This long-awaited volume is the natural sequel to its editors’ earlier collection, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 bc (2003). It is, unsurprisingly, also remarkably similar in format. A brief introduction (pp. xv–xxxii) sets out the editors’ principles of selection, along with a useful summary of the principal issues surrounding the text and interpretation of Greek inscriptions – including physical context, the challenges of restoring the text of incomplete inscriptions, problems of dating and an outline of the most common (that is, the Athenian) epigraphic formulae used. Two maps, one of Greece and the Aegean, and one of ‘the Greek world’ as far west as Sicily, are included to help the reader locate the inscriptions. The main body of the work is, of course, the inscriptions, of which there are 95 in total. Each entry receives a brief summary and bibliography, the Greek text, a facing English translation and a substantial commentary, usually between two and four pages in length. Sixteen pages of plates are included with whole or partial images of seventeen of the inscriptions. The volume concludes with a convenient list of fifth-century Athenian archons, a concordance with other commonly-used epigraphic collections, a substantial bibliography and three indexes: of persons and places, subjects and significant Greek words.

Much like the preceding volume, one great virtue of this collection is that it combines text, translation and commentary all in one easily accessible place. There have been collections that included text and commentary before, most significantly M.N. Tod's A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, Volumes I (1946²) and II (1948), and R. Meiggs and D. Lewis's A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century bc (1969; revised 1988). There have also been collections that included English translations of numerous fifth-century inscriptions, such as C. Fornara's Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (1983²) and Osborne's own LACTOR volumes The Athenian Empire (2000⁴) and Athenian Democracy (2014). Not until the present volume, however, has there been a single book that students can consult for text, translation and commentary all at once.

The choice of inscriptions is also a strength of this volume. Whilst Athenian material (and, as a result, information on specifically Athenian epigraphic conventions) inevitably has a very strong presence, Osborne and Rhodes have made a point of including material from a wide range of Greek poleis; indeed, the first five inscriptions in the collection are non-Athenian. The choice of subject matter is also refreshingly broad, encompassing political decision making (at both polis and sub-polis level), military records (including casualty lists), religious offerings (including curse tablets), regulation of coinage, inter-polis trade and more. At the same time, nearly all the ‘classics’ that one would expect to find – and that a student would be most likely to skim through this volume in search of – are present: the Phaselis decree (no. 120), the Erythrae decree (no. 122), the Gortyn Code (no. 125), Thudippus’ reassessment of Athenian tribute in 425 bc (no. 153) and so forth.

One inscription in particular merits special mention, albeit more for its broader implications than in its own right: the Athenian treaty with Egesta in Sicily (no. 166). This inscription is the focal point of the famous ‘three-bar sigma’ controversy, which has prompted a reappraisal of the dating of many fifth-century inscriptions, and indeed of the broader narrative of fifth-century Athenian imperialism (on which see N. Papazarkadas, ‘Epigraphy and the Athenian Empire: Re-shuffling the Chronological Cards’, in J. Ma, N. Papazarkadas, R. Parker [edd.], Interpreting the Athenian Empire [2009], pp. 67–88). Osborne and Rhodes's volume is the first major collection of its kind to be published since the communis opinio finally came to accept what H. Mattingly first suggested over 50 years ago – that the presence of the three-bar form of the letter sigma does not automatically date an Athenian inscription to no later than the 440s bc. As a result, several other inscriptions in this collection, for example the tribute decree proposed by Cleinias (no. 154), have been re-dated, and Osborne and Rhodes's re-contextualised commentary on them is thus particularly useful. In a similar vein, the inclusion of updated bibliographies which include references to newer works or resources, such as S. Lambert's Attic Inscriptions Online (https://www.atticinscriptions.com, first launched in 2012), further differentiates this volume from older epigraphic collections.

The choice of images for the plates is to be commended; indeed, this is the most obvious improvement from the previous, fourth-century volume. There are double the number of plates, the image quality is higher (although this may in part simply represent advances in digital photography during the last decade), and – most importantly – much more attention has been paid to choosing inscriptions whose text is (for the most part) clearly visible to the reader.

One minor problem is that the numeration of this volume is somewhat counter-intuitive. Osborne and Rhodes note in their preface (p. v) that ‘since with a lack of foresight we began the numbering in our previous collection at 1, for this collection we have reversed the order of our names, and to foreshadow another volume, devoted to the archaic period, we have here started our numbering at 101’. This seems a needlessly awkward solution; would it not have been better either to treat the numeration of each volume entirely separately or else to have a consistent numeration (and order of names) which would span all three volumes, including the forthcoming volume on the Archaic period? One of the underrated strengths of previous collections of inscriptions is their ease of unambiguous reference. ‘Tod 101’, for instance, unambiguously denotes the alliance between Boeotia and Athens in 395 bc; whereas ‘O&R 101’ (Hieron of Syracuse's dedication of his Olympic victory at Cyme c. 474/3 bc) has to be distinguished from ‘R&O 101’ (the restoration of exiles at Tegea in 324/3 bc). The eventual publication of the third and final volume will only accentuate this issue. Having to distinguish between the post-404 ‘R&O’ and pre-404 ‘O&R’ numeration seems to me a distracting complexity that could have been avoided.

I offer two more minor criticisms, both of which may be somewhat idiosyncratic. One is the font chosen for the Greek text; I much prefer the thinner, wider and italicised font of the previous volume to the thicker, narrower, non-italicised font chosen for the present volume. The other is merely one facet of the inevitable quibbles that many scholars may have at their own favoured inscription(s) being excluded; I wonder, for example, at the reasons for excluding the reverse face of the Choiseul Marble (IG I³ 377) whilst including the obverse face (no. 180 = IG I³ 375), especially given that the former has important implications for both Athenian finance and the Athenian calendar.

Nonetheless, this remains an exceedingly valuable reference work for anyone with a serious interest in the use of fifth-century Greek inscriptions. Whilst the individual student or independent scholar may (unless they are particularly dedicated to epigraphy) best be advised to wait for an eventual paperback re-issue, this is a volume that every serious library that professes to cater to the fields of either Classics or ancient history should have on its shelves.