This volume presents a series of studies in honour and in memory of the late P.J. Rhodes, a prolific and widely respected Greek historian and epigraphist. In honouring and building upon Rhodes’ extensive publications in his many fields of interest, the volume reflects the diversity of the honorand's work and Greek history more broadly. The book opens with an introduction by the editors summarising each chapter and a touching tribute by J.K. Davies. The volume is divided into four sections covering different aspects of Rhodes’ scholarship: ‘History and Biography’, ‘Law’, ‘Politics’ and ‘Epigraphy’. It is beyond the scope of this review to discuss each paper in detail; I have therefore elected to discuss a representative sample of papers.

Part 1, ‘History and Biography’, mostly includes studies on historiography or historiographical topics. D. Correa revisits the rivalry between Herodotus and Hecataeus, with particular emphasis on the ways in which competition and rhetoric result in the agonistic methodological development of Greek historiography, taking as a case study Herodotus’ Egyptian ethnography. R.W. Wallace argues that in Thucydides the two Athenian expeditions to Sicily are ultimately presented as defensive, with Thucydides’ explicit statements about Athenian power simply a post hoc framing. In a useful paper M. Gatto draws attention to the fragments of Ephorus as a key fulcrum in the development of the biographical tradition of Lycurgus, as both a lawgiver and the founder of Sparta's allegedly enduring politeia. Gatto's conclusions are convincing. Ephorus clearly displayed a lively interest in both the mythological and the political origins of Spartan society (e.g. FGrHist 70 F 117) (see also P. Christesen, ‘Spartans and Scythians, a Meeting of Mirages: the Portrayal of the Lycurgan Politeia in Ephorus’ Histories’, in: A. Powell and S. Hodkinson [edd.], Sparta: The Body Politic [2010]). G. Verhasselt's paper considers the implications of the ‘double abbreviation’ of Heraclides Lembus’ epitomes of the Aristotelian Constitutions through a detailed study of the epitome of the Athenaion Politeia, the double abbreviation referring to the fact that both Heraclides and a later excerptor produced the received text. The epitome thus preserves the thematic arrangement of the Athenaion Politeia but virtually nothing else, its content being confused and selective; for example, the discussion of the Thirty elides the majority of the Athenaion Politeia's narrative, omitting any reference to the execution of Theramenes, the amnesty of 404/3 bce and the restoration of the democracy. Verhasselt correctly concludes that any information derived from the excerpts of Heraclides’ epitomes should be treated with the utmost scepticism since they are most likely extremely distorted.

Part 2, ‘Law’, explores both legal discourse in literary material and the grittier mechanics of Greek law. Leão examines in incisive and thorough detail the references to Solonian legislation in the Aristophanic corpus (including fragments and scholia). While Leão concedes that some of these references, especially those in a fragment of the lost play Banqueters, are faint, he makes a convincing case for such references forming an important part of a ‘legal imaginary’ with which fifth-century Athenian theatregoers would likely have been familiar. Similar concerns are pursued by Á. Rodrigues, who argues that a ‘relatively well defined and coherent representation of the nomothetēs’ (p. 156) can be observed in fourth-century philosophy, historiography and legal oratory; she further contends that this reflected an increasing concern in the fourth century with ‘legislative intent’, borrowing a concept most thoroughly discussed in American jurisprudence, of either legendary lawgivers or the presumed proposers of historical laws. D. Napoli, in a wide-ranging interpretation of Antiphon's Tetralogies, makes the interesting point that ‘deviation’ from orthodox or correct Athenian law could act as a teaching or theoretical aid, questioning the traditional interpretation of these speeches as rhetorical or mimetic exercises intended to teach forensic oratory. Antiphon's Tetr. 2, for example, demonstrates the direct interplay between linguistic interpretation, and factual and legal questions; culpability for the accidental death of a young boy depends on whether the throwing of a javelin and the subsequent death were part of the same action, in the Greek hinging on Antiphon's use of βάλλω, ‘throw, hit’. His conclusion that Antiphon uses ‘a legal form to problematise legal principles’ (p. 129) perhaps puts the case too strongly, since the relationship with real courtroom practice remains uncertain. Nevertheless, Napoli's paper is convincing in presenting a more legally literate view of this philosophical material. A.-I. Rassia undertakes a detailed study of a sacred regulation from the Amphiareion at Oropus (LSCG 69), suggesting that there is a semantic overlap between the concepts of ἀδικία (‘injustice’) and ἀσέβεια (‘impiety’) in the inscription. She argues that the drafters of LSCG 69 imagined wrongdoing to encompass offences against the god, the sanctuary and other mortal attendees, situated along a continuum between injustice and impiety; successful incubation at the sanctuary required legal conformity with local regulations and a sound ethical relationship with the god. The issue of the definition of ‘sacred laws’, not addressed by Rassia, is explicitly considered in M. Gagarin's paper on Hellenistic Crete, focusing on two third-century bce inscriptions from Itanos (IC III,4 8 and 9). He concludes that in the Hellenistic Cretan material at least there is no ancient definition of a sacred law, noting that systematic collections and, one infers, definitions are primarily a feature of modern scholarship. This stands in contrast with recent attempts to classify F. Sokolowski's texts more precisely (E.M. Harris, Kernos 28 [2015]; J.-M. Carbon et al., CGRN: http://cgrn.ulg.ac.be/), which Gagarin acknowledges as useful but does not take to describe an ancient concept of laws and regulations about sacred matters.

Part 3, ‘Politics’, contains R. Brock's insightful chapter on the ‘oligarchic ideal’, a code of behaviour in the archaic symposion and other elite spaces that policed behaviour through coded language and a possibly unspoken set of ideals, a common tactic of ‘restricted in-groups concerned to police their membership and ward off undesirables’ (p. 216). Archaic aristoi should drink in good company (Theog. 627–8), but they should not get too drunk and certainly not let their usual good behaviour slip (Theog. 309–12). On the other hand, there are frequent references to drunkenness in the corpus (θωρηχθείς, ‘well-fortified, i.e. drunkenness’), suggesting that this may not always have been the case. Brock's chapter builds on H. van Wees's work that analogises Archaic elites to mafiosi of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (‘The Mafia of Early Greece: Violent Exploitation in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries bc’, in: K. Hopwood [ed.], Organised Crime in Antiquity [1999]) and studies that have sought to understand the construction of social identities from archaic Greek poetry (J. Romney, Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece [2020]). If Brock's paper examines ideology, then A.L. Villafranca's paper examines the effect that Archaic elites had on political systems, defending the position that tyranny was a product of archaic aristocracy rather than opposed to the development of the political community (G. Anderson, ClAnt 24 [2005]). L. Mitchell examines the twined fates of Plataea and Tanagra as part of the Attic-Boeotian borderlands, demonstrating that the identification of political boundaries is only a partial answer to how border regions functioned, in particular noting the ‘fluidity of political affiliations’ (p. 251) between the two small poleis (see also S. Farchard, ‘The Resources of the Borderlands: Control, Inequality, and Exchange on the Attic-Boeotian Borders’, in: P. Ducrey [ed.], Économie et inégalité [2017]).

Part 4, ‘Epigraphy’, begins with R. Osborne's study of the distinctiveness of epigraphic texts in place and time, especially reflecting on the fact that most inscriptions are the product of a single act of writing; this paper's most intriguing contention is the extreme variation that Osborne identifies in seemingly ‘formulaic’ texts (horoi, grave-markers, decrees), a sign of the ‘ferocious individualism underlying the Greek city’ (p. 300). These are interesting observations that merit further investigation (for one perspective see P. Liddel, Decrees of Fourth-Century Athens [2020], Vol. 2, 59–108, on the role of the individual in decree-making). A. Patay-Horváth argues that both lost inscriptions purported to have been inscribed on the Delphic serpent column are literary inventions, namely that both the ‘Pausanias inscription’ (Th. 1.132) and the ‘Diodorus inscription’ (D.S. 11.33) were never in fact inscribed on the monument, citing in support of his view the apparent implausibility of the narratives surrounding them and the lack of key details that should appear in dedicatory formulae (e.g. name of deity). He concludes by suggesting that no traces of the original dedicatory inscriptions remain in our evidence, but that such an inscription must have appeared on the lost base of the column. K. Takeuchi presents a detailed epigraphical and historical commentary of ll. 57–65 of the Thorikos sacrificial calendar (OR 146) based on new readings and autopsy of the stone. This is exemplary work, and the high-quality colour photographs published alongside this partial edition give strong support to Takeuchi's proposed new readings. The paper concludes with detailed observations on the calendar's letter forms but no new proposals on the date. A.C. Scafuro's paper provides a detailed history of two interrelated texts from the Demosthenic corpus, the Reply to Philip (oration 11) and Philip's Letter to the Athenians (text 12); after providing a careful history of research on these difficult texts, she argues that text 12 is an authentic document of the fourth century, even if its authorship cannot be confirmed. This is a convincing and thorough case rooted in the close analysis of contemporary principles of ‘international law’, that is non-systematic principles regularly invoked by poleis (see A. Chaniotis, ‘Justifying Territorial Claims in Classical and Hellenistic Greece’, in: E.M. Harris and L. Rubinstein [edd.], The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece [2004]). In particular, Scafuro argues that signs of legal expertise and the reference to a πρόκλησις (‘formal challenge’) in text 12 point to a fourth-century context.

The volume is produced to a high standard. There is regrettably no consistent policy across the chapters regarding the publication of Greek. Contributors vary between translating without the original text, including the original text or transliterating select terms. It is unfortunate that substantial portions of Greek appear without translations in several papers; readers without the language will struggle to access the fascinating insights of both Brock's and Takeuchi's respective papers, for example. However, this in no way detracts from the substance and quality of each contribution, which is consistently high. This collection of essays is a fitting tribute to its honorand and a fascinating cross-section of work currently being undertaken by Greek historians and epigraphers across the discipline's various sub-fields.