This volume collates eleven essays on linguistic standards in Attic and Koine Greek. The concept of single or multiple linguistic standards in Attic, Atticising and Koine texts is frequently alluded to in current scholarship, but rarely defined. As the editors point out in the introduction to the volume, a more constructive approach that takes into account the variety of both the texts and their speakers has become a necessity. The twelve contributors to this volume guide readers thematically through the complex history of the varieties and perceived standards of Attic and Koine.

The volume is organised in three parts. Part 1, ‘Setting the Standards’, problematises the concept of linguistic standards. Following K. Bentein's comprehensive overview of linguistic norms in Greek official writing, W. Smith's and Monaco's chapters focus on the evidence for standardisation, or lack thereof, that can be found in the documentary papyri and the Atticist lexicographers. While the volume may be read non-sequentially and selectively, the opening chapter by Bentein should be read first, as it clarifies much of the terminology used throughout the volume. Bentein investigates the scope and the potential of different methods for identifying linguistic norms. He applies five commonly used approaches to capturing Greek linguistic norms (variationist linguistic theory, using lists of socio-linguistic features from modern and ancient grammarians, and looking at editorial and scribal regularisations on papyri) to a corpus of Greek petitions and evaluates the results obtained. He shows how these different methods, employed by the other contributors to the volume, do not overlap but retrieve different types of norms. Further research, he concludes, may invest in a combined approach such as the one he presents. Part 2, ‘Fashioning Language through Literature and Vice Versa’, also comprises three chapters, all of which focus broadly on how historiographical works both reflect and inform linguistic standards. The first two of these, by L. Huitink & T. Rood and G. Rubulotta, examine the language of the historian Xenophon while the third, by E. Cerroni, explores linguistic standards in the second book of Maccabees, a summary of the historical work of Jason of Cyrene. Finally, Part 3, ‘Socio-Political Aspects of Language’, is both the longest and the broadest section of the volume, with five essays spanning a wide range of topics – from the morphology of the dual to modern-day pedagogical approaches to New Testament Greek – and periods – ranging from the fifth-century poets Eupolis (A. Novokhatko) and Aristophanes (Machado) to the New Testament (R. Crellin and C. Ryan) and the Atticist lexicographers (Bozia). While there is no overall bibliography to the volume, each chapter concludes with a list of references.

The range of different topics and approaches explored by the authors is a notable strength of the volume, with contributions ranging from broader linguistic theory (e.g. Bentein) to focused literary case studies (e.g. Huitink & Rood) and from qualitative papers on the cultural background of language (e.g. Bozia) to quantitative linguistic papers. With regards to the latter, the innovative and data-driven chapter by Smith, on orthographical variation in papyrus letters stands out. Smith discusses two orthographical variables in a sample of around 300 ancient Greek papyrus letters from c. 50–250 ce. She uses the data, included in a comprehensive appendix at the end of the chapter, to challenge previous assumptions about spelling in ancient Greek papyri. Smith shows how looking beyond spelling irregularity to the distribution of orthographic variants (in this case, the use of iota adscripts) can build a nuanced picture of literacy in Roman Egypt. The colour figures are particularly welcome in this chapter, as Smith traces over papyrus texts to illustrate particular orthographic features (e.g. Figure 2.5, p. 84). A data-driven approach can also be found in the papers by Machado and Crellin. Machado's chapter on the language of Aristophanes demonstrates how we can use morphological typology to help solve textual problems. Adducing Aristophanes as a source for spoken Attic, Machado examines how speakers of Attic navigated the stigmas and prestige attached to the use of the dual. His findings are significant from both a linguistic and a literary angle, as he quantitively demonstrates that, when both a plural and a dual form are possible, it is the status of the referent that can help determine a reading. Aristophanes, he shows, is more likely to use dual morphology when the referent is animate, and plural morphology when inanimate. Similarly, Crellin combines quantitative analysis with a qualitative sociolinguistic investigation of the trends in the inflectional morphology of personal names in the New Testament and makes effective use of data-driven analysis to explain the morphological distribution.

Another of the volume's strengths lies in the span of both genres and periods. Most salient to the discussion of standards in Attic, Koine and Atticism are naturally the texts of the Atticist lexicographers and grammarians. Monaco's chapter on the Atticists’ perspective on Menander's language, which concludes the first part of the volume, provides an analysis of the types of linguistic labels used by the lexicographers to describe the norms and varieties of Greek. Focusing on what the Atticist lexicographers call the ‘Alexandrian’ dialect, which they use to describe the language of Menander, Monaco shows how this label does not outline a well-defined linguistic system but rather an inconsistent and ideological notion. Ancient labels, she observes, cannot be taken at face value, and this means that the modern linguist should exercise caution when gathering information about standards from the writers of the period who appear to define them. The abstract value of ancient labels is also highlighted by Bozia, who demonstrates through close reading of the Atticist lexica how their authors anchored their readers to classical norms while at the same time innovatively reusing and reinterpreting these norms to create new models of identity. The choice of Attic models to imitate is certainly an ideological, rather than linguistic one, and Rubulotta demonstrates through close textual analysis how even the most rigorous of the lexicographers such as Aelius Aristides considered Xenophon a canonical Attic author, despite his deviations from the constructed norm.

While some papers examine the reception of classical Attic texts, others demonstrate how these Attic texts can shed light on linguistic standards. Directly preceding Rubulotta's chapter is the study by Huitink & Rood on the language of Xenophon. The sequential organisation of papers in the volume is successful, as readers first see how Xenophon informed and reflected linguistic standards, and then how later critics used the writings of the historian to inform new linguistic standards. Huitink & Rood showcase some of the difficulties faced by linguists when classifying linguistic elements into broad categories such as ‘standard’ or ‘technical’. They successfully demonstrate how Xenophon adopted specialised military vocabulary into his historiographical narratives and in doing so introduced a new development in Greek prose style, which was followed by later authors of the literary Koine such as Polybius. Similarly, in the chapter on Eupolis, Novokhatko argues that Old Comedy played an essential role in the development of the notion of linguistic norm, standards and divergence, notably in the way in which dialects on stage are marked and juxtaposed (non-Attic characters with the familiar koine), as well as through on-stage discussion and moral evaluation of this phenomenon.

Finally, several chapters explore some of the key issues surrounding Biblical Greek. Cerroni addresses linguistic and stylistic issues relating to 2 Maccabees, focusing on three aspects – phonology, morphology and the lexicon – to determine the extent to which ‘grammatical correctness’ (that is, Atticism) can coexist with the Koine features of the book. Cerroni observes that the apparent lack of coherent style could be explained by the cultural background against which the text was composed, with the falling out of fashion of Asianism and the rebirth of grammar and Attic correctness in Hellenistic Jewish literature. The complex interaction of factors operating at various linguistic levels (phonology, sociolinguistics, discourse) also forms part of the focus of Crellin's chapter on (non)-inflection of personal names in the Greek New Testament. Crellin examines the phonology of personal names, the historical status and the stylistic choices of the named individual as well as issues of literary artistry, notably in literary authors such as Josephus, to disprove the commonly held view that non-inflection of personal names is a feature of non-literary Jewish Greek, while inflection is a literary feature. Crellin demonstrates that the decision to inflect or not is instead dictated by the writer's intended audience. Ryan concludes the volume by showcasing the applications of the linguistic theory discussed throughout the preceding chapters, as she considers the relationship between the linguistic study of New Testament Greek as a standard language and challenges faced by teachers of New Testament Greek. She appropriately wraps up the discussion by stressing the need for increased interdisciplinary dialogue between Classics and theology to ‘break the silo around New Testament Greek as an artificially constructed standardized language’ (p. 329) and by calling for advances in linguistic historiography to be taken into account in the creation of Greek textbooks.

The volume is part of a series on ‘anchoring innovation’. The theme is present throughout the volume, as each chapter explores Attic, Koine and Atticism as standards that anchored, or were seen to anchor the language and validate a text's perceived value. For instance, Smith talks of Greek ‘anchored in the past’ through its tradition of historical spelling (p. 75); Novokhatko suggests that Old Attic comedy played ‘a crucial role in anchoring Attic as standard Greek’ (p. 215); Machado seeks to ‘clarify in what period we should “anchor” the frequency and distribution of the duals in Aristophanes’ (p. 236); and Crellin demonstrates how individuals and groups in the Hellenistic Jewish and Graeco-Roman spheres used (non)-inflection of personal names to ‘anchor their identities’ (p. 283) to competing standards. The volume therefore makes a significant contribution to the understanding of ‘anchoring innovation’ in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The eleven chapters are varied in scope and methodology, and as such will not all be of interest to the Classicist, linguist or historian, who will perhaps prefer to select relevant chapters. However, the interwoven themes and the thoughtful ordering of the chapters make the volume very readable cover-to-cover, as readers are taken thematically through the long and complex history of Attic, Koine and Atticism.