E.R. Dodds in his commentary on Plato's Gorgias dismissed Olympiodorus’ exegesis of the dialogue, based on his lectures at Alexandria in the sixth century ce, as ‘seldom of much direct interest’ (1959, p. 59). However, since Dodds wrote, Olympiodorus has benefited from the revival of interest in the Neoplatonic commentators: a revised Greek text of the Gorgias commentary, edited by L.G. Westerink, was published in the Teubner series in 1970, and an English translation, with introduction and notes, by R. Jackson, K. Lycos and H. Tarrant appeared in 1998. More recently, M. Griffin has published a translation, with introduction and notes, of Olympiodorus’ commentary on the First Alcibiades (2015, 2016); Olympiodorus’ introduction to logic has been translated by S. Gertz (2018); and a conference on Olympiodorus held in Utrecht in 2017 has led to the publication of a volume of papers entitled Olympiodorus of Alexandria: Exegete, Teacher, Philosopher, edited by A. Joosse (2021).

Some of those who work on Olympiodorus and other Neoplatonic philosophers regard their commentaries as primarily of interest to the historian of philosophy and to students of late antique culture; others make the bolder claim that these texts still offer material of philosophical and exegetical interest. B. is firmly in the latter group; her monograph aims to set Olympiodorus’ interpretation of the Gorgias alongside modern views of the dialogue and in particular to persuade her readers to take seriously his view that the dialogue's unity derives from its overall theme of πολιτικὴ εὐδαιμονία (‘das politische Glück’).

Some features of B.'s book clearly derive from its origins in her Berlin Ph.D. thesis. Referencing is very full, a number of footnotes include lengthy quotations from cited works, and Chapter 2 offers summaries of both Plato's dialogue and Olympiodorus’ commentary. Chapter 3 is a lengthy, thematically arranged ‘literature review’ of modern work on the Gorgias while Chapter 4 compares and contrasts some modern views of the relationship between content and form in Platonic dialogues with those of Olympiodorus. It is clear from both Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 that B. sees the difficulty of finding a unifying theme for the dialogue as the central problem of interpreting the Gorgias. Olympiodorus, like other late Neoplatonic commentators, took the view that every Platonic dialogue has one overarching theme (σκοπός), which makes his approach immediately attractive to B. In Chapter 5, rather than presenting arguments for Olympiodorus’ overall interpretation, she expounds and elucidates many details of his commentary, clarifying how his view that the theme of the dialogue is πολιτικὴ εὐδαιμονία relates to his interpretation of Socrates’ three interlocutors, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, in terms of the three parts of the soul from the Republic. Alongside the model of the tripartite soul, Olympiodorus also uses a Neoplatonic model of six causes (the four Aristotelian causes – material, formal, efficient and final – with the addition of two more, paradigmatic and instrumental causes), and B. pulls together passages from different parts of Olympiodorus’ commentary in order to make clear how these models are put to work in the exegesis. B. makes good use of Olympiodorus’ commentary on the First Alcibiades to elucidate the views expressed in the Gorgias commentary: pp. 140–4 offer a useful comparison with the treatment of the σκοπός of the Gorgias in the Alcibiades commentary while n. 426 on pp. 248–9 includes passages from the Alcibiades commentary on Socrates’ intellectual midwifery. She also compares Olympiodorus’ account of the Republic's city-soul analogy in the proem to the Gorgias commentary with a passage from his introduction to logic (p. 138 n. 5).

Olympiodorus was working within a well-established tradition of teaching and commenting on Platonic dialogues. The Gorgias was the second dialogue studied in the Neoplatonic curriculum established by Iamblichus, and although no other ancient commentaries on the dialogue survive, much of Olympiodorus’ material is traditional. B. makes good use of the parallels in the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, a work that probably belongs to much the same time period and milieu as Olympiodorus: for example, on pp. 118–21 she compares Olympiodorus’ comments on Plato's use of dialogue form with those found in Anon. Prol. 14.15–21 and in n. 57 on p. 150 she compares Olympiodorus’ list of six causes with the list found in Anon. Prol. 17.34–6. Both Olympiodorus and the Anon. Prol. are strongly influenced by Proclus, and B. also uses Proclus to good effect to illuminate a number of passages of Olympiodorus. For instance, she includes a reference to Proclus’ commentary on the Republic 1.49–54 in her discussion of Olympiodorus on Plato's use of dialogue form on pp. 118–21; on pp. 158–60 she gives a useful account of the view of language found in Proclus’ commentary on the Cratylus which, as she notes on p. 194, may underpin passages of Olympiodorus such as 26.3.17–19 on νόμος, νοῦς and διανέμειν; and in discussing Olympiodorus’ use of the triad of the good, the fine and the just, she helpfully refers to Proclus’ account of this triad in Platonic Theology I 25.112.25–113.10 as supplying the metaphysical background that is absent from Olympiodorus, no doubt, as B. says, because his commentary is directed at beginning students of Plato (p. 210 n. 280). B. goes considerably further than Jackson, Lycos and Tarrant in drawing on material of this kind to help modern readers of Olympiodorus understand his approach to Plato's text and the tradition within which he was working.

B.'s monograph, then, is valuable in elucidating Olympiodorus’ approach to the Gorgias and placing that within the context of Neoplatonic exegesis. However, I am not sure that it would persuade a sceptical modern interpreter of Plato that Olympiodorus is worth reading. In particular, she does not really question Olympiodorus’ characteristically Neoplatonic assumption that using the three parts of the soul from the Republic to interpret the Gorgias is unproblematic. Olympiodorus’ allegorisation of Socrates’ interlocutors as each representing one of these parts does have some interesting results, notably in emphasising Callicles’ hedonism, but B.'s focus is on expounding Olympiodorus’ comments rather than on evaluating them.

On the whole, the book is well produced, but there are occasional signs of incomplete revision of the text, such as on p. 82, where n. 130 lacks a reference in the text and has been printed as a continuation of n. 129, and on p. 91, where the cross-references to sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 seem to be wrong. Since the book's strengths lie in bringing together passages from across the Gorgias commentary and in placing the commentary within its Neoplatonic context, an index of passages discussed would have been a helpful addition.