The stated purpose of this book is to demonstrate ‘how litigants’ words work together with their movements and physical appearance, how they exploit the Athenian preference for visual evidence through the language of demonstration and visibility, and how they plant images in their jurors' minds' (pp. 6–7). The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, ‘Physical Sight’, O'C. discusses what the jurors can actually see. The second part, ‘The Language of Demonstration and Visibility’, examines how litigants use words associated with sight to create a conceptual world, while the third part, ‘Imaginary Sight’, shows how litigants encourage jurors to imagine they were present at the events which landed the litigants in court (p. 22). For his purposes O'C. assumes that all extant forensics speeches are records of what happened during the trial, although he understands that post-trial revisions could have significantly altered speeches, arguments and other important details related to the trial.

In the opening section O'C. briefly discusses the possibility that the shocking visual effects reported by authors of later antiquity during the trial of Phryne for impiety could actually hold some truth. Although he is rightly sceptical about this particular case, he underlines that visual stunts were not uncommon in Athenian trials. In the first chapter several important cases are discussed: the appearance of the ailing Polystratus (Lys. 20), the robust Philon (Lys. 31), the older, respectable gentleman (Lys. 3), or the visibly disabled man (Lys. 24) surely could have a direct impact upon the jury. To these cases the reader could add many more, like for example the appearance of the handsome Lycophron, who in his fifties still looked like a seductive lover (Hyp. Lyc.), or the blind uncle testifying against Timarchus (Aesch. 1.104), but O'C. has clearly made his point that physical appearance and visual evidence could strongly influence the outcome of Athenian trials.

Chapter 2 discusses the visual evidence on movement, gestures and physiognomics. Since the evidence from the speeches is rather limited, O'C. expands the scope of the chapter to include the theory and ethics of gesture in Plato, Aristotle and the rhetoricians of the Greco-Roman world. However, the views of the rhetoricians of the Republican and Imperial era should be treated with caution when applied to a Classical Athenian setting. Sometimes their ideas about the practices of the ancient orators like Pericles or Demosthenes amounted to nothing more than nostalgic tales. The account on physiognomics, the employment of physical appearance as a visual guide to the characters and vices of an opponent, stands on more solid ground since it is based on actual examples from the speeches.

The third chapter discusses proof and demonstration as acts of ‘showing’ (δείκνυμι or ϕαίνω and their compounds) with examples from Aristophanes, Antiphon, Hippocrates and Presocratic philosophy. The fourth chapter deals with the important issue of eye-witnesses. O'C. argues that in a sense witnesses were the eyes of the court to the contested events. While O'C. fully appreciates the human factor in such circumstances, perhaps not enough attention has been paid to the scepticism with which the orators often treat eye-witnesses. A good example might be the case against Pancleon discussed briefly by O'C. The testimony of all five eye-witnesses is essentially worthless, because what it contains is basically irrelevant to the main issue at hand. Of course, the answer to the question whether Athenian juries could easily see through such tricks or were often fooled by them remains a matter of speculation and interpretation of the available evidence, but this is a different, much larger discussion. The account on epideictic oratory as a spectator act is engaging but tantalisingly brief.

Chapter 5 focuses on enargeia, the vivid presentation of events through which the orator is inviting members of the jury to visualise what took place elsewhere, with examples from the major political trials of the 340s and 330s bce. Chapter 6 discusses the concept of internal audiences. The jurors are invited to visualise the reaction of persons or groups who were present at the events, and thus indirectly coaxed to identify with these audiences and react in a similar way. In the brief concluding section O'C. outlines the significance of visual evidence for the art of persuasion. One possible reservation at this point might be that our culture is very visual; we spend endless hours of our lives in front of a screen. Cultures of the past may have been differently accustomed and more attuned to auditory stimuli. There is therefore a danger of transferring some of our own cultural bias to the visual aspects of the ancient world, and we need to be aware of it when discussing the overall significance of visual evidence for them.

O'C.’s book makes a very useful contribution to the expanding literature on performance studies in the Attic orators, and it is an unfortunate coincidence that he was not able to benefit from the recently published book by A. Serafim, Attic Oratory and Performance (2017), and the edited volume by Serafim, S. Papaioannou and B. De Vela, A Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric (2017).

A few minor errors include p. 41, where O'C. mentions that Midias was fined 1000 drachmas because he missed the meeting with the arbitrator. Procedurally this is incorrect. The case which the arbitrator was expected to process was a lawsuit for slander (δίκη κακηγορίας) brought by Demosthenes against Midias. Failure to appear resulted in the loss of the case, but not in a fine. The sum of 1000 drachmas mentioned in 88 and 89 was the amount of compensation which Demosthenes was claiming. On p. 47 the details about the testimony of the physician in the case against Boeotus (Dem. 40) are wrong. The physician testified that Boeotus had asked him to inflict cuts and bruises on his head, so that the latter could claim in court that his half-brother Mantitheus had assaulted him. The physician refused to injure Boeotus, but testified for Mantitheus in the trial. By doing so he essentially invalidated any impact which the cuts and bruises of Boeotus could have had as visual evidence of an assault (Dem. 40.33), and moreover completely discredited him. Consequently Boeotus lost that trial, which would have resulted in the permanent exile of Mantitheus, if successful. The dithering argument made on p. 51 that Demosthenes and Lysias appear to be the most skilled in the employment of sight in their arguments is certainly not true. Apollodorus, Hyperides, Aeschines, Antiphon, and even Isaeus are equally skilled, as it is proven by O'C. himself, who mentions several of their most memorable visual stunts throughout the book. On p. 109 Demosthenes is credited with the speech Against Nicostratus, but in the summary of speeches (p. 182) Apollodorus is correctly recognised as the author. Finally, there are a few lapses in the summaries of the speeches. For example: on p. 181 Apollodorus is credited with the first speech Against Stephanus. Most scholars agree that this is an authentic Demosthenic text; Apollodorus only wrote the second speech Against Stephanus. On p. 183 the case against Lycophron is presented as an adultery charge. This is unlikely; the case was an eisangelia, and the adultery accusations were probably peripheral.

Minor disagreements aside, O'C. has made a valuable contribution to the ever-growing bibliography on performance studies in the Attic orators with a thorough, thoughtful and very accessible account which will be very useful to specialists and students, and substantially enriches our understanding of the techniques, tricks and visual effects employed by the early masters of persuasion.