—he doubtless would have steered policy more effectively. As it was, he led Athens to a defeat from which it never recovered.

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James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including Demetrius: Sacker of Cities and Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece.

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