The study of ethnicity and the interaction between cultures has been a popular topic with ancient historians recently, and this trend continues. While the interconnection between Greek identity and culture and Roman power during the Second Sophistic has attracted significant attention in the last few decades, the earlier periods have remained relatively unexamined. This is now nicely redressed by an important collection of essays edited by Thomas Schmitz and Nicolas Wiater, which focuses on the first century bce.Footnote ¹ One main theme of the volume concerns the interaction between Greek and Roman identities, and the ways in which authors reinterpret and destabilize them: the interaction between Rome and Greek classicism (Dihle), the rethinking of Greek and Roman cultures and identities in Dionysius (Wiater), the impact of Rome on its resident Greek authors (Hibder), the interpretatio graeca of Augustus by Nicolaus of Damascus (Pausch), the Roman context of Mytilenean intellectuals and their self-fashioning (Bowie), and Greek poets and their Roman patrons (Whitmarsh). A second main theme concerns the interaction with the Greek past and its classics, and the extent to which the classicist approaches of the Second Sophistic are already present in the first century. This is variously explored, from Dionysius’ exploration of stylistic models (Fox), Diodorus’ image of Athens (Schmitz), the tendency to systematization in various intellectual fields on the basis of the classics (Most), the grammarians’ attitude to Greek dialect (Hintzen), and the Homeric quotations in Chariton (Baumbach), to the (re)building projects in Athens (Borg).

For ancient historians wishing to expand the established framework of approaches in their field, comparative history and theoretical approaches inspired by the social sciences are becoming prominent sources of inspiration and debate. John Bodel and Saul Olyan contribute a new volume on household and family religion to the Comparative Histories series edited by Kurt Raaflaub.Footnote ² The volume, with an introduction and comparative conclusion by the editors, includes fifteen essays, which cover Syria (Flemming), Mesopotamia (van der Toorn), the Levant (Lewis, Albertz, Olyan, Ackerman, Schmitt), Egypt (Ritner, Lesko), Greece (Faraone, Boedeker), and Rome (Bodel) from the second millennium bce to the first millennium ce. Much of the discussion is concerned with whether we should prioritize a focus on the family as a communal group, or one on the household as the location of ritual activities. A second source of debate concerns the interrelationship between family/household religion and state religion, with some scholars stressing different focuses (e.g. the importance of fertility and death rituals in family/household religion) and contradictions (e.g. between state deities and deities venerated by families/households), while others highlight interpenetration, as well as the existence of intermediate fields (neighbourhood or regional cults). Finally, a third theme concerns the heightened role within family/household religion of women and slaves, who tend to play a marginal role in state cult.

Neo-institutional approaches are enjoying a current vogue in ancient history, and Steven Johnstone contributes a stimulating book on the history of trust in ancient Greece.Footnote ³ The title is slightly misleading, as the book does not largely provide an account of historical development or a systematic coverage of trust in ancient Greece. Instead, it is primarily concerned with a number of activities, which are explored in separate chapters: haggling, measuring, keeping track, valuing, collaborating, apportioning liability, and deciding. These were all contentious and problematic activities, and Johnstone explores a series of practices that allowed the Greeks of the classical period to perform them, in the absence of a strong state apparatus and codified bureaucratic systems of classification and enforcement. The author persuasively demonstrates the existence of alternatives to modern procedures (e.g. the use of containerizing instead of detailed record-keeping for keeping track) and the ways in which competitive action between individuals could produce trusted outcomes in the absence of standardized regulation (e.g. the practice of personal valuation subject to contestation by other interested individuals). While the chapters focusing on the inherent logic of political institutions in order to force participants to trust each other or apportion liability are in my view less successful, this is undoubtedly a rich book that will reward readers of very diverse interests.

Studies of regional history are gradually but clearly burgeoning; one such example is the recent book by Brian Rutishauser.Footnote ⁴ This study is essentially a history of the political interaction between Athens and the Cycladic region and the financial aspects of this interaction, from the late archaic period and the Persian intervention in the Aegean to the collapse of Athenian power and the early Hellenistic period. The book aims to cover all forms of economic interaction; but while aspects such as pottery consumption, amphora production, and field surveys are occasionally discussed, at the centre of the author's attention are the financial results and prerequisites of political interaction, such as tribute exaction, the use of fleets to extract revenue or protect routes, the minting of coins, and treaties with financial aspects. Although his discussion of a great range of sources will be welcomed by specialists in various fields, the study also reflects the current aporias of scholarly approaches to regional studies in a post-Finley world: how do we square the biased focus of sources on external interventions in a region with the often invisible structure of regional patterns? How should we interpret phenomena such as the emergence and cessation of coinage or the varying trends of investment in public architecture? Much work needs to be done in this respect, but this study will be a useful addition towards that aim.

Greek historiography is always a popular subject in modern research and this review includes three interesting volumes. Reception studies have grown immensely in recent years, and it is a positive development that ancient historiography is starting to acquire its own reception history; a stimulating contribution in this regard is the volume on Thucydides edited by Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley.Footnote ⁵ The ten essays of the volume range widely by covering four major areas of Thucydidean reception: the role of Thucydides in interstate politics and international relationships (IR), from the Renaissance (Hoekstra) to twentieth-century IR theory (Forde, Lebow); the history of political thought, and in particular debates about democracy in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France (Urbinati) and nineteenth-century Britain (Potter); the debates on the nature of history in nineteenth-century Germany (Süßmann, Morley); and modern politics in America (Roberts) and Greece (Greenwood). The volume also includes a reflective introduction by the editors and a penetrating commentary on the volume as a whole (Hawthorne). The essays reflect well the particular complexity of the reception of a text that is not only difficult to understand but whose author provides many viewpoints while rarely using his own authorial persona.

Edith Foster and Donald Lateiner have edited a collection of thirteen essays by literary scholars on Herodotus and Thucydides.Footnote ⁶ Some of the essays examine Thucydides’ reactions to Herodotus (Persians, Themistocles); the majority compare Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ treatment of a particular topic (indirect discourse, numbers, oaths, blind decisions) or explore common influences on both of them (Homer); the last three examine the reception of the two historians by later authors (rhetorical treatises, Xenophon, Roman historiography). The essays offer various insights, but also raise the unavoidable question of all comparative exercises: and so what? Any comparison will surely show that in certain respects Herodotus and Thucydides are very similar (for instance, they lived in the same period, they were both Greek, they were part of the same historical tradition) and that in others they were very different (they dealt with different topics, the one came after the other, they had dissimilar interests, and so on). The contributors are rather timid in explaining in what respects the comparisons tell us something we did not know, or advance our understanding of either historian. In this respect, it is quite unfortunate that most essays compare Herodotus and Thucydides in a vacuum, and do not take into account the historiographical production that pre-existed or was contemporary with Herodotus and Thucydides (after all, the one historian Thucydides mentions by name is not Herodotus).

The validity of this last remark is clearly illustrated by Giovanni Parmeggiani's monumental monograph on Ephorus.Footnote ⁷ Scholars have long thought of Ephorus as second-rate in comparison with the heights of Herodotus and Thucydides, and this might explain why we have to go back to Barber's 1935 study for the last book dedicated to Ephorus.Footnote ⁸ This work shows eloquently why this is a mistaken view. Parmeggiani analyses in detail ancient and contemporary approaches to Ephorus as a historiographer and explores with a painstaking discussion Ephorus’ methodological agenda and careful attention to a variety of different sources. Ephorus’ methodological innovation regarded both his decision to write universal history in the form of the koinai praxeis of Greeks and Barbarians and his exploration of how the historian can try to write a reliable history of the very distant past from problematic sources: in both these respects Parmeggiani shows convincingly that Ephorus’ efforts have to be taken as seriously as Thucydides’ methodological innovations in his chosen field. The work includes a detailed discussion of all individual fragments, which will be of interest to a great range of scholars, even if Parmeggiani's interpretations of particular passages will be the subject of debate. But Parmeggiani's study undoubtedly shows that the study of Greek historiography needs to take seriously the fragmentary historians who are usually left outside the canon studied by literary scholars.

James Evans presents an overview of daily life in the Hellenistic age.Footnote ⁹ The book is written in a lively style and ranges widely, covering work and social life, education and science, commensality, leisure and sport, courtly life, and religion. It also makes a consistent effort to cover the whole of the Hellenistic world, from the Aegean, Asia Minor, and Egypt all the way to Bactria. Unfortunately, the book is rather poorly structured, with the same topics often discussed repeatedly in different sections; it is difficult to see why there is a detailed narrative of Alexander's conquests, but no narrative of Hellenistic history. The author is also in the habit of making comparisons with modern phenomena, which are often misleading (such as presenting heroes as ‘the saints of pagan religion’). The book uses a variety of sources, but the author inexplicably only provides references for a handful of them. Finally, it often follows scholarship that is rather dated: for example, Evans’ views that there were no self-governing cities in Macedonia, or that there was a cultural apartheid between Greeks and non-Greeks, have been proven wrong by more recent scholarship.

Two volumes reviewed here are translated sourcebooks. Joseph Roisman contributes a book of translated sources on archaic and classical Greek history; the volume is accompanied by a website, which presents material not included in the printed copy.Footnote ¹⁰ The work is divided into thirty-nine chapters with subsections; each subsection includes sources, a set of stimulating questions, and relevant bibliography. This is an excellent collection of sources as regards political and military history; but cultural, social, and economic history get relatively short shrift. Characteristically for the book's priorities, whole chapters on archaic law and on slaves and metics are absent from the printed copy and confined to the website. Some of the editorial choices are rather strange: it is difficult to see why there is a chapter on archaic religion but not classical, and why a chapter on archaic religion includes sources about fifth-century events. Archaeology is ably used to provide illustrations, but the history of material culture as such is missing. The volume is also deeply Athenocentric, with the wider Greek world and the interaction with non-Greek cultures largely absent.

Bonnie MacLachlan's sourcebook concerns women in ancient Greece from the archaic to the Hellenistic period.Footnote ¹¹ The volume covers a lot of ground, including social, economic, cultural, and political history, using a variety of literary sources as well as inscriptions (though archaeological evidence is sadly missing). The arrangement of the material is a bit confusing, as the same issue is covered in more than one chapter, and there seems to be no order in the succession of chapters. One of the advantages of this volume is that sources are incorporated within the author's discussion, making it lively and easy to follow. Unfortunately, however, there is little critical discussion of the sources and the work has numerous mistakes and mistranslations, and has accordingly to be used with great caution. For example, it is not Demosthenes’ own civic status that is at stake in Against Euboulides (75); a curse tablet is misleadingly presented as paying tribute to its victims (76); the male Attas is mistaken for a female (76); thetes are translated as serfs (91); and the translation of P Elph. 4 quotes the wrong document (208).

Finally, four works are devoted to Greek military history and practice. Jason Crowley has written an interesting work on the psychology of the Athenian hoplite.Footnote ¹² Given that the Athenian hoplite was practically an amateur with hardly any formal training, Crowley, employing modern theories of combat motivation, explores a range of factors that can account for his willingness to fight and kill. Notwithstanding the limited evidence, he argues in favour of the importance of the primary group of affection and solidarity (the levy of members of the same deme) and the restricted value of the wider military unit (the tribal taxis). He is on much firmer ground in arguing for the significance of two other factors: the socio-political system of the Athenian democratic polis (the consequences of the belief in helping friends and harming enemies, the ideals of manliness, and the structural role of warfare in Greek life) and the hoplite's moral commitment to normative power (Athenian civic identity and the legitimacy that it provided to military performance). In that respect, extending the comparative repertoire beyond classical Athens and twentieth-century Western professional armies could prove highly beneficial.

Two other books are part of the Pen and Sword military series. Joseph Pietrykowski examines in detail seventeen battles of the Hellenistic period.Footnote ¹³ Five relate to Philip and Alexander (Chaironeia, Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, and Hydaspes), four to the Successors (Paraitacene, Gabiene, Gaza, and Ipsus), and three to Pyrrhus of Epirus, while one chapter each is devoted to the battles of Sellasia and Raphia and three chapters to the battles that settled the Roman conquest of the Greek East (Cynoscephalae, Magnesia, and Pydna). Each chapter discusses the campaign, the participants, the battlefield, the battle, and its aftermath. The book has a lively narrative that is much enhanced by the well-drawn battle plans; while it largely eschews discussing the problems of the sources and the varying modern scholarly views, it is nevertheless a very useful introduction to the major battles that shaped the Hellenistic world.

In the same series Arthur Keaveney contributes a volume on the well-trodden subject of the Persian invasions of Greece.Footnote ¹⁴ Unfortunately, the book is rather disappointing, as it largely consists of a paraphrase of Herodotus, with the addition of a few occasional comments of criticism. It is quite surprising, given how many book-length works have recently been devoted to the Persian Wars (by Balcer, Billows, Cawkwell, Krentz, Strauss, and Wallinga), that none of them has been taken into account here, with the result that little that is novel emerges from Keaveney's narrative. But perhaps most problematic is how little effort is made to assess the Persian Wars from the Persian point of view. Given the great advances in the study of the Persian Empire in the last few decades, Greek historians should try better; merely taking at face value Herodotus’ account of why the Persians accepted a sea battle at Salamis is no longer sufficient, if it ever was.

Far more successful is William Shepherd's short account of the battle of Plataea for the Osprey series.Footnote ¹⁵ The volume includes a background to the Persian Wars, a description of opposing commanders, forces, and plans, and a recapitulation of the campaign of 479 leading to detailed analysis of the battle itself. The book also includes a study of the battle of Mycale, an interesting discussion of the aftermath of Plataea. Readers will find highly useful the author's description of the current state of the battlefields, which provides good guidance to the modern visitor. The book is lavishly and very efficiently illustrated with images depicting the military material culture of the Greek and Persian forces, as well as the battlefields. Particularly stimulating are the imaginative reconstructive drawings of various episodes from the battles of Plataea and Mycale.