M.’s monograph seeks to expand conversations on Graeco-Persian cultural exchange by exploring Greek reception of Near Eastern materials and ideas from the Geometric period through Alexander. M. focuses on the efforts of Greek elites to heighten and advertise status within their own communities through the consumption, display and transformation of external items and ideas, drawing a parallel with the ‘cabinets of curiosities’ assembled and prized by wealthy Europeans in the age of Enlightenment. Her approach builds on previous scholarship on Athenian appropriations of Achaemenid material culture (especially M.C. Miller's Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century b.c. [1997]), but broadens the inquiry by including Ionian, Spartan and Macedonian encounters with the Near East and Persia. M. concludes that ‘emulation and transformation of artefacts and ideas from the Achaemenid empire were at the heart of ancient Greek culture, elite identities, and even politics’ (p. 296); but at several points she identifies limits to cultural emulation, criticising identifications of Persian War metaphors in the Parthenon frieze (pp. 175–85) and arguing that display of Achaemenid items was less significant in constructions of elite identity at Sparta (p. 251).

Unfortunately, M.’s study displays serious methodological and interpretative shortcomings that undermine many of its conclusions. While cataloguing numerous cases of cultural reception, it often devotes more space to summary of prior scholarship than to new argumentation. Dismissive of the Graeco-Persian wars as a ‘Great Event’, M. misses opportunities to explore the cultural aftermath of military encounters between Persia, its subjects and the mainland Greeks (contrast Miller [1997], pp. 29–62). While warning that studies of the longue durée may suffer from inattention to historical context (p. 8), she proves the point through frequent errors of detail: for instance, the Caunians and Lycians join Harpagus’ army (p. 84), despite Herodotus’ report of their mass suicide in resistance to conquest (1.176); the Alcmaeonids, rather than the Spartans, remove the Pisistratid tyranny at Athens (p. 130); after defeat in Greece, Persia ‘never lost control of the eastern Aegean’ (p. 148); Archilochus writes and performs at Sparta (p. 225). In other cases, M. misunderstands modern scholars’ interpretations while betraying a lack of familiarity with ancient textual evidence. For example, she asserts that Alexander's loyal Iranian troops refrained from mutiny when he burned Persepolis (p. 288), despite the fact that recruitment of Iranians began at a later date, and cites R. Lane Fox's ‘Alexander the Great: Last of the Achaemenids’ (in C. Tuplin, Persian Responses [2007]), which actually notes the success of this recruitment process after the palace's destruction (pp. 294–5).

Chapter 1 gives a highly selective survey of Greek elite receptions of pre-Achaemenid ‘Eastern’ material culture. It focuses on a few examples such as the Lefkandi burial goods and links between Cypselid Corinth and Lydia, but gives surprisingly little attention to Greek encounters with Levantine and Egyptian culture – Al Mina goes unmentioned, and Naucratis appears only in a later chapter as a repository for sixth-century Spartan ceramics (pp. 234, 236).

Chapter 2 turns to the Greek experience of Persian expansion from Cyrus to Xerxes, arguing for continuities with the dynamics of Graeco-Lydian aristocratic interaction, and claiming that the ‘arrival of the Achaemenids changed little’ (p. 90). M. attempts to minimise the disruptive effects of conquest, Ionia's revolt and the invasions of mainland Greece, but an insufficient grounding in Herodotus undermines several of her claims; for example, she states that Histiaeus of Miletus ‘remained loyal to Darius’ (p. 84), on the basis of a speech (5.106) that Herodotus characterises as deceptive (5.107) and precedes Histiaeus’ military campaigns against the Persians (6.1–5, 6.26–30). At times she indulges in unsupported speculation about cultural imitations, as in the proposition of an Achaemenid model for the square, columned hall of the ‘Pisistratid Telesterion’ at Eleusis (p. 118), without reference to debates over the building's date (for bibliographic summary, see J.M. Hall, Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian [2014], p. 56).

Chapter 3, surveying Athens’ uses of Eastern ideas and imagery, traces a progression from aristocratic to popular appropriations of Persian culture. Yet again, M. is tempted to assume Persian origins for elements of Athenian social and political behaviour, without adequate evidence or argumentation. Cleisthenes’ reforms are presented as deliberate emulations of an Achaemenid model of ‘power and the visible consumption of human resources’ (pp. 131–2), and the gendered division of space in Athenian households is attributed to growing awareness of Near Eastern and Achaemenid palace design (pp. 164–5). M. is more successful in a cautious discussion of Persian imagery in Athenian vase painting, noting the production of some Persian War combat scenes for non-Athenian consumers in distant locales such as Etruria and suggesting that the vases might ‘play on ideas of reality and unreality’ rather than commemorating victory in simplistic terms (p. 168); she also argues that rampaging centaurs and Amazons in Attic sculpture might allude to democratic concerns about aristocratic misbehaviour rather than memories of foreign conflict (pp. 181–5).

Chapter 4 shifts from material culture to ‘Classical Ionian Texts’, broadly defining the Persika genre to include not only Ctesias and Deinon, but also Herodotus and Xenophon's Cyropaedia. The literary survey is somewhat out of place with the other chapters’ emphasis on material culture, and Xenophon's presence disrupts the attempted regional focus. There is little close analysis of textual evidence, and further speculation: Herodotus’ descriptions of royal palaces ‘may have stimulated changes in domestic practices’ at Athens (p. 206), and Ctesias’ historical errors might be ‘deliberate’, meant to gratify elite readers sophisticated enough to spot them (p. 212).

Chapter 5 examines Spartan views of Persia, noting Archaic contacts with the Near East, but arguing that access to external objects was less important than internal ideology in constructions of identity. The survey of guest-friendships and diplomatic contacts between Spartans and Persians is brief and error-prone (as in the confusion of Tissaphernes with Tiribazus at p. 243). M. could benefit from greater attention to the Persian–Spartan economic ties developed during the Peloponnesian War (noted briefly in the misleading claim that an Achaemenid grant of 470 talents in 405/4 b.c. allowed neodamodeis to pay contributions in Spartan messes).Footnote ¹

In Chapter 6 on Macedonia and Persia, M. cautions against assumptions that Alexander the Great's institutions emulated those of the Achaemenids, yet occasionally ignores this principle, for example in the reference to the Macedonian hetairoi as a copy of Persia's royal kinsmen, without consideration of the Homeric context (p. 272). In general, she follows scholarship that minimises Alexander's intention to transform himself into an Achaemenid monarch, but skims over the complexities and enormous bibliography on such issues as the treatment of Persian royal women or the burning of Persepolis. Finally, a brief conclusion stresses the variety of meanings that Achaemenid items could carry in different regions of Greece, and reasserts the centrality of Persia in the development of Greek culture.

In addition to the problems already noted, M.’s text suffers from numerous typographic errors and inconsistencies in Greek transliteration. Overall, its flaws sadly limit its value to scholars and students of Graeco-Persian interaction.