Mediterranean islands and their adjacent coastlands have long been the subject of a wide range of disciplines and discourses; from prehistory to late antiquity and beyond, the processes of imperial expansion, economic interconnectedness and cultural change have had a deep impact on their history. In recent decades the conceptual apparatus through which we study those processes has started to shift significantly. Earlier approaches influenced by nationalism and colonialism tended to adopt totalizing, top-down, and centre–periphery perspectives. The three volumes examined in this review are evidence that things are changing radically; but they also demonstrate the need for particular disciplines and subdisciplines to pay attention to each other. Though all three volumes focus on, or give major attention to, archaeological evidence, it is quite evident that prehistoric, classical, and late antique scholars follow distinctive scholarly traditions that could all benefit from more cross-fertilization.

The first work is a volume edited by Evi Gorogianni, Peter Pavúk, and Luca Girella on the processes of Minoanization and Mycenaeanization in the Aegean.Footnote ¹ The volume consists of thirteen papers focusing on different areas of the Aegean: while the lion's share concerns the Cyclades, it is particularly valuable that the volume also covers the north-east Aegean, Asia Minor, the Dodecanese, Thessaly, and Epirus. Minoanization and Mycenaenization used to be understood through a centre–periphery model, as the impact of powerful Minoan and Mycenaean polities on their conquered territories or peripheries. The papers in this volume take an explicit stand against such approaches, even if no single alternative emerges from the different perspectives adopted by individual authors. Given the significance of pottery for prehistoric archaeologists, it is undoubtedly a step forwards to stress that the impact of Minoan/Mycenaean styles and iconographies on Aegean pottery productions cannot be seen a priori as part of a totalizing phenomenon of cultural assimilation. The contributors explore how different elements of material culture are affected in diverse ways, how different areas respond in divergent ways to wider koinai, and how cultural change might relate to human mobility. Examining Minoanization and Mycenaeanization together has the significant advantage of opening new perspectives: to ask to what extent Minoanization set the path for Myceneanization, or to query whether such overall terms can really account for the multiple processes evident in the material record.

From the prehistoric Aegean we move on to archaic and classical Sicily, whose history is the subject of a new synthesis by Franco de Angelis.Footnote ² The history of Greek communities in Sicily has long been approached as a colonial offshoot of mainland Greece, mostly explored by specialists and rarely brought into wider discussions, unless to highlight the ‘failure’ of the Sicilian Greeks to follow the ‘proper’ course of the Greek polis. While explicitly focusing on Greek Sicily, de Angelis is conversant with more recent approaches that highlight the entanglement and multiple identities of Greek, Phoenician, ‘native’, and Italic inhabitants. The volume is divided into four chapters, which examine the geography and ‘prehistory’ of Greek Sicily, the settlements and the territories of Greek communities, their social and political development, and their economic history. De Angelis laudably pays equally strong attention to the full range of the literary, epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological evidence; his work is an excellent introduction not only to the wealth of the evidence and its limits but also to the voluminous Italian scholarship on the topic, which is little known outside specialists in the field. The chosen format of selecting a topic and then mentioning all the relevant information from every Sicilian community is very useful for engaging with the range of existing evidence, but makes it rather difficult to perceive wider trends. But de Angelis’ major points – that labour needs account for the diversity and mobility of Sicilian populations and that Sicilian economies are excellent illustrations of Mediterranean intensification and connectivity – have important implications for all Greek historians.

The third book is Georgios Deligiannakis’ synthesis of the history of the Dodecanese in late antiquity.Footnote ³ It is the first systematic regional study of this important island world in the period, and it includes an invaluable extensive gazetteer of sites. As in the previous two volumes, Deligiannakis explores the intersection between the local communities of the Dodecanese on the one hand, and wider patterns and trends of political, economic, and cultural change affecting the wider Mediterranean world on the other. The book focuses on four aspects that have been at the centre of recent work on late antiquity, largely confirming observations made elsewhere: the processes of Christianization and the interaction between pagan, Christian, and Jewish communities; the changes in urban and rural landscapes in the course of late antiquity; the processes of economic expansion and retrenchment; and finally the extent to which the seventh century and the Persian and Arab wars constitute a major break between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Deligiannakis shows how the emergence of Constantinople as an imperial capital and its dependence on Egyptian grain developed a political and economic axis that had profound effects on the prosperity and economic intensification of the Dodecanese in late antiquity.

This review contains a rich crop of works on Macedonian and Hellenistic history, which make a stimulating contribution to our understanding of this complex period. Dealing with the issues of the entangled histories of Macedonia, Philip, and Alexander, we commence with a collection of essays by Elizabeth Carney, focusing on the relationship between king and court in Macedonia.Footnote ⁴ The thirteen previously published essays are supplemented by an excellent introduction, which traces the development of the scholar's views and of the field of Macedonian studies, while each essay is followed by an afterword that explores literature and state of the art since the original publication. The collection is divided into three sections: the public image of Macedonian monarchy in Macedonia and abroad (which includes two important essays on the Vergina tombs); the conspiracies that continually tested and shaped the relationship between king, royal family, court, and aristocracy; and the social and cultural practices of court life. Two things stand out in particular: the prominent attention given by Carney to Macedonian material culture, and, in line with developments in ‘mainstream’ Greek history, the significance of social and cultural practices (hunting, symposium, sex) for politics. Greek historians who do not specialize in Macedonia or Alexander tend to pay little attention to Macedonian history; this volume is a good example of the exciting developments in that field, and needs to be read widely.

Carney is also a contributor to the Festschrifts for two of the most important scholars in the field of Alexander studies: the late Brian Bosworth and Waldemar Heckel (with each contributing to the other's volume). Bosworth's Festschrift is titled East and West in the World Empire of Alexander, but the nineteen contributions range widely and without any apparent thematic link; while the focus is on Alexander and the early Hellenistic period, the volume also covers a number of other issues, unsurprisingly for a Bosworth Festschrift.Footnote ⁵ Nevertheless, the quality of the individual chapters is high, and there are many aspects on which they make valuable contributions. I single out the two essays by Maitland and Heckel, which focus on the link between Achilles and Alexander. Surprisingly to me, but quite convincingly, they both argue that the evidence that Alexander took Achilles as a role model on which he patterned his actions and reactions appears to be problematic and could plausibly be attributed to later authorial agendas rather than to Alexander himself. Whitehead examines Alexander's mechanics and raises some interesting problems of Hellenistic siege techniques. Sheedy and Ockinga offer a magisterial study of how the crowned ram's head on Alexander coins can be interpreted as a Ptolemaic effort at intercultural communication. Wheatley explores how Babylonian chronicles, Aramaic ostraca and Phoenician coins can be employed to re-examine the chronology of the Diadochi. Cohen examines the employment of the expression ‘polis Hellenis’, finds interesting patterns in the employment of the expression largely outside Asia Minor, and concludes that we cannot a priori determine to what the term refers. Finally, Kennedy uses the effort to locate Thapsacus on the Euphrates as a means of exploring the routes through northern Syria that linked the Levant with Mesopotamia.

Heckel's Festschrift is equally wide-ranging and with the same general focuses as Bosworth's, though with a stronger attention to military affairs.Footnote ⁶ Three articles (Greenwalt, Willekes, and Wrightson) examine the evolution of Macedonian military forces, with interesting points on the features of horses and animals and their significance for the development of the tactics of combined arms, while de Souza explores Polybius’ descriptions of Hellenistic naval warfare. Garvin's attempt to use Clausewitz's theories to explain military success and failure in antiquity is interesting, but remains rather abstract. Finally, the complementary chapters by Brice and Roisman offer a stimulating discussion of the issue of Macedonian military unrest. A number of chapters focus on literary representations and source problems, including the comparison between Philip and Alexander (Squillace), and the portrayal of Cleomenes of Naucratis (Baynham); I found particularly stimulating Howe's exploration of how Arrian's dealings with the Alans influenced how he described Alexander's campaign against the Thracians. In terms of material and cultural practices, Carney examines the role and participation of women in Macedonian symposia, while Gattinoni explores the world of afterlife through the Vergina tombs. Three fascinating contributions are worthy of particular note: Meeus’ excellent discussion of how the career of Sostratus of Cnidus showcases the multiple functions of royal philoi; Burstein's re-interpretation of the Satrap stele in order to reveal a Ptolemaic campaign in Nubia; and Ogden's examination of eunuchism as a peg through which to explore Hellenistic dynastic politics.

The treasures of Alexander are the subject of a powerful book by Frank Holt.Footnote ⁷ If Carney's work shows how the field has transformed from Alexander studies to Macedonian history, Holt's book confirms how a study focused on Alexander can have serious implications for the rest of ancient history. Against current fashionable attempts to write sanitized ancient economic history with violence and exploitation excised, his account is a powerful reminder of violence's constitutive role. Holt documents the dominant role of plunder and booty in creating Alexander's treasures, and the deep suffering created by his campaigns: large-scale slaving gets the serious attention it deserves. He also explores the lifestyles and priorities that led to the widespread mismanagement of the massive wealth generated by Alexander's campaigns, both in terms of Alexander trusting his wealth to people such as Harpalus and Cleomenes and in terms of how his soldiers managed to find themselves seriously in debt amid so much booty. Finally, Holt exposes some serious misunderstandings behind arguments that have seen Alexander's coinage as a major stimulant of economic development. If one is to complain about something, it is that he does not built on his deconstructive work in order to explore the actual effects of the massive circulation of precious metals in the aftermath of Alexander's conquests.

Moving to the Hellenistic period, we come across a beautiful little jewel by Peter Thonemann.Footnote ⁸ His book is a short general introduction to the Hellenistic world, which impressively manages to pack in an immense amount of evidence and issues, presented in a lucid and stimulating way. Thonemann explores the concept of ‘Hellenismus’ and its historiography, and provides a short but inclusive history of the main developments of Hellenistic history. Unsurprisingly, he devotes a chapter to the nature of Hellenistic kingship, using Demetrius the Besieger as an illustrative case study. I was happily surprised by the choice to devote a chapter to Hellenistic science, including theoretical treatises such as those of Eratosthenes, applied science like the Antikythera mechanism, and Hellenistic poetry devoted to scientific issues. The Hellenistic mosaic of interacting cultures and societies is explored through Ashoka and the discovery of the Indian Ocean, Aï Khanoum in Bactria, Olbia in the Black Sea, and the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Finally, the magnificently preserved little town of Priene in Asia Minor serves as an illustration of the vagaries of the political and social life of the countless small poleis that constituted a significant element of the Hellenistic world.

The final Hellenistic contribution, by Jeremy Labuff, focuses on the fascinating area of Hellenistic Caria, perhaps the region with the strongest continuities between the fourth century and the Hellenistic period.Footnote ⁹ This is a significant contribution to the study of the Greek poleis, which is usually dominated by an image of the polis as a self-enclosed entity and in which Hellenistic poleis rarely provide food for thought for those scholars focusing on the archaic and classical periods. Labuff explores the issue of polis expansion in the Hellenistic period: the phenomenon of sympoliteiai, whether between poleis of roughly equal standing or between a major and a minor community, is particularly well attested in Hellenistic Caria. The book provides an overview of the history of Hellenistic Caria, along with a detailed examination of the epigraphic corpus and the relevant archaeological and topographic evidence. But what distinguishes it from the usual dossier of Hellenistic inscriptions is the wider argument that focuses on the dominant role of the elites of Hellenistic communities as the major beneficiaries – economically, politically, and socially – from the processes of polis expansion. This focus on the divergent agency of different groups within ancient communities is a significant contribution that should make us rethink the usual polarities that we employ in the study of archaic and classical poleis (e.g. the polis versus the aristocracy).

I conclude with three books devoted to social and cultural history. The first two focus on the history of women in antiquity. Esther Eidinow's new work examines a series of trials against women in fourth-century Athens.Footnote ¹⁰ Eidinow manages to combine the study of the history of emotions, a field with rising popularity, with the history of women and the social history of classical Athens. Theoris, Phryne, and Ninon were prosecuted with public trials (graphai), on charges focusing on subversive activities, including impiety, poisoning, religious innovations, and interference with slaves. Exploring the problematic sources relating to these trials, Eidinow concludes that they can best be approached through three wider contexts. The first is the emotion of envy (phthonos): in order to approach this Athenian notion historically, she employs the term of ‘emotion talk’ to explore its expression across a wide canvas of Greek literature. The second is poison, not only in the specific terms of the accusations, but more widely in the form of gossip, the narratives and the communities that it constructs, and the ways in which and purposes for which it is employed. The third is the historical context of fourth-century Athens in the aftermath of defeat in the Peloponnesian War: Eidinow argues that the economic and social problems of this period led to the leap from envy and gossip into the legal prosecution against these women. I am sceptical about the interpretation of the specific historical setting; but, whatever the case, this is a highly stimulating book and an exemplary case of how the history of emotions needs to be grounded in specific historical contexts and processes.

The second volume under review is the fourth edition of the well-known sourcebook on women's life in Greece and Rome by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant.Footnote ¹¹ Originally published in 1982 as the first ever sourcebook on women, this edition has incorporated additional documents that appeared in the second and third editions, now in the authors’ own translations. The wealth and breadth of literary, epigraphical, papyrological, and archaeological material included is familiar to anyone who has used the previous editions, and will rapidly become obvious to those new to the book. I simply take this opportunity to raise the issue of the arrangement and format of this and most other sourcebooks for ancient history. The format betrays its origins in the 1970s, with seemingly natural divisions, such as women in public and in private life, or women's voices and men's opinions. Class and gender formation as processes are absent as organizing categories: slavery is pretty much everywhere in the sources, but is practically invisible either in the list of contents or in the index. And this kind of sourcebook, with minimal introduction and guidance on how to use the decontexualized sources (e.g. with leading questions), has important limits: how many teachers using it will notice, without prior expertise in Cretan history, that the Gortyn law code (no. 91) rules that slave children belong not to the owner of their slave mother, as in Athens or Rome, but to the owner of the slave husband, father, or brother of the mother? The implications of this for gender and kinship are profound but, without the kind of sourcebook that enables the users to discover them, the wealth of material included here is likely to remain significantly untapped.

Finally, Nathan Arrington's book considers the commemoration and representation of the war dead in fifth-century Athens.Footnote ¹² Arrington examines the gradual development of the Athenian practice of collective commemoration of the war dead, arguing for its origins around 500 bce; he also convincingly shows that the Public Cemetery (demosion sema) was not a space devoted exclusively to public burials, but rather a cluster of public tombs sharing space with lots of other monuments and activities. Particularly interesting is his examination of the public depiction of the war dead (funerary speeches, casualty lists, public graves and their epigrams, iconography of sacred buildings). Both the triumphalism of victory and the lamentation of loss are generally absent from public commemoration: as Arrington shows, the focus is rather on struggle and its moral foundation, as well as on collective effort. He then turns his attention to the private commemoration of the war dead and to private reactions to the culture and practices of public commemoration, including an exhaustive discussion of the iconography of white-ground lekythoi. Unsurprisingly, he finds evidence both for the adoption of the foci and attitudes of public commemoration, and for different emphases on loss and mourning. This is an important and well-presented book, which will be relevant for most specialists of fifth-century Athens and beyond.