To A.H.M. Jones, Athenian Democracy (1957), M.I. Finley, ‘Athenian Demagogues’ (1962), P.J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981), J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989) and M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (1991) must now be added O.'s Athens and Athenian Democracy for any full understanding of the Athenian democracy. Written over a period of 25 years these essays are stimulating and at times provocative, even iconoclastic. They have been grouped in five parts, each with its own newly written introduction: ‘Making Athenian Democracy Work’, ‘Athenian Democracy and the Athenian Economy’, ‘Athenian Democracy and the Athenian Legal System’, ‘Athenian Democracy on Display’ and ‘Athenian Democracy and the Gods’. Each essay has an endnote which locates it in relation to scholarship since the original publication and to any other matter which O. considers to be relevant including further thoughts. As those familiar with O.'s scholarship will be aware he draws from and combines a wide range of evidence – literary, archaeological, epigraphical and iconographical – and explores it in ways that give new nuances or meanings to the question(s) being considered. Space dictates that not all the essays and significant contributions can be noted; a few personal preferences will have to suffice.

O. begins by locating his approaches to the study of Athenian democracy in the context of the past 60 years of scholarship in an essay which provides an excellent introduction to some of its significant elements. However, at pains to distinguish his contributions from the traditional constitutional and political approaches, he all but passes over the single most important work in this tradition – Hansen (1991). Nor does he consider the work of Ober (1989) although he engages briefly with Ober and Hansen at a number of points. The scholarship of Hansen and Ober should be seen as complementary to that of O. as his is to theirs. O. places himself in the tradition of Jones (1957) and Finley (1962, etc.) especially in relation to the ancient economy, slavery and political leadership – demagogia. With his interest in law and in the culture of democracy, including the crucial nexus between democracy and religion, he rightly believes himself to have helped widen our perspectives on Athenian democracy.

In the three essays of Part 1 O. develops a view of the Athenian democracy which could be called ‘corporatist’. The Athenians experienced their polis through membership of groups at different levels – phratries, demes, tribes, cult groups – each of which mirrored in miniature the structures and the political culture of the overarching democracy. He argues for a more conservative and cohesive Athenian democratic polis than is usual. Not all will go as far as O. when he states, ‘Athenian democracy went part and parcel with the Athenian way of life which we should judge illiberal, culturally chauvinistic and narrowly restrictive. It was, essentially, the product of a closed society’ (p. 37).

Part 2 brings us to O.'s discussions of slavery which he argues was integral to the operations of the democracy. He follows Jones (1957) in believing ‘that Athenians of the hoplite class and above would regularly be slave owners’ (p. 89). He then goes on to argue, ‘It seems unlikely … that citizens could actually have supported their households, let alone continued to take any part in public life, had they taken employment doing the tasks that slaves did’ (pp. 96–7). It seems to me that he has overstated his case by focussing on citizens of the hoplite class who were peasant farmers employing at least one oiketes. Rowers in the fleet, small scale artisans and thetic farmers producing little or no surplus who, like Chremylus' fellow demesmen (Ar. Plutus 223–5), were to be found doing their own hard work in the fields, seem not to have been factored into the democratic mix as much as they could be. Others might want to argue for a more class structured view of the Athenian citizen order and its impact on citizen participation in the democracy, especially at the level of its polis institutions.

In Part 3 Chapter 10 O. does for sycophants and sycophancy what Finley did for demagogues and demagogia. He argues that they were a structural element in the democratic court system and that ‘sycophant’ could be pejorative in similar ways that ‘demagogue’ was pejorative. It was used as a term of abuse in the dikasteria (cf. p. 227). O. has made his case and made it well. Chapter 12 draws extensively on iconographical evidence, white-ground lekythoi and funerary stelai, to argue that the Periclean citizenship law of 451/0 saw a marked change in the representation and acknowledgement of citizen women. At pp. 248–51, to reasons advanced to explain the change in the law, some consideration might have been given to the likely relationships before 451/0 between citizens and metic families, the men of which rowed together on the benches of Athenian triremes, traded with each other in the Piraeus, and worked together in various skilled and unskilled capacities on the Erechtheum and, presumably, elsewhere.

Part 4 contains two essays (Chapters 14 and 15) which explore how the sculptures of the Parthenon may have been viewed by a contemporary. They contain some of the more iconoclastic but thought-provoking of the hypotheses to be found in this volume. Whilst at least some might agree that the ‘peplos’ scene at the eastern end the Parthenon frieze can be interpreted in the context of the chryselephantine statue of Athena with its base relief of the creation of Pandora beneath it, more have rejected O.'s case for reading the imagery of the pediments, the metopes and the frieze ‘side-by-side’ (p. 322). That the Athenians, such as the young attendants of Creusa at Delphi, could readily associate images with known myths (Euripides, Ion 184–218) is a sound assumption, but modern scholars are not always in agreement over the identification of the figures and scenes which survive. This is acknowledged by O. (p. 318 n. 9 and 319 para. 1). The girls (… and the boys) first learnt their myths as ‘tales sung or told at the loom’ (e.g. Euripides, Ion 196–200, 507–9) whereas modern scholars must grapple with incomplete and damaged evidence. Not all variants of myths are known. At times O. chooses one reading of an image over another and creates an interpretation built upon what some might call shifting sands. Even if we were to accept all of O.'s readings we are still left with unasked questions. What was the role of the democracy in the creation of the design and the sculptural program of the Parthenon? For example, were they the result of a single mind such as the sculptor Phidias or the architect Ictinus? Or should we perhaps follow Ath Pol. 49.3 and posit that it was the boule, and subsequently a dikasterion, the composition of which was designated by lot, which voted on architectural and sculptural models and for the design of the peplos? O. hints at the presence of individual and/or collective decision making at a number of points: ‘the decision to …’ (p. 308); ‘… why does the frieze choose …’ (p. 311); ‘We do not know how the sculptors developed these questions’ (p. 317). Do we need to look to an intellectual and artistic input not only by sculptors and architects but also by politicians such as Pericles to democratic decision making about such important matters as the representation of the Athenians to themselves and to others including allies? There are important matters about the democracy at stake here.

Part 5 deals with festivals and religion. Search the indexes and contents of the studies of democracy named above and one will find little by way of systematic study of religion and its interconnectedness with the Athenian democracy. The essays in this final part go a some way to redressing this lack and point to the rich scholarship on Athenian religion to which O. has himself been a significant contributor.

Still fresh, challenging and innovative in methodology and analysis, the republication of these essays marks a major contribution to scholarship on Athenian democracy.