The question that constitutes the title of this book – barbarian or Greek? – refers to the early Christians, or more precisely perhaps, to the early Christian apologists, who are at the centre of the enquiry. The subtitle suggests that ‘barbarism’ is understood here as a ‘charge’ brought against early Christian apologetic. The subject of the study seems to be the ways in which early Christian apologetic reflected or responded to that charge. Four main chapters are dedicated to developing the investigation. A first chapter, following a prologue (pp.1–13), sets out how the charge of barbarism emerges in the context of ancient rhetoric (pp. 14–29), how this is related to early Christian apologetic literature (pp. 29–42), and how modern post-colonial literature grapples with the same or a very similar issue (pp. 42–57), for example by discussing the treating of ‘the other’ as oriental (Said), subaltern (Spivak), hybrid (Bhabha) or abject (Kristeva). A second chapter discusses ‘conceptualisations and representations of “the Barbarian” in Greco-Roman literature’ (pp. 58–128), a third ‘the charge of barbarism and Greek Christian apologetic’ (pp. 129–211), and a fourth the charge of barbarism in Latin Christian apologetic (pp. 212–303). A brief epilogue, bibliography and (very short and somewhat cursory) index complete the volume.

To say that the motif of ‘the barbarian’ was important in ancient Greek culture is an understatement. As Antonova herself writes, unnecessarily restricting the scope of her observation to Seneca's use of the expression, ‘the term “barbarian” not only serves to designate “the other” … but also to define “the self”’ (pp. 127–8). It is a universal and complex term with very different meanings in different circumstances and historical periods, whether it occurs in Herodotus’ ethnographies, Caesar's war reports, Tacitus’ historical works, Seneca's reflections on ‘the barbarian’ in each of us, Lucian's self-identification with barbarians like the Scythian Anacharsis, Tatian's list of barbarian inventors, Clement of Alexandria's references to barbarian philosophy or Lactantius’ stereotyping of excessive irrational behaviour as ‘barbarian’ (or perhaps ‘barbarous’?). As Antonova finds, early Christian apologists were not very different from other literati of their time in encountering the charge of barbarism and dealing with it by alternately rejecting and embracing it. In so doing they resorted to the same literary rhetoric as their non-Christian counterparts and potential models. Tatian, for example, modelled himself on the Scythian Anacharsis following Lucian of Samosata (compare pp. 120–7 with pp. 158–60); Lactantius rejected the brutality and savagery of some aspects of Roman culture as dehumanising and ‘barbarous’ following Seneca (compare pp. 92–4 with pp. 288–300).

However, apart from occasional and almost accidentally placed cross-references in footnotes (see, for example, p. 233 nn. 84–7) such lines are rarely drawn in this book. There seems to be a general lack of coherence. From the outset there is no explanation of the main topic or argument, or a methodological reflection. The opening paragraph on page 1 offers an exegesis of 1 Peter i.1 and ii.9–11. Provenance and date of that work are not explained nor is there a reason given why this is discussed at this point. Afterwards it is not mentioned again. The epilogue (pp. 304–6) is fairly unspecific and merely reiterates general observations. There is no semantic explanation of the meaning of ‘barbarism’. Precisely which Greek and Latin expressions is this word meant to translate? What do these words originally mean? What is included in the semantic field, in Latin, Greek and English? For example, does it matter that ‘barbarism’ equally corresponds to ‘barbarian’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘barbaric’? Based on a selective and prejudged use of sources at the outset the assumption is made – without this being explained or argued for – that the dominant meaning of ‘barbarism’ is ethnic, racial, related to identity and the plight of minorities (pp. 1–8). On the back of this assumption postcolonial theories are consulted (pp. 9–11, 42–57). These, however, prove inadequate as hermeneutic tools, since they cannot be mapped onto the complex meanings of ‘barbarism’ that surface when a wider range of ancient texts is analysed. References to these theories are therefore hardly found in the later chapters of the book, although they do resurface in the epilogue. Yet the initial, narrowly ethnic, concept of barbarism does also influence the choice of ancient authors: Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus and Seneca (in this order) are selected as Latin authors because they are members of the ‘Roman elites’, while ‘Aelius Aristides, Cassius Dio [sic] and Philostratus’ are chosen among Greek authors because they ‘write in the context of the Second Sophistic movement’ (p. 11). Lucian is deemed not to belong to that group, as he is ‘a Syrian and sophist’. As for the apologists, little attention is paid to the fact that they too are interdependent. Tatian, for example, was a pupil of Justin, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria both read Tatian, and there is some material that all apologists share, some of it vital for their notion of ‘barbarism’. Then there is the repeated use of the stereotypical phrase ‘charge’ or ‘allegation of barbarism’. Antonova herself points out that many of the authors whom she selected defined or referred to themselves as ‘barbarian’. Often the reason for that was simply that they were not Greek (but Syrian, Samarian, Egyptian or African), and often they even took pride in that fact. They did not necessarily suffer discrimination or persecution in a ‘hostile environment’ in which they were ‘charged’ with being ‘barbarians’. Rather their world was also one in which they were in the majority, a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural world that responded positively to ‘barbarian’ culture and its superior age, its claim to major ancient cultural inventions and achievements, or its possession of writings that contained superior ancient wisdom. In the case of the Greek apologists one could add that they were able to express all this in the medium of Greek. This made them, to answer the question of the title of the book, both barbarian and Greek. Somehow this study lost sight of this aspect of the topic, but it did not vigorously pursue an alternative route either (for example, the postcolonial approach).

In sum, therefore, although this book engages with an important topic in the study of early Christian apologetics, it does so in a way that has its deficiencies. It strikes one as a yet incomplete draft that could be improved in certain areas, for example by a more structured and thorough methodological reflection in chapter i, more reflection throughout on the links between chapters and the coherence of the topic as a whole, and more detailed and nuanced analyses of the diverse meanings of ‘barbarian’ in the ancient sources explored. The book also contains numerous errata that could do with being correcting; the author's habit of citing full titles (instead of short titles) in footnotes throughout leads in many places to overloaded footnotes; and the very short and cursory index could be much improved as well.