The wave of scholarly interest in – and the gradual rehabilitation of – the Hellenistic city as an object of study continues unabated in recent years, and S.'s volume on Hellenistic isopoliteia both continues the trend and makes an invaluable contribution to it. While few today would echo the allegations of decline and irrelevance that dominated scholarly discussion of Greek poleis after Philip and Alexander in the twentieth century, there is still work to be done. S.'s approach of returning ad fontes with this re-appraisal of the epigraphic evidence for isopoliteia is as necessary as it is praiseworthy, and readers emerge from this volume with a much better sense of how these ancient epigraphic testimonia should be treated with contemporary methodology and rigour.

S.'s volume can be situated in what we might tentatively call the ‘second wave’ of recent studies on the Hellenistic city that seek to provide up-to-date analyses of the institutions that were central to its internal functioning and external relations. In this sense S. follows in the footsteps of K.J. Rigsby on asylia (1996), S.L. Ager on interstate arbitrations (1997), H. Beck on poleis and koina (1997), N.M. Kennell (2006) and A.S. Chankowski (2010) on Hellenistic ephebeia and W. Mack (2015) on proxenia, to name a few. Such an approach remains eminently needed in the collective re-appraisal of the Hellenistic city, given that earlier institutional studies and compendia of source material tended to be guided by presuppositions of decline and decadence, along with a dash of fatalism with the advent of Rome.

As S. clearly outlines in the introduction, this volume is meant to be Grundlagenforschung: back-to-basics scholarship that returns to the ancient material and derives its observations from it, rather than trying to make it fit into a particular analytical mould. In this it succeeds confidently. Isopoliteia, which S. cleverly translates as ‘potential citizenship’, has not been the subject of a monograph-length study since W. Gawantka's 1975 volume, which continues to influence scholarly thinking on the subject with its (problematically) rigid models, highly theoretical approach and reliance on modern interpretative categories. S. begins with a compelling argument against the notion that isopoliteia was ‘an unconditional and unlimited grant’ (p. 1) of a city's most valued treasure – citizenship – and that it was automatically conferred by inter-city agreements. Instead, she understands isopoliteia as an institutional framework for the option of switching citizenship according to an agreed process.

How frequently and in what circumstances individuals made use of this option is impossible to determine given the nature of our source material, leading S. to focus instead – quite wisely – on the diplomatic aspect of isopoliteia and what this can tell us about Hellenistic diplomacy more broadly. Jettisoning the old (and largely unsubstantiated) view that isopoliteia was somehow a means of offsetting depopulation or demographic decline by mass enfranchisement, S. identifies two main ways in which the grant was used: first, as a means of establishing or regulating long-term diplomatic relationships between communities; and second, as a means of influencing relationships in the short-term between polities in the context of urgent social or political situations.

The core of the volume is a collection of 70 inscriptions preserving grants of isopoliteia identified by S. and organised predominantly along geographical lines. Part 1 discusses the evidence from Asia Minor (with chapters on Miletos, Lykia, Magnesia on the Meander, Samos and Western Asia Minor), Athens and the islands, while Part 2 shifts its focus to central Greece (the Peloponnese and Aitolia) and Crete. Part 3 is dedicated to the intriguing relationship between asylia and isopoliteia, in which S. argues that the combination of the two is not as common as is normally supposed and that isopoliteia can appear tacked on to later ‘renewals/reminders’ (p. 221) of older recognitions of asylia. Brief conclusions and appendices on the origins of potential citizenship (Appendix 1) and potential citizenship in Polybios (Appendix 2) close the volume.

In assembling this collection of 70 agreements of isopoliteia, S. has both accomplished a commendable research endeavour and done a great service to the broader scholarly community. The relevant Greek text of each inscription is provided, followed by a translation, discussion of the text, re-construction of the historical context of each community involved, and a discussion of the agreement and the potential citizenship it entails. This is a superb collection of texts with enlightening commentary, in which S. identifies the key debates and relates each text to relevant literary sources without contorting the former to fit into the latter, as is often the case. The argumentation throughout is consistent and perspicacious, and readers can always see the analytical forest for the evidentiary trees. How isopoliteia relates to other diplomatic tools and institutional structures is consistently kept under consideration.

It is difficult to find points to criticise in S.'s work or this collection of documents. Perhaps having full translations of the inscriptions rather than excerpts of the relevant lines would have been helpful to non-specialists; and given the nature of the interaction between polities and individuals, some broader discussion of how isopoliteia interacts with proxenia and its associated rights would have been helpful. Some documents, especially in Part 2, could have benefited from engagement with the chapters in H. Beck and P. Funke 2015. As is often the case with collections such as these, readers are left wanting more overarching discussion and analysis, but this is the result of the interest piqued by the quality of the discussion and argumentation rather than any deficiency of the text. The volume is beautifully edited, typeset and organised – the only typo I could find was Funke 1985 being listed as Funke 1995 in the bibliography (p. 266). S. is to be commended for her engagement with a wide range of scholarship published in English, German, French and Italian – something that seems to be becoming less common in English-language publications.

At the close of the introduction to the volume S. identifies two goals of this research: first, to provide her reading of this particular tool in the arsenal of Hellenistic diplomacy; and second, to provide a useful tool to other scholars (Grundlagenforschung). S. has unquestionably succeeded on both counts with this indispensable study.