B.'s monograph helps answer vexing interpretative questions about knowledge claims in Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. Some of these questions are: How should we understand Xenophanes' claim in B35 that ‘these things are like the truth’? In Parmenides, what are we to make of the goddess's claim in B8.61 that the order of things she speaks of is likely, when she had claimed previously in B8.53 that the composition of her verse is deceptive? Finally, how do we read the εἰκώς-claims in Plato's Timaeus? Could a reading of Xenophanes and Parmenides help us understand the εἰκώς-claims in the Timaeus? B.'s secondary source material is too extensive for this review, so I focus on her main arguments. While the book is limited to the Presocratics and Plato's Timaeus, it has broader implications for how we should think of likeness and image in other Platonic dialogues.

In the opening chapter, B. presents arguments for reading fragment B35, ταῦτα δεδοξάσθαι μὲν ἐοικότα τοῖς ἐτύμοισι, as an indication of Xenophanes' fallibilism: humans are incapable of attaining certain knowledge (p. 9). One of the more interesting and perhaps questionable arguments B. advances is her contention that the ἐοικότα τοῖς ἐτύμοισι in B35 alludes to ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα in Hesiod's Theogony 27–8 and in Homer's Odyssey 19.203 (pp. 12–16). While the similarities have been noted elsewhere in the literature, B. offers new insight: while ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα is understood usually as ‘successful lies that deceive’, it also means ‘indistinguishable from the truth’ (p. 15). B. claims that by altering ὁμοῖα to ἐοικότα, Xenophanes intentionally distances himself from the poets, and asserts that his own views have ‘a different resemblance to the truth’ (p. 16). His account is probably true, but the truth cannot be known with certainty (p. 23). At the same time that Xenophanes recognises the ‘cognitive disparity’ between gods and men, he is still optimistic about human reason (p. 48).

Chapter 2, ‘Parmenides’ Allusive Ambiguity', argues that the use of ἐοικώς in Parmenides is both an allusion to and a correction of Xenophanes' B35: where Xenophanes rules out human access to god's knowledge, Parmenides provides a way for humans to have knowledge of reality (p. 58). B. focusses on the fragments which move from the so-called Alētheia to the Doxa parts of the goddesses' poem. B. offers four different meanings of ἐοικώς in the B8.60's: similar, fitting or appropriate, specious, and plausible (p. 66). None of these standard meanings alone satisfies B. Yet, when taken together, they form a coherent reading. B. takes Parmenides to use ἐοικώς intentionally in an ambiguous manner that serves a philosophically significant point. The Doxa is plausible because it bears a likeness to the Alētheia. However, since the Doxa is about Coming-to-be rather than about Being, the resemblance is only apparent. Such an interpretation uses the goddess's warning in B8.53 that the account is deceptive while maintaining a positive interpretation for ἐοικότα πάντα at B8.61: the whole account is plausible. B. cleverly avoids an inconsistent reading of these passages by introducing a distinction between objective truth and falsehood and subjective plausibility (p. 73). The Doxa has subjective plausibility and it is false: ‘plausibility can be understood as a subjective quality of accounts distinct from their objective truth or falsehood’ (p. 73). While both Parmenides and Xenophanes attribute opinion to mortals, Parmenides ‘corrects’ Xenophanes' pessimistic epistemology by emphasising the nature of what can be known rather than the nature of the knower (p. 101).

In Chapter 3, ‘Plato's Timaeus’, B. departs from the widely held view regarding the proemium at 29b1–d3, that the story of the cosmos, is εἰκώς, ‘likely’, where εἰκώς is understood as expressing a deficiency about the status of the account. Instead, B. attends to Timaeus' claim that being a likeness (εἰκών), the account will be ‘likely’ (εἰκως) (p. 115). She proposes that Plato uses εἰκώς in an original and technical sense founded in the etymological link to εἰκών (p. 118). B. argues Timaeus' εἰκώς-claim indicates it successfully relates the status of its descriptum as a likeness (pp. 119–31). B. relies on a strong reading of Timaeus' claim that accounts are ‘kin’ (συγγενεῖς) of their subject matter to support her argument. She says the συγγενεῖς-claim is prescriptive, ‘the status of the descriptum as either likeness or model will or, rather, should influence the status of the description’ (p. 120). From B. we get a new, positive account: ‘A successful likeness is one that represents its original. A successful likely account is … one that expresses the status of its subject-matter as a likeness, i.e., as related to and influenced by the original’ (p. 144). On B.'s reading, Timaeus' cosmological account is both a likely account, since it successfully describes a likeness as a likeness, and a plausible account.

Chapter 4, ‘Imitation and Limitation in Timaeus’ Proemium', integrates the work from the previous chapters to inform an understanding of two claims that Timaeus makes in the proemium. The first is the proportional claim at 29b5–c3, the second is the εἰκὼς μῦθος claim at 29c4–d3. B. reads the proportional claim, ὅτιπερ πρὸς γένεσιν οὐσία, τοῦτο πρὸς πίστιν ἀλήθεια, as alluding both to the Republic and to Parmenides. I leave aside her Republic analysis and focus solely on the allusion to Parmenides fragments B1.29–30 and B8.26–8. For B., since πίστις in Parmenides is not a cognitive state but a quality attributed to accounts, it refers to the persuasive force of the account. Hence, we should read ‘ἀλήθεια is to πίστις’ in the Timaeus, ‘As Being is to Coming-to-be, so truth is to convincingness’ (p. 170). For the εἰκὼς μῦθος claim, B. stresses the μῦθος part of the claim, rather than the εἰκὼς (p. 176). Her reasoning is that Timaeus is not limiting mortals to a merely likely account of the cosmos. Instead, the limitation is in the kind of account it is, a μῦθος account.

The importance of this work is that it challenges the paradigmatic thinking that whenever Plato talks about image, likeness and likelihood, the account is somehow deficient or specious. We may think Plato has such misgivings because of his treatments of image in the Republic or his reserved remarks about likeness in the Phaedrus and Theaetetus. We might add to these ‘deficient accounts’ the discussion of equal sticks ‘falling short’ of the equal itself in the Phaedo. B.'s analyses of likeness may help in other ways, too, such as how to take Plato's images of Socrates, or what to make of the claim in the Phaedrus that the account of the soul does not say what the soul is, but rather what the soul is like. B.'s work alerts us to the fact that ‘likeness’ in Plato does not always mean the account is deficient. Moreover, the work teases out and makes clear Xenophanes' influence on Parmenides and Parmenides' influence on Plato. B.'s monograph, a revision of her doctoral thesis at Cambridge, is a helpful resource for scholars working on Presocratic philosophy and Plato's dialogues.

B. addresses the more contested fragments and claims in Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus. Her analysis of ἐοικώς/εἰκώς explains how each of the three authors responded to his predecessor, and arguably, in the case of Xenophanes, to Homer and Hesiod. I recommend her book to the academic community.