The main goal of this ambitious and innovative book is to present the city of Argos in the north-eastern Peloponnese from a new and original point of view: the reception of the local archaeological heritage through the centuries. In doing so, it fills a gap between ancient history and modern history in introducing them as two parts of the same story and enlightening the duality of history: history as we inherit it, history as we write it. The last decades have shown how important it is to come back to the works of our predecessors so as to understand the way in which we make history today.

The city of Argos has always been and still is a challenging case study: it is a modern city built on an ancient one, which never shared the fame of Athens and Sparta, nor the same modern scholars’ interest. Moreover, since Roman times, it is a dethroned city in the representations, because of the constant comparison with Homeric Argos, due to the ‘belief in a fundamental continuity’ (p. 50). To deal with this complicated past and the stereotypes attached to it was the real challenge of this book. But as demanding as studying Argos can be, it appears as a perfect opportunity to reunite the local and the global scale, to see Greek history through the epichoric lens, to write a history that is not ‘despatialized’ and immortal, but comes from the field.

After having studied the ethnic identity of ancient Argolid (J. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity [1997]), H. focuses here on the analysis of the ‘process of the creation of historical memory and of memorialization of the past’ (p. 18) in modern times. He shows how the past of the Argive city has been perceived and experienced by locals and travellers through the centuries and how it evolved from an obvious lack of interest from both groups during medieval times to the rediscovery of the ancient Greek past by travellers since the sixteenth century. It was then enhanced during the Greek Revolution, with a renewed consideration of the past in the local identity. Through this historical span H. is always replacing the question in a broader national and international context.

To touch as closely as possible the feelings of locals and travellers towards the Argive past, H. uses Foucault's concepts of ‘heterotopia’ (‘demarcated spaces, set off from regular space, to which access is controlled, regardless of whether or not admission fees are charged, and both contain an accumulation of material from different times and contexts, juxtaposed within the same site’, p. 14) and ‘heterochronia’ (‘temporal discontinuities that mark a break with traditional time but they also represent temporal accumulations’). The city of Argos is therefore a ‘palimpsest’, ‘strata compressed, existing in the same time-space continuum’ (p. 13) for the inhabitants and travellers, and it is the perception of this palimpsest and its evolution that H. tries to deconstruct.

H. takes on the role of two ancient authors he admires and who are the object of several developments: Herodotus and Pausanias. De facto, H. introduces himself as a modern Herodotus, writing an ‘Enquete’ from different sources of knowledge: archives, journals, books and, as the ancient one did, personal experience. Indeed, the mass of information computed is impressive, and H. amazes by his erudition, juggling with the ancient Argive history, which was the centre of his Ph.D. (ethnic identity), the medieval and modern periods, and a sociological background for the study, which combines important names such as Michel Foucault, Gérard Génette, Pierre Nora, Maurice Halbwachs, Johannes Fabian, Michael Herfeld, Yannis Hamilakis and Vangelis Calotychos. Last but not least, H. proves his linguistic skills, as he is able to read in French and in Greek, even in the most difficult notebooks or archives. Moreover, H. acts here and there as a modern Pausanias would, wandering in the streets of Argos and describing monuments and myths linked to these monuments: he explains the ruins of Argos and the reception of these antiques in modern and contemporary periods, the representation of these ruins in local and European minds.

Travelling with these two wonderful minds is a welcome journey, and the book is a veritable Odyssey for our imagination, which starts with the story of the Kapodistrian Barracks at Argos: the future of this central Argive monument was the centre of a national and international argument between ‘demolitionists’ and ‘preservationists’ from 1977 to 2017, when the Byzantine Museum of the Argolid finally opened inside its doors. Choosing to begin the book with this story was a coup de genie because it summarises the main issue H. is about to study as well as illustrating all the history of the Argive heritage: the tension between local and global, and especially between the majority of Argives on the one hand who have a Romeic identity (Christian and Roman) and favour economic and social development, and on the other hand the foreigners (‘the Westerners’) and the ‘educated elites’, who promoted a more dehistoricised vision of the Ur-Greeks and a ‘Hellenic’ identity of Greece and claimed the preservation of the archaeological heritage. The highlight of this book is to show the slow interpenetration (visible e.g. in I. Kofiniotis, A History of Argos [1892]) between these two groups, locally thanks to the press and nationally thanks to the new vision of the Greek State, which created the current Greek historical identity.

Dealing with a city with a history and a historiography as difficult as Argos can be tricky, even if the goal is to demonstrate the reception of antiquity during modern times: the first chapter deals with the history of Argos from the Neolithic to the eighteenth century in less than 20 pages. This bold exercise could only allow for event-based history to the detriment of the architectural, cultural and social history that is at the heart of the rest of the book.

Some mistakes are to be noted. To name just a few: thanks to the inscriptions of the treasury of Athena Pallas (C. Kritzas, ‘Nouvelles inscriptions d'Argos: les archives des comptes du Trésor sacré (IVe s. av. J.-C.)’, CRAI 150 [2006]), we know that Argos did not ‘take over the presidency of the Nemean Games’ (p. 28) in the last third of the fourth century bce, but that it ruled them during the classical period. During the battle of Argos, in which the Epirote King Pyrrhos died, the city was not ‘under the effective rule of Aristippos’, who was just a faction leader, as was Aristeas, named just after (p. 28). Furthermore, H. does not avoid some generalities, some topoi about Argive history, dating each big reform (territorial, democratic etc.) from a single date given by Diodorus for the destruction of Mycenae (cf. C. Weber-Pallez, ‘Argos, l'Empire romain et les historiens aujourd'hui: déconstruire les représentations, reconstruire l'histoire argienne’, REG 134 [2021]) or stating that Argos ‘did not count for much in the first century of Roman rule’ (p. 29): we know that it was the centre of Roman preoccupation, being L. Mummius’ headquarters or becoming, thanks to the imperatores, the centre of the technitai of Dionysus from the Isthmus and Nemea. Sometimes, some big parts of this event-based history are forgotten, such as the role of Argos as the centre of the Achaean koinon during the first centuries of the Roman empire. But these few details do not detract from the quality and originality of the book, recommended for a better understanding of our past heritage.