This volume is a welcome addition to the recent trend in modern scholarship, particularly in V. Gray's magisterial Xenophon's Mirror of Princes (2012), which identifies a consistent moral and political outlook throughout Xenophon's large and very diverse body of work. L. applies this approach to Xenophon's theory of moral education and demonstrates that he offered an original and innovative programme not only in the Cyropaedia, where one would expect it, but also in his other extant works. L. therefore provides a timely and salutary corrective to H.-I. Marrou's dismissal of Xenophon as a marginal and unimportant figure in his Histoire de l’éducation dans l'Antiquité (1948).

L. opens with an analysis of the background to Xenophon's concept of moral education (Part 1), which he attributes to two sources. The first (Chapter 1) is the pervasive effect of his contemporary world, which L. determines ‘using Xenophon's Hellenica as the basic document, supplemented by additional historical information we can safely conclude that Xenophon must know’ (p. 18, italics mine). Xenophon's pessimistic view of his contemporary world, imbued as it was with internecine strife and internal disorder, results in his criticism of the moral corruption of all the existing powers and the tendency to look for ideal leadership instead in powerful individuals. While this conclusion is reasonable enough, if not particularly groundbreaking, L.'s tendency to assume Xenophon's take on various historical events with the ubiquitous use of ‘must’ leaves one with the uneasy feeling that not all his claims can be substantiated.

In Chapter 2, L. turns to the second major influence on Xenophon's system of moral education, the philosopher Socrates, who both stimulated his interest in the moral exercise of leadership and provided the prototype of the ideal leader. Again, much of what L. says is eminently reasonable (if not necessarily new), and certainly there is no denying the importance of Socrates in Xenophon's social and political thought. Nevertheless, in certain points of detail L. seems to be overstating his case. He suggests, for example, that ‘it is very likely that he got most of his knowledge on poetry through Socrates’ conversations’ (p. 46). Although evidence for Xenophon's life and background is sparse and unreliable (as L. correctly points out), it is clear enough from the few biographical details that he provides that he was a member of the educated elite, and there is no reason to assume that he did not receive a traditional education, which included the study of the great poets. Also, L. makes the interesting and potentially very important observation that ‘Xenophon's Socrates talks more about leadership than Plato's Socrates does’ (pp. 47–8). He attributes this interest in leadership to the historical Socrates, but one wonders to what extent this emphasis in Xenophon's Socratic works is a reflection instead of his own well attested and carefully elaborated views on ideal leadership; perhaps his Socrates is more of an original literary creation than Xenophon, whose philosophical profundity is generally dismissed, is usually given credit for.

In Part 2, the longest and most fully developed section of the book, L. reconstructs systematically Xenophon's coherent theory of moral education as elaborated in various works. Beginning with the Cyropaedia, L. attempts to solve the ‘paradox’ (p. 66) that this work, ostensibly on education, in fact offers a lengthy discourse on political theory, whereas the Spartan Constitution, ostensibly a discussion of politeia, also contains much material on education. L. concludes that both works offer blueprints for the appropriate social and moral education to be imparted by an ideal leader (Cyrus and Lycurgus respectively) who has the authority to initiate and maintain his educational system in his (idealised) society. A potential drawback to this utopian system of education is that it must have an absolute ruler at the helm powerful enough to ensure its implementation and success, which prompts L. to examine Xenophon's views of tyranny in his Hiero (Chapter 2). As he demonstrates, according to Xenophon, the virtuous exercise of leadership not only benefits the tyrant's subjects but also the tyrant himself, for it promotes his own happiness too.

In Chapter 3, L. turns to what he terms the ‘dark side’ of Xenophon's theory of social education, by which he means the application by ideal leaders of methods or even tricks which might seem immoral or ‘dirty’ by modern standards in order to achieve an ultimately moral goal. This pragmatic view that the ideal leader's own self-interest, however achieved, is not necessarily incompatible with moral behaviour is similar to the views expressed recently by V. Gray (Xenophon's Mirror of Princes [2012], esp. Chapter 1) and G. Danzig (‘The Best of the Achaemenids: Benevolence, Self-Interest and the “Ironic” Reading of Cyropaedia’, in F. Hobden and C. Tuplin [edd.], Xenophon: Ethical Principles and Historical Enquiry [2012], pp. 499–539). This straight reading therefore does not correspond to the usual definition of ‘darker readings’ of Xenophon, according to which he actually offers ironic or subversive criticism of the very leaders he purports to praise. Furthermore, the application of modern standards to isolate ‘dark’ elements in Xenophon's system of moral education is troubling, to say the least.

In the final chapter in this section, L. examines Xenophon's two economic works, the Poroi and the Oeconomicus, which (as he argues) supplement his views on moral education by revealing that the proper use of wealth is an essential component of ideal leadership because it brings about peace and prosperity for the state as a whole. L.'s discussion of these works, which are generally thought to have little to do with Xenophon's educational theory, offers a valuable demonstration of the unity of his thought across his large corpus.

In the third and final section, L. proceeds to the application of Xenophon's theory of social education in two of his literary works, the Agesilaus (Chapter 1) and the Oeconomicus (Chapter 2). L. reaches the unsurprising conclusion that the Agesilaus differs from its model and predecessor, Isocrates’ Evagoras, in its more explicit articulation of moral virtues. What is surprising, however, is that he suggests that the intended audience of his biography of the Spartan king was the general public, rather than the educated elite (p. 189) for whom Xenophon composed the rest of his corpus; this claim seems inherently unlikely. In contrast, L.'s discussion of the Oeconomicus is interesting and valuable, for he views this work as offering an extension of Xenophon's theory of moral education into the private and domestic sphere, rendering it worthy of serious study as a coherent part of his social and educational programme.

L.'s overall thesis, that Xenophon had a consistent theory of moral education articulated across his whole corpus, even (especially?) in his works which do not appear on the surface to treat the topic of education, is generally convincing. But if a systematic treatment of Xenophon's educational theory is his goal, why does he not examine all his works? There is no explicit discussion of the Memorabilia, the Anabasis or the Hellenica, except as a source for contemporary history and a comparandum for the Agesilaus, and the Hipparchicus does not even appear in the index. One wonders if L. has done himself, and us, a disservice by publishing his 2014 Edinburgh dissertation too quickly. A longer interval before publication would have allowed him to develop more fully his potentially very fruitful approach and to extend the conclusions reached in his dissertation to the rest of Xenophon's corpus. Furthermore, publication with a traditional academic press would have provided more effective peer review and copy editing (the monograph in its current form contains numerous typographical errors and still reads like a dissertation in its extensive use of direct quotation from both modern scholars and ancient authors, sometimes in the place of argument). As it is, a comprehensive examination of Xenophon's theory of moral education still needs to be written.