C.d.R.'s study sets out to examine the development of tyranny in the archaic Greek state, particularly the rule of the Cypselids in Corinth. The structure of the book is unusual: it is presented as one continuous essay written in what C.d.R. characterises as a digressive mode (p. x): taking a broadly chronological approach, C.d.R. considers the theories of Aristotle on tyranny and their application to the tyrannies of Polycrates, Pisistratus and Theagenes, then devotes the larger part of the book to a detailed study of Corinth, discussing at length the mythical and historical traditions about the polis and its commercial development.

The topic of ‘archaic tyranny’ has undergone considerable change in the past 20 years, as historians have demonstrated the continuities between aristocratic and tyrannical forms of government, and examined the semantics of ‘tyranny’ and its place in the mythmaking of the polis. Scholars including Parker, McGlew, Anderson and most recently Mitchell have argued for a reappraisal of the developmental model of the rise and fall of archaic tyranny. (V. Parker, ‘Turannos: the Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle’, Hermes 126 [1998], 45–72; J.F. McGlew, Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece [1993]; G. Anderson, ‘Before tyrannoi were Tyrants: Rethinking a Chapter of Early Greek History’, Class. Ant. 24 [2005], 173–222; L.F. Mitchell, The Heroic Rulers of Archaic and Classical Greece [2013].) C.d.R. indicates in his introduction, however, that his text was originally written in 1982, and despite subsequent revision his argument is still rooted in the scholarship of the 1960s and 70s; the debates in which he engages, on hoplite warfare, chronology and the historicity of the Dorian invasions, are with an older generation of scholarship. J.B.Salmon's magisterial Wealthy Corinth (1984) is a particularly odd omission from the bibliography.

While individual aspects of the discussion, such as those on the mythical traditions of Corinth, will be of interest to historians of the archaic polis, the study adds little to modern debates on tyranny.