The arrival of this volume marks complete coverage of the extant works (and several important fragments) of the canonical Athenian orators in the University of Texas Press's The Oratory of Classical Greece series, which has become an invaluable resource for anyone approaching these texts. H. has already made important contributions to the series, as translator of Demosthenes, Speeches 20–22 (2008) and of Lycurgus in Dinarchus, Hyperides, and Lycurgus (2001). His new volume does not disappoint: it provides clear, reliable, well-annotated and well-contextualised translations of these four speeches, probably the least-read in the public part of the Demosthenic corpus. They are the first published translations in English since the 1935 Loeb in the cases of Against Timocrates (Demosthenes 24) and Against Aristogeiton I and II ([Demosthenes] 25–6) and only the second in the case of Against Aristocrates (Demosthenes 23). H. strikes a good balance between reflecting these speeches’ vigorous adversarial tone and offering the kind of accurate, faithful versions most of this volume's likely readership will be seeking.

Succinct general introductions to Greek oratory and to Demosthenes by M. Gagarin are followed by H.’s volume introduction, which provides a historical overview of Athens’ preoccupations in the 350s bc (to set Demosthenes 23–4 in context) and of Athenian attitudes to the rule of law; the opportunity is also taken (pp. 14–16, and followed up in the notes) to summarise detailed work H. and M. Canevaro have done elsewhere to establish the inauthenticity of many of the documents that have made it into our texts of these speeches. H.’s conspicuous bias, both here and in the individual speech introductions, towards historical and above all legal aspects (authoritatively treated) and away from rhetorical/literary ones does reflect the significance of what Demosthenes 23 and 24 have to offer to students and scholars of Athenian law, who are these speeches’ core traditional readership, and also the fact that relatively little rhetorical/literary work has been done on these speeches; and it is precisely resources like this volume that will hopefully help to expedite such work in the future. Useful for all readers is H.’s brief but well-supported introduction to his lively versions of the stylistically rebarbative and often bizarre Against Aristogeiton speeches, which tend not to attract much attention (though see e.g. G. Martin, Divine Talk [2009], pp. 182–202). Although some scholars (e.g. D.M. MacDowell, in Demosthenes the Orator [2009], pp. 298–313) have endorsed their authenticity, H. gives good reasons to see them as later forgeries (pp. 195–7) and substantiates this in detail in his notes on the speeches. Although some of the points made are stronger than others, they amount to the most systematic – and convincing – case against authenticity yet articulated.

The volume's value should therefore not be underestimated: none of these four speeches is easy reading, but both H.’s translation and his introductions and notes offer thorough and reliable support, which is all the more welcome given the current lack of an up-to-date published commentary in English on any speech of the group.