In his doctoral thesis, written at the University of Stuttgart, F. examines the mobility of educated men (pepaideumenoi) between the first and fourth centuries ad. F. thus addresses a central topic of the culture of the so-called Second Sophistic. This cultural movement, as described by the author Philostratus, owes its importance primarily to the travelling activities of orators, who moved from city to city and slipped into the role of historical personalities to impress the audience with their oratory. It is therefore all the more surprising that F.'s book is the first synthetic study of the significance of mobility for the educated of the Roman imperial period. In general, research on the topic of travelling in antiquity proves to be limited (cf. e.g. L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World [1974], C. Adams and J. Roy [edd.], Travel, Geography and Culture in Ancient Greece, Egypt and the Near East [2007] or H. Duchêne, Voyageurs et Antiquité classique [2003]), and thus F. tackles a major desideratum in the field.

In the introduction F. first clarifies a number of basic premises. He sketches out the context, gives a general definition of travelling and focuses in on the practice of transportation by land and by sea. He then approaches the topic from three different angles. Chapter 1 is devoted to journeys undertaken by students for the purpose of acquiring, cultivating and applying knowledge. In Chapter 2 F. considers eight major centres of learning in the Roman Empire, such as Alexandria and Athens, and not only elaborates on how each city became a principal seat of learning, but also calculates the particular area of influence from which they attracted those eager for learning. In the final chapter the focus shifts to the scholars themselves, as F. seeks to determine why fully educated pepaideumenoi still had to travel. Here, his attention is directed to sophists, legal scholars, philosophers and physicians. Furthermore, the Panhellenic games are highlighted separately as a travel destination for the purpose of acquiring fame and honour for an educated person.

This brief summary of the book's content cannot do justice to F.'s enormous erudition and knowledge of the ancient source material. F. uses literary texts as well as inscriptions and papyri to explore the topic and also revisits lesser-known sources. Thus, F. quotes from the work on medicinal substances by the physician Pedanius Dioscorides from Anazarbus (pp. 270–1) just as he cites, for example, the graffiti of travellers in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt during the imperial period (pp. 128–31) or draws attention to laws collected in the Digest (p. 221). Although the book's title might suggest a trite gathering of the ‘usual suspects’ of the Second Sophistic, such as Dion of Prusa or Lucian, the study thus offers much more, allowing every reader to benefit, even if aspects may already be familiar such as F.'s remarks on early academic education (cf. parts of Chapters 1.1 to 1.3 with e.g. R. Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind [2001]). A great strength of the book is also F.'s engagement with the area of influence of the cities Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Berytus, Ephesus, Pergamon, Rome and Smyrna. In a total of 85 appendices F. presents every student attested for these individual centres of learning, based on his thorough scrutiny of the material. For Alexandria, for example, F. lists evidence from inscriptions as well as entries in the Suda or remarks in Galen, Gregory of Nazianzus or Porphyry. F. has invested an enormous amount of effort in the appendices, which is absolutely predestined to pay dividends in the form of further research in this field. In addition, the area of influence of the individual cities is nicely illustrated on 28 self-created maps. An interesting result is certainly the predominantly local sphere of influence of Ephesus, Pergamon and Smyrna. F. is able to work out that their area of influence consisted essentially of the regions of Asia Minor and the Levant, whereas Alexandria or Athens attracted a truly pan-Mediterranean clientele.

F. does well to relate his study to pepaideumenoi in general, rather than dealing specifically with sophists, orators, philosophers or the like. The breadth of his chosen categorisation allows him to include every scholar of the Roman imperial period under the label of the educated in one way or another, significantly enlarging the field of inquiry. The choice to look beyond the first two centuries likewise proves apt, as it allows F. to illustrate the continuity of conditions from the second century to the end of the fourth century. However, the broad framework does not only bring advantages. Its downside is a rather generalising approach to the source material, which on the one hand is very informative, but on the other hand also entails methodological problems. F. constructs a general picture of travelling that is based on ideal types and precisely for this reason becomes vulnerable to attack. For example, he repeatedly draws on specific experiences of Libanius, such as his encounter with Sopatrus, who offered the orator a position in Constantinople, as general information about travel (p. 44). Furthermore, just because Dion of Prusa styles himself in one of his speeches as a frugal philosopher in simple clothing, this need not correspond to the real conditions of his travels (pp. 54–5). In these as well as in other cases F. relies on the (self-)presentation of the ancient authors and in this way creates a general picture of the travelling of scholars. However, precisely by doing so, he will certainly provoke criticism from readers who have been influenced by the linguistic turn.

F.'s investigation of the individual centres of learning can be considered successful, since he is able to present a diachronic overview in most cases. His sketch of Antioch, however, is largely drawn from the account of Libanius, limiting what can be said about the city by comparison with the other places (pp. 151–9). Berytus, moreover, only gradually became the centre of legal education in the Roman Empire from the third century ad onwards (pp. 175–9). For Smyrna, second-century sources predominate (pp. 203–9). For all these cities, the existing source material clearly limits what can be said about how their areas of influence changed over time.

The focus on the mobility of the scholarly groups of sophists, legal scholars, philosophers and physicians is based on clearly separated professions and thus fits into the ideal-typical picture on which the entire work is based. However, these very categorisations raise problems against the background of the literary discourses of the imperial period. In this sense, who could be considered a sophist or a philosopher depended strongly on the individual perspective (see only C.T. Kasulke, Fronto, Marc Aurel und kein Konflikt zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie im 2. Jh. n. Chr. [2005]). F. is aware of this problem (p. 263), but does not discuss it in more detail. The clear demarcation between the travel behaviour of philosophers and sophists, for example, seems too ideal-typically conceived. Here, too, readers who primarily take a literary approach to ancient texts will have reason to criticise.

Nevertheless, these monenda do not detract from the enormous achievement constituted by the collection and evaluation of the available source material. Even if the postmodern eye may not agree with one or the other generalisation, any reader will still draw enormous profit from the very instructive presentation, which deftly handles legal texts, inscriptions and papyri alike. Readers with a more documentary interest, on the other hand, will find the detailed study of the literary evidence profitable and will appreciate the compilation of sources on the individual cities as well as the calculation of the various areas of influence as a point of departure for further research. In conclusion, F.'s study on the mobility of the pepaideumenoi between the first and the fourth centuries stands as an interesting and useful contribution to the study of the Second Sophistic.