The last decade has witnessed a boom in the study of post-palatial, pre-Hellenistic Crete. Archaeologists have turned to this era with renewed vigour, hence a recent spate of edited volumes, not to mention S. Wallace's archaeological synthesis Ancient Crete: from Successful Collapse to Democracy's Alternatives, Twelfth to Fifth Centuries bc (2010). New histories are appearing too, most notably G. Seelentag's Das archaische Kreta. Institutionalisierung im frühen Griechenland (2015). Yet for students of ancient Greek law, Crete's epigraphic riches have not hitherto received the attention they deserve; in particular, teaching Cretan law has proven difficult in the absence of English translations and commentaries. Students have made do with R. Willetts’ The Law Code of Gortyn (1967), a classic to be sure, but one which leaves out all of Gortyn's legal inscriptions save the ‘Great Code’ (IC IV 72) and whose commentary is, after half a century, somewhat dated in places. More adventurous students have had to try their hands at H. van Effenterre and F. Ruzé’s Nomima: recueil d'inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l'archaïsme grec (2 vols, 1994–5), the rather harder to obtain Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der frühen griechischen Polis (1993) by R. Koerner, or the Latin translations and commentaries of M. Guarducci's Inscriptiones Creticae vols 1–4 (1935–1950). G. and P.’s carefully produced volume, gathering (with introduction, text, English translation, commentary and linguistic notes) the bulk of Cretan law from c. 650–400 b.c., is thus not only a major contribution, but a timely one too. The book has been a decade in the making, and it has been worth the wait.

The authors are as well placed as anyone today to have taken on this task: both G. (a specialist in Greek law) and P. (an archaeologist and epigrapher) have decades of experience in working on these inscriptions. They divide the work as follows: the Gortynian material (which is the most substantial from a single Cretan polis) is primarily the work of G.; and the material from Axos, Datala, Dreros, Eleutherna, Eltynia, Knossos, Lyktos, Phaistos and Prinias is primarily the work of P.

A (necessarily) long introduction comprises ten parts: (1) the question of Cretan unity versus diversity; (2) the early archaic context wherein legislation first emerged; (3) epigraphic and linguistic matters; (4) institutions of government; (5) juridical status and family structure; (6) social institutions; (7) the economy; (8) inter-polis relations; (9) religion; (10) technical aspects of law. This is followed by the texts themselves; these are helpfully arranged by polis (alphabetically, running from Axos to Prinias) with numbers following the system established by Guarducci in IC but with polis abbreviations replacing ‘IC’. Thus Gortyn's ‘Great Code’ IC IV 72 becomes G 72 in their schema (G denoting Gortyn), which is less cumbersome and enables easy cross-referencing. Texts are accompanied by a judicious set of linguistic notes to aid readers trained in Attic but at points bamboozled by the local dialect and terminology.

In general, the introductory materials are superb. I should like to state a couple of minor reservations. On the question of Cretan unity versus diversity (pp. 1–5), the line taken has scarcely changed from P.’s important essay on this issue in Classical Philology 87 (1992), 193–205. If anything, it has become more dogmatic. On her view, literary sources on Crete (esp. those by Aristotle, Ephorus and Dosiadas) were either misinformed, made up or simply extrapolated from the constitution of Lyktos; the epigraphy shows little cultural or institutional uniformity. Most historians, though (including Seelentag, op. cit., and this reviewer), take a less extreme position, best summed up in A. Chaniotis’ essay in E. Greco & M. Lombardo (edd.) La grande iscrizione di Gortyna (2005), pp. 175–94. To be sure, the literary sources generalise and oversimplify, but they are unlikely to be made from whole cloth; decent information on Crete was hardly impossible to come across for interested Greek writers, and there was at least some basic institutional uniformity among the Cretan cities, even if diversity is the rule at the level of finer detail. G. and P., though, opt for a rather harsh methodology that requires jettisoning much of the literary evidence: if details of the literary sources are not corroborated in the inscriptions, they are presumed erroneous (pp. 2–5). But would the details on the upbringing of Cretan boys mentioned by Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F 149) likely appear in an epigraphic context? That is not to provide a simplistic apologia for Ephorus, only to say that to view the literary texts merely as ahistorical make-believe takes a healthy scepticism too far.

There are some mysterious choices of terminology, too. For instance, in Section 5 G. and P. note (p. 81) that individuals called doloi and woikeis can be sold, but opt for the old-fashioned distinction between the two denoted by the words ‘slaves’ and ‘serfs’. Yet the fact that the latter can be sold (G 41.4, lines 7–8) means that they too are slaves. G. and P. enlist a comparison with Russian ‘serfdom’ to justify their translation, but there is debate in the field of slavery studies over whether this label is accurate. Likewise, G. and P. rightly note (p. 350) that the semantic range of the term moicheia is broader than our term ‘adultery’, and at Gortyn embraced not only wives but various free women in the household. Yet they use the term ‘adultery’ instead of ‘seduction’ nonetheless. It would perhaps have been better had they taken Lucian's advice (De Hist. Conscr. 41) and called a fig a fig, and a trough a trough.

These quibbles, however, hardly detract from the value of the volume. Its bulk – and chief contribution – comprises the legal inscriptions themselves (pp. 147–505), accompanied by translation and commentary. G. and P. have taken considerable care over this and should be commended for their years of work and scholarship on this laborious and highly technical task. Some 75 black-and-white illustrations help convey the physical appearance of the inscriptions themselves (though for monuments such as those bearing G 41 and 72, the pull-out illustrations of IC IV still remain invaluable). The commentary is succinct, and whilst one might wish for more discussion at points, this perhaps would have led to a rather unwieldy book. The collection showcases the richest regional body of evidence for the formation of the institutions of the classical polis, with, for example, iterative magistracies, term limits and legal safeguards against elite accumulation of power etc. (on this process see E.M. Harris, ‘Solon and the Spirit of the Law in Archaic and Classical Greece’ in his Democracy and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens [2006], pp. 3–28).

Greek historians often stress that, however Athenocentric our sources may be, Athens was in many respects an unusual polis. The opportunity to present alternatives to Athens is, however, difficult at an undergraduate level. G. and P. have therefore performed a valuable service in making accessible a great deal of epigraphic material (especially from Gortyn). Having recently used this volume for teaching third- and fourth-year undergraduates in a course on Classical Sparta and Crete, I can report positive feedback from the students, who found it authoritative and user-friendly; skilled students were also able to marshal a great deal of epigraphic material in their coursework that was hitherto inaccessible. One hopes that the potential of this fine volume as a teaching tool will be fully realised in the near future; at £120, though, unlocking that potential will require a well-produced e-book. Finally, despite its potential as a teaching tool, the volume is far more than an undergraduate sourcebook, and professional scholars too will be grateful to G. and P. for making Crete's legal inscriptions more accessible than was previously the case.