This is in many ways a helpful introductory textbook for use in courses on Greek historiography or for the interested general reader. Its virtues are several. It offers a generous treatment of the contexts of historical writing in antiquity (though much more so for the earlier periods of the genre's development). While devoting most space to Herodotus and Thucydides, it devotes full chapters to Xenophon (the ambition of whose writings is sympathetically treated) and Polybius. It has a larger chronological range than some of its competitors: the final chapter on ‘Greek Historians in the Roman Era’ includes brief discussions of writers from Fabius Pictor and Posidonius to Cassius Dio and Herodian. Throughout, it offers a flexible guide to the intellectual aspirations of the writers it covers: the Greek historians are attractively presented not as narrow dogmatists but as rich exploratory thinkers, and their interests are brought out through sensitive thematic readings and linear surveys. S. also foregrounds some of the important Greek terms the historians employed, notably the vocabulary of power (this is explored to particularly good effect in the chapter on Herodotus). Finally, there is a helpful section of ‘Further Reading’ to supplement the chapter-by-chapter bibliographies.

Against these positive features must be set a few awkward choices and interpretations. While W.R. Connor's 1984 Thucydides is acknowledged as an inspiration for the format of some of the discussion, S.’s book-by-book treatments are at times little more than paraphrases: one wonders whether fuller thematic sections would have been a better use of space. At times judgements of fragmentary authors make insufficient allowance for the state of the evidence. The linear ordering of material is oddly interrupted by the postponement of the early Sicilian historians until the chapter on Hellenistic historiography, when Timaeus enters the scene. And there is disappointingly little on the Greek historians of Persia and nothing at all on Manetho or Berossus to balance the pleasing inclusion of Fabius Pictor.

It is above all the carelessness of the volume that detracts from its usefulness. A list of mistakes that should be corrected in any future edition includes: p. 33: the abductions of women at the start of Herodotus are said to start (rather than end) with Helen. P. 62: the phantom ship from the gods at Hdt. 8.94 is said to prevent the Corinthian commander from deserting during the battle of Salamis: in fact it appears after he has fled and leads to his returning when the battle is over (and this is in any case only a story told by the Athenians and disbelieved by the other Greeks). P. 95: Cylon does not die on the acropolis in Thucydides' account (he escapes). P. 96: the second book of Thucydides covers the first three (rather than the first two) years of the war. P. 97: Hornblower is alluding to comparisons between the Parthenon frieze and the Periclean epitaphios on the basis of their shared democratic ideology, not of their magnificence. P. 150: the ‘beginning of ills’ speech at Thuc. 2.12 is spoken by Melesippus, not by Archidamus. P. 151: the third book of Xenophon's Hellenica is said to cover ‘the death of King Cyrus' (cf. p. 281, where the Anabasis is said to recount the failed attempt ‘to reestablish royal power for Cyrus’). P. 176: Ephorus is cited as FGrHist 70, BNJ 36 – but BNJ throughout uses the same numbering system as FGrHist. P. 179: owing to a garbled translation of F 25, S. suggests that Theopompus sought through historical writing the fame that he had failed to achieve through oratory. F 25 is actually a boast of Theopompus’ oratorical renown. P. 190: the Hellenistic age is usually conceived as lasting until 31 rather than 146 b.c. P. 191: the claim that Callisthenes was ‘a relative of Alexander who tutored him’ is an obvious slip for ‘a relative of Aristotle’ (but the fact that the next sentence starts ‘Together with Aristotle, who was a cousin of his mother’ makes the sequence even harder to follow). P. 196: the summary of Philistus’ account of Nicias’ capture misleadingly suggests that Thucydides offers a different account of Nicias’ surrender (it is the contrast with Demosthenes’ alleged suicide attempt that is at issue). P. 227: it is implied that Polybius himself does not explicitly raise the question of why he inserted his account of the Roman constitution where he did. But at the start of Book 6 Polybius explicitly offers the same explanation that S. advances as if it were his own. P. 281: the claim that the narrative of the Anabasis recounts a time when the imperial rule of a single superpower is no longer possible is belied by the strong focus on the unrivalled power of Sparta in the final two books. The Spartans had not yet blown it. S.’s claim suits the Hellenica much better. He then moves straight on to the statement that ‘the lessons from the fate of the former Athens are invoked only as a warning not to take on hybristic schemes (X. An. 7.1.27), an incentive to spur new Athenian power (X. Hell. 1.4.20), or a rhetorical caution against possible Athenian ambitions (X. Hell. 4.8.20)’. In fact in the first passage Athens’ fate is a warning not to fight against Spartans; the second passage (set before Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War) relates perceptions that Alcibiades might revive Athenian power; and in the third Athens’ former fate is not mentioned. Disregarding the weak readings of the individual passages, the whole sequence here seems confused. Similar sloppiness appears at a few other points, including the index, where the introduction of Olympic dating is attributed to Philistus (rather than Timaeus). Throughout the book, moreover, there are unfortunate typographic errors in names and technical terms (p. 14: ‘Phrynicus’; p. 94: ‘pentetkontaetia’; p. 169: ‘Adrotion’; p. 170: ‘Phaleon’; p. 187 and elsewhere: ‘Liddell’ for ‘Liddel’; p. 200: ‘Taurmenium’; p. 230: ‘Ephrous’) and in numbers and citations (p. 30: it is Books 7–9, not 6–9, that some scholars have thought Herodotus wrote first; p. 56: read ‘7.49’ for ‘6.49’; p. 84: read ‘2.65’ for ‘1.65’; p. 107: two book numbers are missing; p. 258: ‘App. BC’ has intruded before ‘3.82–3’ in a discussion of Appian echoing Thucydides on stasis). Collectively, these mistakes (some of which are presumably to be attributed to poor copy-editing) undermine the value of what is otherwise a helpful and intelligent survey.