Those looking for ‘authentic’ Demosthenes in this book will probably be disappointed. The portion of the Demosthenic corpus included encompasses eleven law court speeches which have been transmitted as a group by some medieval MSS (e.g. Marc. Gr. 416 [F] or Marc. Gr. 418 [Q], and partially Par. Gr. 2934 [S]). However, these speeches, which show a varying degree of accuracy and forcefulness and cover the late 360s to c. 330 b.c., cannot be assigned as a whole to Demosthenes. Only a few are directly attributable to the orator (on the formation of the collection of works which goes under the name of Demosthenes, one can still usefully refer to L. Gernet, Démosthène. Plaidoyers civils, I [1954], pp. 11–13). Nevertheless, these texts deserve attention for various reasons, as this new annotated translation in the series ‘The Oratory of Classical Greece’ confirms.

Along with the recently published vol. 14, containing the deliberative speeches (nos 1–17), the present volume brings the publication of Demosthenes' works in the series nearly to completion. It includes the speeches traditionally numbered (more or less exactly as in MS F) from 39 to 49: Against Boeotus I and II (39 and 40), Against Spudias (41), Against Phaenippus (42), Against Macartatus (43), Against Leochares (44), Against Stephanus I and II (45 and 46), Against Evergus and Mnesibulus (47), Against Olympiodorus (48) and Against Timotheus (49). These orations mainly concern disputes involving estate property, with the exception of 39, in which the plaintiff sues his half-brother in order to prevent him from using the same name as him, and 47, dealing with false testimony given in a former assault case.

After two introductions, to the series and to Demosthenes (both by M. Gagarin), S. presents various issues arising from these texts in a clear and comprehensive way, paying particular attention to the legal aspects (pp. 6–31). S. offers a brief overview of the problems of authorship: apart from those speeches that can be clearly assigned to Demosthenes' associate Apollodorus, the son of the banker Pasion (nos 46, 49 and probably 47), S. is inclined to consider speeches 39, 41 and 45, which can be dated to the decades 360–350, as the only ones that were written by Demosthenes. One might suggest as a general rule that the later the court speeches are, the less likely it is that they are Demosthenes' works, since it is difficult to imagine Demosthenes' career as a logographer extending as far as 330 b.c. S. deals cautiously with slippery matters such as stylistic criteria for the evaluation of authenticity and invites readers to develop their own views on the authorship of these texts, though she does not shrink from stating her own position: ‘The translator shares many of the prejudices of the nineteenth-century German scholar Friedrich Blass and has sown them freely in the introductory essays: that speeches in which the argumentation is lifeless and not lucid but void of legal finesse and repetitive and naïve, in which material is adduced without relevance and order, and in which sentences run on without articulate direction – such compositions cannot have been Demosthenes’ (p. 9). After briefly considering the order of 39–49 in the main medieval MSS, S. deals with the debated issue of the legal documents that we find inserted in the transmitted text of Attic court speeches, for example laws, witness testimonies or contracts. Such documents were read during trials by clerks, but it is highly improbable that they were transmitted together with the written text of the relevant speech from the beginning. In many cases they were placed in the text of the speeches afterwards or they were replaced by reconstructed documents at some stage of the transmission. As for speeches 39–49, documents (including nineteen laws) can be found in nos 43, 45 and 46, and S. deals with their degree of authenticity in each case.

The remaining part of the preface is usefully arranged according to the main topics involved in the study of these texts: (1) ‘Marriage, Legitimacy, and Natural Children’, in which the two kinds of marriage, by engyê or by epidikasia, are described; (2) ‘Adoption’, dealing with the main way of providing a childless man with an heir not only to his estate but also to important obligations (three forms of adoption were possible: ‘inter uiuos’, ‘testamentary’ and the poorly attested ‘posthumous adoption’); (3) ‘Paternal Acknowledgement and Introduction to Phratry and Deme’, dealing with the witnessed forms of paternal acknowledgement and with the introduction of a child born to an Athenian citizen to the civic body; (4) ‘Claiming an Estate’, which illustrates the various ways to claim an estate: by embateusis, by epidikasia and diadikasia, by diamartyria and dikê pseudomartyriôn; (5) ‘The Law of Intestate Succession’, concerning the law that governed the adjudication of an estate in the absence of legitimate sons and of an uncontested will.

Each speech is preceded by an introduction which explains the (often tangled) background of the dispute and its nature, the issues at stake, the kind of case and the stage of the legal procedure to which the speech refers. The translation of 39–40 is based on M. Dilts' recent OCT, while S. relies on the previous OCT by W. Rennie for nos 41–9 (vol. 4 of Dilts' edition containing 41–61 has been published in the meantime). It is careful and fluent, with effective solutions, such as the translation of genos as ‘kin circle’ or ‘inheriting circle’ in contexts dealing with succession (p. 27 n. 55). It is a fitting replacement for the former English translations by Kennedy (Bohn's Classical Library, 1897) and Murray's Loeb (1936, 1939). The book ends with a well-selected bibliography and an accurate index which duly registers the Greek technical terms.

For scholars and those interested in the life of ancient Athens, reading these texts can be an instructive experience (as reading Attic forensic oratory generally is, even in its less successful expressions). We can limit ourselves, conclusively, to a few examples. As far as practical aspects of the work of a court are concerned, it is in some of these speeches (39.17; 45.17, 57–8; 47.16; 48.48; 49.65) that the most substantial evidence for the use of the echinos (i.e. the lidded pot in which the documents for a trial were preserved) can be found. Again, the little we know about the antidosis procedure comes mainly from no. 42, concerning the adjudication of a trierarchic service, the only surviving speech for an antidosis trial that we possess (for the rest, Pollux 9.36 quoted the title of a lost speech of Hyperides, while Isocrates' Antidosis is not actually about an antidosis procedure). But these speeches also allow us a glimpse of the economic and political life of Athens. In this respect, nos 36 and 49 provide evidence for the destiny of the important bank of Pasion (and in 49.5 and 49.43, etc. we can observe ancient banking practices, namely the use of grammata or hypomnemata, respectively ‘record books’ and ‘memoranda’). No. 49 is also the only speech in the group concerning a public personality, the general Timotheus, the wealthy son of Conon, in whose regard S. rightly observes: ‘This speech provides one of the best depictions of the link between one's military and economic position’ (p. 355). This speech also preserves a valuable piece of information: the night arrival of two foreign sovereigns, Alcetas king of the Molossians and Jason king of the Thessalians, at Timotheus' house at Piraeus in autumn 373, to provide him with assistance for a trial (49.22).

On the whole, Demosthenes' speeches 39–49 contribute to the understanding of the lively, dynamic and conflicting world of fourth-century b.c. Athens. We now have a valuable, up-to-date tool for approaching them.