The Thucydidean Cleon observes, memorably, that the Athenians were θεαταὶ … τῶν λόγων (‘spectators of speeches’, Thuc. 3.38.4), meaning roughly that they attended assembly meetings in the same way as they attended the theatre, and were equally captivated by both. V.'s book is a lengthy, thoughtful and detailed investigation into precisely what was meant by this phrase. Along the way she is able to consider Athenian democracy (at least in its mature form) as political theatre, in which ‘la pratique consciente de la théâtralité est … co-substancielle de la démocratie athénienne’ (p. 368). Citizens were entertained by politics, although within certain rules.

V. swiftly and (I think) rightly rejects the notion that Cleon is making a critique of political apathy, a concept that she thinks applies only in a modern, representative democracy (p. 24). This point can be illustrated through consideration of the second half of Aristophanes' Knights, an allegory of the relationship between the orators and the demos in session, which V. discusses more than once as a dramatic illustration of the sort of thing Cleon had in mind. Demos in this play is indeed a spectator at the speeches but he does not listen in an apathetic or uninterested way; rather, he actively colludes with the flattering behaviour of the Paphlagonian and the Sausage Seller; at one point (Knights 1121–30) he even claims to be able to exploit this behaviour.

V.'s overriding interest is in political institutions and she structures the three substantial sections of her book around the theatre, the jury courts and the assembly. Part 1 considers the interaction of citizens at the dramatic festivals. V. tries to uncover what Cleon must mean by θεαταὶ and concludes that attendance at the theatre was not a passive act, like watching a television; rather, it was a moment of political participation. The members of the audience, sitting on more than one side of the performance space, looked across at each other. They were addressed directly in comedy and indirectly in tragedy. Both tragic choruses and tragic messengers, even if frequently cast in a socially marginalised role, served in different ways as a bridge between the actors and spectators. I find much of this convincing (and in sympathy with my own argument in CCJ 56 [2010], 47–94). V. is careful to distinguish what she calls ‘les addresses aux spectateurs dans la tragédie’ from direct address (which is to say: address to the audience combined with acknowledgement of the audience, p. 108). It is true, however, that there were various ways in which the audience could be engaged: V. provides a series of examples of tragic speeches that would not make sense if we did not assume the background presence of a mass audience. The role of the chorus in all this is less fully argued here than the role of tragic messengers. It remains to be explained in what ways the collective experience of twelve or fifteen chorus members can be related to the collective experience of a much larger and more varied group of spectators, but there is none the less much to be gained from this line of enquiry.

In Part 2 V. considers the jury courts to have been theatrical in form, the jurors being spectators of speeches as much as they were there to judge. On this reading democracy emerges as something that citizens enjoyed taking part in, for which reason we should not be surprised if the successful party in a trial was the one who gave the most appealing speech. V. argues moreover that the theatrical form of a trial meant that it was conducted according to certain rules. If these rules were broken it spoiled the relationship between the speakers and the citizen audience to the extent that the demos ‘se mue … lui-même en foule en délire et perd sa souveraineté’ (p. 217). This last point, although it seems to me as if it might be overstated, is nicely illustrated through a detailed discussion of Xenophon's account of the trial of the generals of 406 b.c. V. argues with some merit that the trial is recorded in tragic terms and that ‘il n'est pas facile de distinguer, dans le récit de Xénophon, quelle est la part de théâtralité réelle du procès lui-même et quelle est celle du récit qui donne à voir l’épisode au lecteur-spectateur' (p. 206).

Part 3 turns to the Athenian assembly. Here, and in the general conclusion, V. adopts a diachronic perspective, arguing that the theatricality of assembly speeches, so far as we can tell from historical accounts, reached its height in the age of the new politicians of the late-fifth century and declined somewhat in the fourth. As for the relationship between speaker and audience, the politicians were kept in check by thorubos, described as an ‘expression de la souveraineté du démos’ (p. 360).

This is an important and useful book for two reasons. First, it is as comprehensive an account as we are likely to get of the concept of theatricality in Athenian literature, if not Greek literature more generally. V. usefully catalogues the appearance of this idea in a range of historical and literary contexts of direct relevance to the Athenian democracy. She sensibly does not confine herself to literary sources but also considers a range of epigraphic and archaeological evidence (much of the argument is conditioned by a strong sense of theatrical space). Second, there is the attempt to bottom out what is actually meant by theatricality within a democracy, and how the two concepts might be linked. In making her argument V. draws some interesting and occasionally provocative conclusions on the nature of Athenian government, citizenship and rhetoric. The book is clearly organised around its three central themes and comes with an illustrated appendix on the topography of the Theatre of Dionysus, the jury courts and the Pnyx.