This ambitious study treats an important area of Athenian history from roughly the mid-sixth to mid-fourth centuries b.c. Its title suggests that Athenian internal politics during this period cannot be fully understood unless the lens is widened to embrace the peripheral wilds of the north. This is defensible. Thrace's value to Athens as a resource for the supply of precious metals and timber and the appropriation of land in commercially strategic locations was unparalleled. No better proof, perhaps, is required than the tailspin that the loss of Amphipolis, Athens' colony near the mouth of the Strymon river, sent the Athenians into in 424, and their futile attempts to recover the settlement well into the mid-fourth century. Thus on a basic level, politicians and generals who were ‘Thracian experts’, who spent time in Thrace, were well-connected to tribal chiefs and kings, and able either to facilitate diplomatic relations or to access trade networks might expect to convert their expertise to leadership roles in the polis.

S.'s primary interest in this subject, however, lies beyond the strategic and economic importance of Thracian resources to Athens and, in the end, his discussions lead to rather different conclusions. He lays out his programmatic focus towards the beginning of a hefty 45-page introduction: ‘throughout the Late Archaic and Classical period Thrace by turns fascinated and terrified the Athenians. The Thracians were strange and barbaric, decadent and savage … Athens, the center of Greek learning, culture, and political innovation, was enamored of a barbarous people representing the very paradigm of primitive savagery. This is perceptible at every level of Athenian society …’ (p. 3). His attention is on the individuals and families, ‘disciples’ (more on the term below) of Thrace, ‘the most distinguished figures in the polis [who] were often those who shaped and effected Athenian policy at home and abroad. At the same time, they were frequently denied the power they sought at Athens and were forced to look elsewhere’ (p. 41).

After the introduction (in which some information creates false expectations, e.g. a section on the interior river emporion Pistiros shows up nowhere in the book proper; a helpful summary of the main different Thracian tribes seems there for reference, rarely integrated into the analysis of the book), two subsequent chapters focus, chronologically, on individual Athenians who benefited from their Thracian connections but for whom Thrace was also a refuge; these include Peisistratus; the Elder Miltiades and his illustrious younger family members, Miltiades the Younger and Cimon; Hagnon, the founder of Amphipolis; Thucydides, the historian; and Dieitrephes, the general who crops up repeatedly in Thracian commands (Chapter 2). Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, Xenophon and Iphicrates form the subjects of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is concerned with broader Athenian attitudes towards Thrace and Thracians, while Chapter 5 focuses on the appeal Thrace had for Athenian elites. Chapter 6 concerns the military impact Thrace had on Athens. S.'s impressive evidentiary base is broad: he looks at textual but also art historical evidence to make the case that Thrace reached deep into the world of Athenian elites. He also makes a strong case that not only the use of Thracian light-armed troops – the peltasts – but also Thracian military tactics influenced military tactics more broadly among Athenian generals.

The study usefully charts the Thracian connections of Athenians, not only individual and family connections with Thrace but also the relationships that were inherited and cultivated through generations, for example in the families of Miltiades (Elder, Younger, Cimon), Hagnon (Thrasybulus) and Alcibiades (Alcibiades). The sections on Miltiades the Younger, the fifth-century general Dieitrephes and the fourth-century general Iphicrates are the best, coming closest to addressing the title of the book, but even they raise the question, how much ‘shaping of leadership’ is going on? Of the sixth-century Thracophiles, none seems to have acquired leadership at Athens because of anything particular to Thrace until Miltiades the Younger. Most important, behind the ‘political’ is question-begging of the first order: when S. asks simply, ‘why was Athens no longer able to satisfy the ambitions of many of its elite?’ (p. 4), he never establishes there, or subsequently, that many of its elites could not satisfy their ambitions and so went to Thrace to fulfil them. Instead, the assumption pervades of an elite, politically marginalised, living in a politically ‘stifling environment’ (p. 5). As S. puts it, Thrace offered Athenian elites a chance to fulfil their ‘full aristocratic potential without the constraints of the Athenian political system, be it democracy or Peisistratid tyranny’ (p. 61).

Some choices of individuals on whom to concentrate are less obvious given the title. Xenophon, whose Anabasis indeed is a rich source of information about a Thracian court (Cotys II), is a most curious example of an Athenian whose life and career were supposedly shaped by his Thracian connections; he ended up briefly in Thrace because it lay on the path home after the failed campaign in Asia fighting for Cyrus. Alcibiades, likewise; could he not arguably have ended up in the coastal Thracian Chersonese simply because it was the closest safe territory to which to escape to end his life, rather than residing there because of feeling a special affinity (his return to Athens was brief, and his previous exit from Athens and time spent in Thrace were unconnected); we know of no connections he had in Thrace before 406.

These examples make one wonder whether much better results could have come from raising questions, rather than making assumptions, about Athenian government and the inability of elites to function and thrive politically in it, and the significance of Thrace per se to their political lives at home; indeed, often the significance of Thrace is over-emphasised and imposed where it is not always clear or at least not demonstrated. (A few additional examples: unambiguously Scythian clothing of the beardless mounted archer on the red-figure plate with the inscription ‘Miltiades kalos’ becomes possibly ‘stock barbarian imagery … thereby conflating Thracians and Skythians’ [p. 193] which S. assimilates to Thracian clothing by p. 199. Hagnon, the founder of Amphipolis, was appointed to the board of probouloi in 413 ‘at least in part because of his past success in Thrace’ [p. 79], but no support is given. Were the Athenians suspicious of Alcibiades because he was a Thracophile, as seems to be implied? Likewise Thrasybulus [p. 163]?)

A decided peculiarity pervading the theme of the book is the term ‘disciples’ of Thrace used for these men. It comes from S.'s translation of the term thraikophoitai in a fragment of Aristophanes' Gerytades. Arguing from Aristophanes' use of the verb phoitao once in Knights and again in Clouds to mean ‘to go to school’, and several times in Plato for frequenting a school (and even drawing on modern Greek usage of phoitetes), S. translates this term as ‘disciples of Thrace’, though he qualifies it with ‘perhaps’ when first suggested. As unconvincing as it is per se, he applies it with no evident awareness of the implications or problem of the translation in its context in the fragment. In one preceding line, a group of poets refer a group of haidophoitai, men who are philochorountes (‘Hades-haunters, and regularly fond of yonder parts’, Sears's translation). The response: ‘so there are ‘Hades-haunters among you?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Like ‘thraikophoitai’? Presumably if the Thraikophoitai are ‘disciples’ or ‘students’ of Thrace, i.e. learning from Thrace, so too the haidophoitai should be ‘disciples of Hades’.

The conclusions stress Athenian ambivalence toward Thracophiles, which may very likely be true, but not necessarily because they were Thracophiles, but because their loyalties were suspect, or because their military efforts were unsuccessful and/or their political enemies at home got the better of them in the assembly. Much in the book is plausible; whether it is successfully demonstrated is problematic. This is a book well worth reading, for the importance of the topic, the marshalling of a rich array of evidence, the good discussions of politicians or generals with Thracian connections and their impact, and likewise, the importance of Thracian mercenaries and military tactics. All will give much food for thought to the reader and provoke discussion and further work. Bibliography is not always up to date; one inexplicable, not-so-recent omission is B. Lavelle's 2005 monograph, Fame, Money and Power: the Rise of Peisistratus and Democratic Tyranny at Athens.