Resulting from a seminar held at the University of Toulouse in December 2011, this collection of papers is the first of its kind to be devoted to poverty in ancient Greece, its ‘forms, representations, and issues’. The editors are to be complimented not only for organising a symposium dedicated to this much neglected and equally slippery aspect of ‘forgotten history’, but for bringing it to press. The eleven contributors represent a cross section of primarily Francophone philologists, historians, archaeologists and art historians, plus one sociologist, providing for a diversity of approaches. Organised into three main sections focused on definitions, practice and images, a general introduction and conclusion bookend the individual contributions. Along with useful introductions to each section, these are co-authored by the editors. An extensive bibliography of sources cited and indexes of primary sources, names, places and a general index conclude the volume, along with illustration credits.

The volume opens with the editors laying out the relevance as well as the difficulties of studying poverty and the poor generally, but especially in the ancient (Greek) world. These range from the scarcity of primary sources, their inherent limitations and biases, and the difficulty of establishing ‘thresholds’ for poverty. The contribution of N. Jouenne follows with a consideration drawn from contemporary sociology of the marginal and ethnology of the homeless. Part 1 offers two papers on ‘definitions and concepts’. S. Coin-Longeray addresses the themes of penês and ptôchos, the poor and the beggarly, as stock elements in ancient poetry, from Homer to Aristophanes. This is followed by M.-J. Werlings's look at the historical reality behind these elements, focused on the Archaic period, and drawing again on the poets. Included here is a useful corpus of relevant texts from Homer, Hesiod, Solon and Theognis.

Part 2 turns to space, place and practice, comprising a series of case studies. L. Baumer presents four small sanctuaries of rural Attica (the caves of Pan at Vari and on Pentele, the terrace at Varkiza and the sanctuary at Trapouria) as locales which could be said to evoke the ‘romanticism’ of rustic piety, but were equally actual settings of devotion for those of modest means. R.-B. turns to the vernacular architecture of the poor, their dwellings, shacks and ‘squats’, as well as the lack thereof, and the degree to which the truly homeless constituted vagabondage, and so represented an itinerate and ‘invisible poor’. Part 2 continues with contributions devoted to economic strategies which may reflect impoverishment, namely the repair, modification and reuse of ceramics (A. Poludnikiewicz), and the abandonment / exposure of infants (J.-M. Roubineau).

Part 3 takes up images of poverty, from iconographic to philosophical ones. P. Jacquet-Rimassa looks at the imagery of Attic pottery from the sixth and fifth centuries, in particular at representations of slaves, of Odysseus as beggar-in-disguise, and at Geras, as depicting states of being reflective of reduced circumstances. This theme is continued by G. who discusses the imagery of Hellenistic terracottas, where representations of ethnic minorities, the deformed and aged, portray those upon whom Plutus and Tyche have not been kind. Aristophanes’ Plutus provides the theme for the penultimate paper, by C. Orfanos, as providing an ‘elegy’ for, as well as the nemesis of, poverty. Part 3 concludes with ‘the sandals of Socrates’, C. Pébarthe's appraisal of poverty in the sophists and philosophers, for whose calling ‘shameful’ profit and ‘noble’ penury sit side by side. A short closing statement offers an appraisal of and perspective on the themes of the volume.

There is much to recommend this work, not least for the effort it makes to give the study of poverty and poor its rightful place in the social history of antiquity, as part of the continuum of the longue durée.