This review commences with two important recent books on archaic Greek history. Hans van Wees sees fiscality as a main aspect of the development of Greek communities in the archaic period.Footnote ¹ He explores the trajectory of Greek, and more specifically Athenian, fiscality in the course of the archaic period from personal to institutional power, from informal to formal procedures, and from undifferentiated to specialized offices and activities. Van Wees argues convincingly that navies based on publicly built and funded triremes appeared from 530s onwards as a Greek reaction to the emergence of the Persian Empire; the resources for maintaining such navies revolutionized Greek fiscality. This means that the Athenian navy emerged decades before its traditional attribution to the Themistoclean programme of the 480s; but this revolution would have been impossible without the gradual transformation of Athenian fiscality in the previous decades from Solon onwards, as regards the delimitation of institutional and specialized fiscal offices, such as the naukraroi and kolakretai, and the creation of formal procedures of taxation like the eisphora. This is a very important book that should have significant repercussions on the wider study of archaic Greece and Athenian history; but it also raises the major issue of the nature of our written sources for archaic Athens. While van Wees's use of the sources is plausible, there does not seem to be any wider principle of selection than what suits the argument (very sceptical on the tradition about Solon's fiscal measures, or Themistocles’ mines and navy policy; accepting of traditions about Hippias’ and Cleisthenes’ fiscal measures). We urgently need a focused methodological discussion of the full range of sources and the ways in which tradition, anachronism, ideology, and debate have shaped what we actually have.

Marek Wecowski's new book focuses on the interrelationship between the symposium and Greek aristocracy in the archaic period.Footnote ² Wecowski sees the forming aristocracy of the archaic period as resulting from a process that included both the incorporation of rising members of the lower classes and the exclusion of failing members of the old elites. The symposium was a key practice which, through its self-selecting aristocratic groups, affirmed both the exclusionary and the inclusive aspects of aristocratic formation. Through a painstaking discussion of the more detailed classical sources, Wecowski constructs a model of a peculiarly Greek symposium as a culture-oriented drinking practice, characterized by a combination of egalitarianism and competition, best expressed in the principle of the circulating cup. This leads him to challenge seeing the symposium as the Greek adoption of reclining banqueting from the Near East. Wecowski makes a good case for dating the origins of the symposium to the eighth century; he sees the Nestor cup as affirmation of the early existence of the symposium, and further supports this through his analysis of the emergence of distinct drinking sets of pottery in the Geometric Aegean. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book is its examination of the different registers of the Homeric texts, which shows the co-existence of a clearly non-sympotic but idealized hierarchical feast in the main register of the world of the heroes, with the allusion to the audience's extra-textual experience of the symposium in the background of the heroic narratives.

The next book is a collection of seven previously published and one unpublished essay on Aristotle's Politics by Mogens Hansen; it shows the range of Hansen's engagement with Aristotle and will enhance access to his important work for Aristotelian scholars.Footnote ³ In the four most significant articles, Hansen examines the inherent diversity of Aristotle's thinking: his distinct but complementary views of the polis both as an economic and social community that includes all its inhabitants and as a political community that includes only citizens; the co-existence, alongside the six-fold model of constitutions (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and their corruptions) of another classification which focuses on oligarchy and democracy and distinguishes four varieties of each; related to this, the presence in Aristotle's work, alongside the common perception of ancient democracy as participatory and direct, of an alternative conception of indirect ancient democracy; finally, the variety of conceptions of freedom in ancient Greece and the ways in which Aristotle and Plato criticize, reject, or ignore them. Other essays explore the relationship between polis, politeuma, and politeia; Aristotle's definition of the polis; the ideal Aristotelian polis; and the conceptualization of the ethnos in its relationship to the polis.

Hansen's focus on citizen politics is complemented by Lynette Mitchell's new book on rulership in archaic and classical Greece.Footnote ⁴ Traditional approaches have posited a distinction between legitimate kings and illegitimate tyrants and have constructed a narrative of the progressive marginalization of kingship in archaic and classical Greece. Mitchell offers a powerful account in favour of collapsing the distinction between kings and tyrants into a single model of heroic rulership and of stressing the significance of rulership in archaic and classical Greece. The impact of a heroic model of rulership on Greek politics is undoubtedly a major contribution of this book. In accordance with recent approaches to Greek aristocracy, Mitchell rightly stresses the performative role of Greek rulers and the ways in which superior virtue – demonstrated in terms of victory in battle and athletics, ancestry, and city foundation – legitimized rulership. She further claims that it was ruling families rather than just ruling individuals who played a major role, and examines the marriage and succession strategies of rulers, but the evidence can merely illustrate that rulers often employed relatives in key positions. Mitchell has decided to examine together without distinction large kingdoms (Macedonia, Epirus), kings of poleis (Sparta, Cyrene), rulers of large territorial states (Sicilian tyrants), and rulers of small communities; this is a choice that both illuminates but sometimes also becomes rather misleading.

This brings us to five recent books devoted to the wider Hellenistic world, from its origins in the Macedonia of Philip and Alexander, through Ptolemaic Egypt, and all the way to the flourishing Greek culture of the late antique Near East. Edward Anson's book on Alexander is not another biography but focuses on certain key themes and issues that are particularly prominent in current research.Footnote ⁵ Anson rightly places great emphasis on the significance of Alexander's Macedonian background and the achievements of Philip on which Alexander built: two chapters and almost half the book are devoted to these issues, stressing the defining predominance of Macedonian kingship and its strategies of building links with subordinates and foreign powers, as well as the transformative role of Philip's military and institutional reforms. The discussion of Alexander's divinity rightly emphasizes the stages in its evolution. Finally, in exploring the administration of Alexander's empire and the purpose and evolution of his conquests, Anson stresses the ambiguous co-existence of Alexander's dominant search for further glory and conquest with the retention of a basic Achaemenid framework for running the conquered provinces. The book is a balanced discussion of both the ancient sources and the divergent views of modern scholars and should prove popular with various audiences.

Ian Worthington offers a large-scale narrative of the careers of Philip and Alexander and the radical changes that resulted from them.Footnote ⁶ Like Anson's book, Worthington's provides a balanced account, in which the achievements of Philip are accorded sufficient space and frame the way in which Alexander's remarkable career is seen. However, while the account is eminently readable, it yields little that is novel and suffers from three problems. First ,there is hardly any engagement with the revolution that has taken place in Achaemenid studies, with worn platitudes about native resistance to Persian tyranny used as explanations of Alexander's success; equally, Macedonian success over Greece is explained through platitudes about Greek disunity and democratic inability to act swiftly. The second is the Orientalist tendency to read Alexander's campaigns in the light of modern imperialist intervention in the area (e.g. Spitamenes’ revolt is seen as unwillingness to be conquered by a Western army – ‘the same attitude prevails today’; 223). Finally, the text has a number of mistakes and misunderstandings (e.g. talking of the Persian god Baal).

We move on to two works devoted to Hellenistic Egypt and its rulers. Christelle Fischer-Bovet's book is a major study of the relationship between army and society in Ptolemaic Egypt.Footnote ⁷ It persuasively situates the Ptolemaic army within two axes: the international environment within which the Ptolemaic state acted, and the interrelationship between the complex ethnic composition of Ptolemaic armies and the structures and patterns of life in Egypt. Fischer-Bovet incorporates the Greek and non-Greek soldiers of the Ptolemaic army within the long-term history of the recruitment of foreign soldiers in Egypt, and integrates that part with the long-term story of the employment of Egyptians in the army. The initial period of mass recruitment and migration from outside Egypt in the third century, followed by an era of crisis and reorganization between 220–160 bce, was succeeded by a final period in which the Ptolemies’ limited international role modified the function of the army and enabled both a wider role for Egyptians and Greco-Egyptians and also a more modest recompense for the soldiers. In particular with regard to the latter period, the book explores the integrative role of the army in terms of forging links between the monarchy, soldiers, and subjects, of creating networks between soldiers and civilians in the countryside, and of integrating Egyptians in Greek institutions such as the gymnasium and Greeks in Egyptian religion and temples.

The life of the Ptolemaic princess Arsinoe II, who married Lysimachus, her half-brother Ptolemy Ceraunus, and her brother Ptolemy II, is the subject of a biography by Elizabeth Carney.Footnote ⁸ It is unfortunate that the nature of our sources makes it practically impossible to say anything concrete about the thoughts, motives, and actions of Arsinoe, and Carney consistently alerts the reader to the limits of our knowledge. Instead, she turns the life of Arsinoe into a majestic portrayal of the early Hellenistic world and its uncertainties, turmoils, and achievements. Of particular interest is the analysis of how the Successors and the first generation of their descendants moulded the institutions and practices of Hellenistic kingship: Carney uses Arsinoe to explore the complications of early polygamy and its gradual substitution by brother–sister marriage and the dominance of the royal couple in Ptolemaic Egypt. Equally important is the author's treatment of the emergence of the royal cult in its various forms, and the wider Greek (specifically Macedonian) as well as Egyptian elements that went into the creation of a series of cults in which Arsinoe figured prominently, and which continued for centuries not only in Egypt but also across the Mediterranean.

Joseph's Geiger book explores the nature of Greco-Roman culture in the ancient Near East from the Hellenistic period to late antiquity through a focus on the life and works of Palestinian intellectuals.Footnote ⁹ The volume consists of three distinct but related parts. The first part is a prosopography of Greek intellectuals in Palestine, accompanied by a series of appendices on attested visitors to Palestine, the intellectuals in the circle of Herod the Great, and intellectuals from Petra. The second part focuses on Greek intellectuals from the Palestinian city of Ascalon. Given the patchy nature of our sources, Geiger shows that there was a significant flourishing of Greek culture in two periods. The first one extends from the late second century bc to the first century ad, with a series of grammarians, historians, and in particular philosophers, the most famous of whom, Antiochus, was a teacher of Cicero; the second took place in late antiquity, with the rhetoricians Ulpian and Zosimus and the mathematician Eutocius. Finally, the third part examines the use of Latin in Palestine. Although the evidence is limited, the author discusses a range of cases, from the law school of Caesarea through the activities of Latin-speaking pilgrims to the translations of Jerome and others, to conclude that its use was more widespread than usually thought.

The final part of this review consists of five volumes devoted to translations and commentaries of important ancient texts. These volumes appear in different series and, while their readership will be partly overlapping, they are likely to appeal to quite different preoccupations. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought is a major established series with a very large readership among historians and political theorists. Now Jeremy Mynott's translation of Thucydides’ History is a welcome addition to a text that has exercised a deep impact in ancient, early modern, and modern thought.Footnote ¹⁰ Thucydides might wish his work to be a ‘possession for all time’, but his political thinking comes embedded in a narrative with minute detail of battles and intrigues stretched across the eastern Mediterranean, and presented in a form of Greek which was difficult even for its native speakers. These problems have often led readers who are not professional ancient historians to focus on the ‘juicy parts’; to his credit, Mynott has presented a translation that pays great attention and alerts the reader to the problems of understanding the text. Furthermore, the volume includes detailed notes, maps, lists of dates and biographies, synopses of contents and speeches, a collection of ancient texts discussing Thucydides, a glossary, and detailed indexes. Finally, the decision to divide the text according to yearly campaigns, rather than the traditional division in books (which is maintained for reference purposes), makes for a very interesting reading, which many will find illuminating.

Simon Hornblower contributes a commentary on Herodotus’ Book Five to the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series, complementing existing volumes on Books 8–9.Footnote ¹¹ This volume will be accompanied by a prospective volume on Book 6, a decision based on the strong thematic links between these two books, which cover the decade between 500 and 490 bce and focus on the two great events of the Ionian Revolt and the Battle of Marathon. The book includes an introduction, an adapted version of Hude's OCT text, and an extensive commentary; the accompanying maps and the detailed bibliography and indexes will greatly facilitate the use of the work by students and teachers. Hornblower's commentary is a significant contribution to Herodotean studies, beyond its pedagogical uses. The equal attention paid to language and intertextuality on the one hand, and the historical background and historical information conveyed by Herodotus on the other, will bridge an existing gap in Herodotean studies between scholars who largely approach Herodotus as a literary text and historians who are primarily interested in his historical narrative. Hornblower's particular interests in onomastics, kinship, and religion – already evident in his studies of Thucydides and Pindar – unsurprisingly play an important role in the introduction and commentary and bring new light to important aspects of the text.

Two volumes of translations are the result of an ongoing collaboration between Pamela Mensch and James Romm, in which Mensch contributes the translation while Romm provides the editing, introduction, and notes. The first is a collection of translated lives of eminent Greeks from Plutarch's Parallel Lives. The selection includes the lives of Theseus, Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Lysander, Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Demosthenes, Alexander, and Phocion. The volume thus covers most of the major figures of the classical period and will introduce the reader to many key aspects of the period; and the notes that accompany the text will prove very useful to the uninitiated reader, along with the maps, the detailed glossary, and the index. However, the sources are excerpted in such a way that it is essentially impossible for the reader without prior knowledge of the text to know what and how much is missing. There is consistent omission from Plutarch's text of most that has nothing to do with politics in a strict, nineteenth-century sense (e.g. religion); the omission of Dion and Timoleon enforces a traditionalist focus on Athens and Sparta; and the abstraction of the Greek lives from the intended Roman comparison makes much in Plutarch's account disappear. The selection of Plutarchan stories to present ‘a coherent narrative of the classical Greek world’ (cover blurb) looks like a project that is unlikely to succeed.Footnote ¹²

The second volume is a translation of Herodotus’ Histories.Footnote ¹³ The text is accompanied by a short introduction, brief chronological and biographical lists, and a detailed list of proper nouns (but not of subjects). The translation flows nicely, and it successfully manages to render in English Herodotus’ admirable and idiosyncratic style; the notes are kept to a minimum, but are usually helpful. Given its low price, this volume is clearly a bargain for the lay reader who is more interested in the beauty of Herodotus’ tales. For the student and scholarly audience, in my view the volume cannot compete with the wealth offered by the Landmark Herodotus.

The final book is a selection of speeches by Demosthenes, translated by Robin Waterfield with introduction and notes by Chris Carey.Footnote ¹⁴ The selection includes nineteen speeches divided between deliberative speeches (1–3 Olynthiacs, 1 and 3 Philippics, On the Peace, On the Chersonese), public trials (On the Crown, On the Dishonest Embassy, Against Meidias, Against Aristocrates, Against Neaira), and private trials (1–2 Aphobus, Against Lacritus, For Phormio, Against Boeotus, Against Conon, Reply to Callicles). Apart from an informative general introduction, each speech is preceded by a short introduction and accompanied by extensive notes that allow the reader to understand the context and grasp the legal procedure and the issues at stake; less emphasis is given in the notes to issues of rhetoric, but the reader will occasionally find some very illuminating comments. The translation keeps close to the text and is eminently readable; this should facilitate access to the wider audience of the Oxford World's Classics series. The selection works well in giving the reader a view of the complexities of Athenian life, from diplomacy, warfare, and democratic politics to slavery, banking, family inheritance, and agricultural life. While the volume excludes pseudo-Demosthenic speeches, the inclusion of Against Neaira is justified on the basis of its importance.