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Ancient Lives
Demetrius: Sacker of Cities
A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back again
“This colorful biography of Demetrius . . . explores his rich inner life and reveals an ancient world of violence and intrigue.”— New York Times Book Review
The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces.
Capitalizing on good looks, youth, and sexual prowess, Demetrius sought to weld those pieces together and recover the dream of a single world state, with a new Alexander—himself—at its head. He succeeded temporarily, but in crucial, colossal engagements—a massive invasion of Egypt, a siege of Rhodes that went on for a full year, and the Battle of Ipsus—he came up just short. He ended his career in a rash invasion of Asia and became the target of a desperate manhunt, only to be captured and destroyed by his own son-in-law.
James Romm tells the story of Demetrius the Besieger’s rise and spectacular fall but also explores his vibrant inner life and family relationships to depict a real, complex, and recognizable figure.
“This colorful biography of Demetrius . . . explores his rich inner life and reveals an ancient world of violence and intrigue.”— New York Times Book Review
The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces.
Capitalizing on good looks, youth, and sexual prowess, Demetrius sought to weld those pieces together and recover the dream of a single world state, with a new Alexander—himself—at its head. He succeeded temporarily, but in crucial, colossal engagements—a massive invasion of Egypt, a siege of Rhodes that went on for a full year, and the Battle of Ipsus—he came up just short. He ended his career in a rash invasion of Asia and became the target of a desperate manhunt, only to be captured and destroyed by his own son-in-law.
James Romm tells the story of Demetrius the Besieger’s rise and spectacular fall but also explores his vibrant inner life and family relationships to depict a real, complex, and recognizable figure.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 20, 2023
Demetrius Ittimenos*
Review of the Yale University Press hardcover (November 29, 2022).
Although the title of this biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (aka Demetrius the Besieger aka Demetrius I of Macedon (337-283 BC) implies a great number of victories, the overall impression that I had was that of a long series of catastrophic losses.
Demetrius followed in the footsteps of his father Antigonus One-Eye in the wars of the successors to Alexander the Great as the various generals battled for supremacy after the death of their leader. Demetrius' reputation is based on his construction of huge siege engines and warships, even though his military campaigns were often failures.
Lithograph of the Siege of Rhodes, English School, 19th Century. Source: See link under 'Helepolis' below.
The siege engine Helepolis (Greek: City Taker) was used in the siege of Rhodes and after the failure of that campaign, parts of it were used in the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes. Demetrius' flagship Hekkaidekērēs (Greek: The Sixteen) was considered the largest ever single-hulled warship built in the ancient world.
Bust of the divinised Demetrios Poliorketes wearing bull's horns. Roman copy from 1st century AD of a Greek original from 3rd century BC. Image sourced from Wikipedia.
Footnote
* Ittimenos (Greek: Loser)
Although it seemed like a long catalogue of failed campaigns, I still enjoyed reading this further book in the Yale University Press' Ancient Lives series. I had previously read Vergil: The Poet's Life and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth.
Other Reviews
Demetrius: Sacker of Cities by Marc DeSantis, The-Past.com, March 5, 2023.
Other Books
Demetrius the Besieger (2020) preceded Romm's book by a few years and was considered the first major English language biography of Demetrius. You can read a summary of Demetrius' life by one of its co-authors at Why Demetrius the Besieger Was One of History’s Most Outrageous Kings.
Trivia and Links
Read an excerpt from the book at How the Wars of the Successors Began at Yale University Press.
Author James Romm discusses "Demetrius: Sacker of Cities" at the Yale University Press Podcast which you can listen to here.
Demetrius: Sacker of Cities is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected February 2024), Vergil: The Poet’s Life (2023), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth (2022).
Review of the Yale University Press hardcover (November 29, 2022).
Although the title of this biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (aka Demetrius the Besieger aka Demetrius I of Macedon (337-283 BC) implies a great number of victories, the overall impression that I had was that of a long series of catastrophic losses.
Demetrius followed in the footsteps of his father Antigonus One-Eye in the wars of the successors to Alexander the Great as the various generals battled for supremacy after the death of their leader. Demetrius' reputation is based on his construction of huge siege engines and warships, even though his military campaigns were often failures.
Lithograph of the Siege of Rhodes, English School, 19th Century. Source: See link under 'Helepolis' below.
The siege engine Helepolis (Greek: City Taker) was used in the siege of Rhodes and after the failure of that campaign, parts of it were used in the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes. Demetrius' flagship Hekkaidekērēs (Greek: The Sixteen) was considered the largest ever single-hulled warship built in the ancient world.
Bust of the divinised Demetrios Poliorketes wearing bull's horns. Roman copy from 1st century AD of a Greek original from 3rd century BC. Image sourced from Wikipedia.
Footnote
* Ittimenos (Greek: Loser)
Although it seemed like a long catalogue of failed campaigns, I still enjoyed reading this further book in the Yale University Press' Ancient Lives series. I had previously read Vergil: The Poet's Life and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth.
Other Reviews
Demetrius: Sacker of Cities by Marc DeSantis, The-Past.com, March 5, 2023.
Other Books
Demetrius the Besieger (2020) preceded Romm's book by a few years and was considered the first major English language biography of Demetrius. You can read a summary of Demetrius' life by one of its co-authors at Why Demetrius the Besieger Was One of History’s Most Outrageous Kings.
Trivia and Links
Read an excerpt from the book at How the Wars of the Successors Began at Yale University Press.
Author James Romm discusses "Demetrius: Sacker of Cities" at the Yale University Press Podcast which you can listen to here.
Demetrius: Sacker of Cities is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected February 2024), Vergil: The Poet’s Life (2023), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth (2022).
January 17, 2023
Demetrius, one of the Alexander wannabes of his time, spent his life trying to put the empire back together. In the course of this he developed a variety of siege engines and monster ships. Between wars, he indulged in excessive drink and sex. Not surprising that Plutarch paired his biography with that of Marcus Antonius.
Hellenistic Greece is not really my thing; I generally stick to Roman and classical Greek history. I picked this up because I liked the first book in the Ancient Lives series (Crassus). Romm writes in a lively style, skillfully elucidating the twists and turns of the Diadochoi through the life of Demetrius Poliorketes. He aims at general readers, but notes problems and gaps in our knowledge. The book is unobtrusively equipped with plenty of notes and bibliography for those who want to pursue specific topics in the sources or secondary literature.
Hellenistic Greece is not really my thing; I generally stick to Roman and classical Greek history. I picked this up because I liked the first book in the Ancient Lives series (Crassus). Romm writes in a lively style, skillfully elucidating the twists and turns of the Diadochoi through the life of Demetrius Poliorketes. He aims at general readers, but notes problems and gaps in our knowledge. The book is unobtrusively equipped with plenty of notes and bibliography for those who want to pursue specific topics in the sources or secondary literature.
April 28, 2023
3.5, not as good as ghost on the throne, covers a lot of the same ground in the first few chapters.
April 17, 2023
Fascinating book about the struggles to succeed Alexander the Great. Constant battles amount the successors with shifting alliances.
March 5, 2023
What an excellent read! The historical narrative and the figures therein come to life with Romm's telling.
February 9, 2024
One day when Demetrius ignored his father’s summons, claiming he had a fever, Antigonus went to the boy’s chambers and spotted a hetaera, a courtesan, furtively slipping away. As he entered his son’s room, Demetrius stuck to his story:
“The fever has left me,” he declared.
“Yes, I met it just now as it went out the door,” his father replied.
It is really really hard to come away from this book and not think – I could have just re-read Plutarch.
I accept that Romm sources more widely than Plutarch, applies more rigorous historiography, and is probably clearer with the narrative. Yet I really really find it hard to get away from regretting that I just didn’t read Plutarch.
Demetrius is an interesting character – not quite a freebooter as he had a semi-legitimate dynastical claim. He was also rarely totally bereft of a power base and therefore a player during the Successor Wars. However, Demetrius’ main noteworthiness is that he continued to exist for as long as he did, rather than any sustained (or possibly even momentary) periods of strategic success.
How much confidence did Demetrius inspire? He had failed to win in Egypt, at Rhodes, and most recently in Thessaly when facing Cassander.
I also feel Romm does not quite have the same energy as with Ghosts on the Throne - it’s a pretty straight man’s retelling, plus a little bit of titillation. The best stories sourced from… …Plutarch. I get the book is meant to be a precis of a moderately major character of the period, but Demetrius is probably better novelised – to really extract something from him, you probably need to go dramatic.
If you absolutely need your Diadochi fix from yet another shuffling round of sources that haven’t revealed anything new in the last century(? – more even?), sure, but realistically you should just read a general history (like Ghosts on the Throne!) and maybe an annotated copy of Plutarch. It is a good period to read about, just not via Demetrius.
“The fever has left me,” he declared.
“Yes, I met it just now as it went out the door,” his father replied.
It is really really hard to come away from this book and not think – I could have just re-read Plutarch.
I accept that Romm sources more widely than Plutarch, applies more rigorous historiography, and is probably clearer with the narrative. Yet I really really find it hard to get away from regretting that I just didn’t read Plutarch.
Demetrius is an interesting character – not quite a freebooter as he had a semi-legitimate dynastical claim. He was also rarely totally bereft of a power base and therefore a player during the Successor Wars. However, Demetrius’ main noteworthiness is that he continued to exist for as long as he did, rather than any sustained (or possibly even momentary) periods of strategic success.
How much confidence did Demetrius inspire? He had failed to win in Egypt, at Rhodes, and most recently in Thessaly when facing Cassander.
I also feel Romm does not quite have the same energy as with Ghosts on the Throne - it’s a pretty straight man’s retelling, plus a little bit of titillation. The best stories sourced from… …Plutarch. I get the book is meant to be a precis of a moderately major character of the period, but Demetrius is probably better novelised – to really extract something from him, you probably need to go dramatic.
If you absolutely need your Diadochi fix from yet another shuffling round of sources that haven’t revealed anything new in the last century(? – more even?), sure, but realistically you should just read a general history (like Ghosts on the Throne!) and maybe an annotated copy of Plutarch. It is a good period to read about, just not via Demetrius.
October 31, 2023
I knew a little bit about how Alexander's empire was divided up among his generals after his death - Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Anatolia and the Middle East, and so on. I knew nothing of Demetrius. But I think that in my mind it had sorted itself out pretty quickly with a natural allocation of territories after a few skirmishes. It should have been no surprise to me that it was not that simple. There were many years of endless battles and jockeying for position among men whose lives were about fighting and conquest and who all saw themselves as being entitled to rule Alexander's empire in its entirety. Their troops loved their fighting, victories and plunder and so did the leaders. It was the only life that they knew. They couldn't happily rule in peace over a sizable chunk of the known world. Their ambitions drove them to want it all. Anyone who disbanded his army was prey for his rivals, and anyone who kept his army intact had to keep it fighting to control it. It must have been a hellish period for the people trying to live their lives in the vast regions around the Mediterranean and Middle East that were so long ravaged by these wars.
Demetrius was handsome and brave, skilled as a general, a leader and a diplomat, but he also had his setbacks. He couldn't sit still and consolidate his gains, and he was probably ultimately not so much as a civilian leader. In any case he had a serious addiction to war. He was like a gambler at the craps table who wins for a while, knowing full well that the only possible long run outcome is to go bust, but still continuing roll after roll after roll until the inevitable happens. Game over.
Demetrius was handsome and brave, skilled as a general, a leader and a diplomat, but he also had his setbacks. He couldn't sit still and consolidate his gains, and he was probably ultimately not so much as a civilian leader. In any case he had a serious addiction to war. He was like a gambler at the craps table who wins for a while, knowing full well that the only possible long run outcome is to go bust, but still continuing roll after roll after roll until the inevitable happens. Game over.
March 29, 2024
Amazing storytelling brings the history and wars of Diadochoi to life. Hellenistic period deserves more books like this one. I can`t understand why the Hellenistic period, with such a rich array of adventures, intrigues, culture, sudden reversals of fortune, and so on, is so underrepresented in popular history books, historical fiction, or movies. It seems most people are far more interested in the classical Greek period, Greco-Persian wars, and then Rome as if nothing interesting happened in between. The Hellenistic period is intensely interesting and deserves Game of Thrones-like series and movies. In fact, quite often G.O.T., a fictional story, pales in comparison with real history, especially in the Hellenistic Period. While you won`t find dragons in history, I think war elephants are just as good!
June 24, 2024
An amazing read, the Yale Ancient Lives series again does not disappoint.
I have very little knowledge on the wars of the Successors and had never before heard of Demetrius. Now I have read this I am eager to read more upon the subject and learn even more about this time of nearly constant war, mistrust and uneasy alliances.
Structured in such a way that it reads amazingly, it made me want to not stop reading, not something I find I feel often. The actual Structure of the writing was something that made it easy to read but gave all the knowledge you would like.
Overall, a great instalment in a great series, I would whole heartedly recommend people read this book and series
I have very little knowledge on the wars of the Successors and had never before heard of Demetrius. Now I have read this I am eager to read more upon the subject and learn even more about this time of nearly constant war, mistrust and uneasy alliances.
Structured in such a way that it reads amazingly, it made me want to not stop reading, not something I find I feel often. The actual Structure of the writing was something that made it easy to read but gave all the knowledge you would like.
Overall, a great instalment in a great series, I would whole heartedly recommend people read this book and series
May 19, 2023
This book is very thin, in both size and the depth to which it dives into the subject. More a string of facts with a few colloquial asides about how one development or another might have felt. It appears to be one of a series of Plutarch-like Lives. As such, it’s certainly interesting. However, it’s not satisfying for someone who wants the broader context of history such as material culture, philosophy and world view, archaeological record etc
June 30, 2023
Love Romm. Nice overview.
October 6, 2023
A gem
The Ancient Lives series has produced another great book. It tackles a fairly complicated subject and brings Demetrius into focus clearly while not losing the reader
The Ancient Lives series has produced another great book. It tackles a fairly complicated subject and brings Demetrius into focus clearly while not losing the reader
December 2, 2023
The Gram Parsons of antiquity.
June 12, 2024
I enjoyed very much reading this book. It vividly traces the life of Demetrius, serving as a captivating through-line to the tumultuous forty years following the death of Alexander the Great. Romm expertly navigates the reader through the era of constant battles among Alexander's successors, highlighting the shifting alliances and betrayals that characterized this period. The detailed narrative brings to life the complexities of Demetrius's ambitions and the relentless power struggles that defined his life.
The detailed accounts of battles and political maneuvers are balanced with insightful analysis, making it easier to follow the intricate web of relationships between the different empires and generals competing for power.
The detailed accounts of battles and political maneuvers are balanced with insightful analysis, making it easier to follow the intricate web of relationships between the different empires and generals competing for power.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews