This inspiring book explores the emergence of the genre of philosophical protreptic, by which C. understands literary efforts of fourth-century philosophers to convert possible students to their specific brands of education. The focus of the study thus is not on a literature of protreptikoi logoi, a term that was only coined by the time of Aristotle, but on the ‘making’ of the genre avant la lettre. This develops in two analytical parts which focus on the protreptic strategies of Plato and Isocrates, and it ends with an outlook on the ways in which Aristotle picked up central elements of his predecessors’ approaches and integrated them into his own philosophical protreptic. The epilogue is followed by bibliography, index locorum and an index of subjects.

The introduction summarises the sociocultural background of the fourth century b.c.e., when the proponents of new forms of instruction began to compete with each other for influence in what C. describes as an emerging educational ‘marketplace’. Under the conditions of this competition, any encouragement of possible students to convert to one specific education implied an aversion from alternative programmes (pp. 1–7). From this perspective, protreptic appears as a discursive strategy for highlighting the superiority of one's own approach against competing voices rather than a fixed literary genre replacing didactic poetry. C. corroborates this claim by referring to the Bakhtinian concept of ‘secondary genres’ emerging from older ones by modes of transformation and permanent evolution.

This new historicist approach, which combines with a narratological method, becomes especially fruitful in the first, ‘Platonic’, part of the analysis. Four of the five chapters of Part 1 focus on the Euthydemus. Chapter 1, ‘Levels of Discourse in Plato's Dialogues’, gives an introduction to the narrative complexity of this dialogue, which contains protreptic encounters on several narrative levels. C. underscores the importance of (implicit or explicit) authorial comments for keeping the reader on track among the many competing voices of the dialogue. In the following chapters, C. convincingly disentangles the complex web of protreptics put on stage by Plato by these different voices and on different narrative levels. On the extradiegetic level, Socrates plays the role of a mouthpiece not only of his own, but also of his competitors’ protreptics. This allows him to comment upon the intradiegetic scenery and thus manipulate Crito's reception of it (Chapter 2, ‘Narrative between Socrates and Crito’). Part of this is the way in which the meeting in the gymnasium is described as a public stage hosting a mixed audience, whose presence and passive reception of the protreptic questioning of young Cleinias constitutes second-order protreptic communication between the Sophists and these bystanders (Chapter 3, ‘From Narrative to Drama: inside the Intradiegetic Level’). C. meticulously carves out the differences between the Sophists’ and Socrates’ protreptic/apotreptic methods, by which the student, in the first case, is objectified for the sake of display towards the greater audience, whereas Socrates, though he uses similar question-and-answer methods and even adopts some of the Sophists’ statements, centres the dialogue on Cleinias and his personality, trying to privatise it from the public and aiming at a sincere and lasting conversion of the student. The next chapter, ‘Return to the Extradiegetic Level: Metalepsis, Protreptic, and Apotreptic’, analyses how the different levels of the dialogue interfere with each other. By letting Socrates lure the extradiegetic narratee Crito into virtually taking part in the dialogue himself, Plato demonstrates to the reader how protreptic efforts can fail if directed towards an unwilling audience, and how such failure results in an apotreptic from philosophy, which lets Crito, in the final scene of the Euthydemus (304c–7c), fall prey to competing teachers lurking around the corner. In identifying the unnamed critic in this scene with Isocrates, C. follows an interpretation which may be well established yet is neither necessary nor convincing for several reasons. In particular, the critic explicitly rejects all philosophy as useless and does not propose any education of his own (Plato, Euthyd. 304d, cf. pp. 135–8) whereas even Plato ascribes a ‘certain philosophy’ to Isocrates in the Phaedrus (278e–9b), and Isocrates himself takes great pains throughout his work to establish the worth of (his brand of) philosophy.

The final chapter on Plato, Chapter 5, ‘Creating Consumers and Consensus in the Protagoras’, compares the protreptic discourses at work in Euthydemus with similar scenes in the Protagoras. In this dialogue Plato stages an encounter in front of an audience of already converted students. That conversion of bystanders plays no role in this setting, according to C., leads to greater cooperation between the competing Sophists; common ground these teachers share among each other and with Socrates (moral instruction) becomes more important and allows for a constructive modus operandi, which, of course, still results in proving the superiority of Socratic philosophy.

Part 2 analyses protreptic strategies in Isocratean literature. While the three chapters of this part contain insightful readings as well, they are also, in some respects, more problematic than the Platonic chapters. This is partly due to the fact that C., after demonstrating how different voices and their pro-/apotreptic effects in Plato work together to establish the authority of Platonic philosophy, treats all Isocratean discourses as expressions of a single authorial voice, thus neglecting the fact that these discourses explicitly present themselves as coming from very different speakers. Whether and how this might be of any significance for judging Plato and Isocrates by comparable measures should, at least, have been considered. Even more importantly, C. treats the Ad Demonicum as a genuine Isocratean treatise without mentioning the fact that scholarship has been divided upon its authenticity for almost 500 years. While the English-speaking academic world has treated it as genuine since Sandys’ commentary of 1868, most scholars in continental Europe still regard the treatise as suspect and date it to c. 340 b.c.e., which would disqualify it as a source for pre-Aristotelian protreptic. That C. is not aware of this problem and even follows the Byzantine idea (long abandoned) that Demonicus had been an otherwise unknown Cypriot Prince (p. 197) is all the more surprising, since he does argue that the terminology of protreptic in this treatise (especially [Isocrates], Ad Dem. 3–5, cf. p. 176–7) differs significantly from all other Isocratean discourses.

These concerns aside, these chapters give a good overview of Isocrates’ continuing efforts to advertise his profession as a form of philosophy oriented towards practical use. By addressing different types of Isocratean discourse in Against the Sophists (Chapter 6, ‘“Professional” Protreptic’), in the ‘Cyprian Orations’ (Chapter 7, ‘Paraenetic Protreptic: Τὰ ἀρχαῖα and Exhorting Young Tyrants’) and in Antidosis and Panathenaicus (Chapter 8, ‘Judging Protreptic’), C. not only succeeds in demonstrating how Isocrates proposes an educational brand that claims to revalue traditional educational doctrines and maxims (ὑποθῆκαι) by critically assessing and creatively enhancing their worth for the present, but he also convincingly points to the protreptic quality of all Isocratean literature, which he interprets as an attempt to combine older literary forms into a new programme of ‘mixed’ logos.

In the epilogue C. takes a look at the fragmentary remains of Aristotle's Protrepticus, which he – plausibly following the reconstructions of D.S. Hutchinson and M.R. Johnson – reads as an exoteric dialogue, in which an Isocratean, a Platonian and an Aristotelian voice engage in a protreptic discussion about the value of theoretical vs practical philosophy. While Aristotle thus includes the two most important proponents of earlier protreptic, his Protrepticus neither contains such diverse and creative applications of different literary ‘genres’ nor does it seem to have been as polyphonic and provocative to the reader's own critical consciousness as the protreptics of his predecessors. In the changed political and intellectual environment of Aristotle's days, the philosopher more confidently takes control over the definition of true philosophy.

C. succeeds in highlighting the carefulness by which fourth-century philosophers addressed possible students of their new form of education that required an unseen commitment to the art and challenged traditional values of political prestige. The book offers valuable new perspectives and refreshing insights about important texts, especially concerning the interplay of intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative levels. Less attention is given to the problem of identifying the ideal reader of these texts, the study of which would be a useful supplement to contextualise the results of this welcome addition to the scholarship on the intellectual world of fourth-century Athens.