The pamphlet on the nature of the Athenian democracy by the ‘Old Oligarch’ is a very popular text on undergraduate courses treating fifth-century Athens and its empire, shedding light as it does on certain Athenians' views of the empire, constitutional disputes and contemporary social attitudes, but the complexity of its interpretation is often underestimated. A translated text with commentary has been available in the LACTOR series for some time (revised in 1992); M. and R.'s new edition, however, offers a revised Greek text with facing translation and an extensive and detailed historical commentary and analysis, aiming to explain the reasoning behind the often problematic claims made in the text. This edition will become an indispensable aid to any consideration of the text: it is accessible, detailed and thorough, and it will be immensely useful to undergraduates trying to make sense of a difficult and polemical text.

The authors' expertise is evident in the detailed discussion of the workings of the democracy and empire, incorporating references to a wealth of historical and epigraphic material, and in the consideration of the political context of the work as part of a developing ideological debate. The commentary offers focussed and informed discussion of even the smallest points, for instance at 2.8, where the claim that the Athenians have acquired foreign vocabulary and developed a mixture of diet and dress prompts discussion of the imported word tahos and the peacocks which it designates, the use of diaitia as ‘regimen’, and Persian imports such as parasols, cloaks and shoes. The structure of the argument is carefully mapped, and the edition also includes appendices on stylistic points – characteristic vocabulary, generalisations, verbal repetitions – and a very useful catalogue of class labels, and qualities attributed to the demos and the oligoi. Points of grammar and expression are also discussed, though this is not a text for learners: a good command of Greek on the part of the reader is assumed.

The introduction considers the thorny issues of authorship, context and audience, concluding that the work is not that of Xenophon (though the choice of ‘X’ to designate the unknown author is perhaps unhelpful in this regard), is probably a debating exercise by a sophist's pupil, and is addressed to an assumed Spartan audience. M. and R. are open in their assessment of the work's shortcomings, describing it as confused in structure and exaggerated and occasionally incoherent in argument, but the repeated assertion that all faults are an indication of a ‘youthful’ author (pp. 15, 27, 28) seem unjustified, and in the service of an unspoken model of writing – the work is described as ‘a topic which has been set for X by his teacher’, and the final chapters added ‘in response to his tutor's comments’. Poor writing style, generalisations and forced contrasts are not always faults solely of the young, and such a model may breed an unhelpfully patronising attitude towards the work in the reader, compromising its status as genuine evidence for political views in the late fifth century.

On the issue of dating, M. and R. summarise dates previously proposed for the work, from the 440s to the 390s, showing the wide divergence of scholarly views (and the considerable ingenuity of some arguments). M. and R. establish an extremely precise date for the writing of the Constitution: summer 424, after the performance of Aristophanes' Knights, and before Brasidas' march to Thrace; at 2.15 they suggest a further refinement to late summer 424, after the abortive democratic coup at Megara (Thuc. 4.66–74). This dating has two effects: it makes the work contemporary with Euripides' Supplices and Electra, allowing M. and R. to draw comparisons in the use of class terms and attitudes, and it also means that a work which is in itself very vague, speaking only in generalities about the organisation of the empire or issues of defence, is situated in the very well-documented period of the Archidamian War, every idea of the Old Oligarch being related to a recent documented event. Such close dating in fact makes for a rather closed circle of historical conclusions, in which the Constitution refers only to events already well known, and becomes entirely reflexive to our existing knowledge.

The principal value of the text, however, lies in the criticisms which it levels at the democracy, and the political and social attitudes which it betrays, both of which M. and R. treat in detail, distinguishing the justified from the exaggerated and sketching the development of pro-oligarchic ideas through the 420s and 410s. Although in their view the Old Oligarch's work had little contemporary importance, they demonstrate how its language and outlook represent a significant strand of oligarchic thought, and hold the counter-arguments to democracy up to close examination. The bibliography suggested throughout is very full and up to date; on just a few points additions can be made. On the topic of laws about comedy, A. Sommerstein, ‘Harassing the Satirist …’ in I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (edd.), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (2004), pp. 145–74 should be included, and Joss's Ph.D. thesis referenced at 1.10 has since been published as K.L. Wrenhaven, Reconstructing the Slave: the Image of the Slave in Ancient Greece (2012).