This lucidly written, well-researched and well thought-out monograph offers a fresh interpretative perspective on Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women. Taking his lead from Danaus’ report of the Argives’ decision to grant residence-permission to his daughters (ἡμᾶς μετοικεῖν τῆσδε γῆς ἐλευθέρους, lines 609ff.), B. argues that these lines constitute ‘the most extensive legal description of metoikia surviving from the mid-fifth century’ (p. 31) and proceeds to interpret the play and to reconstruct the trilogy with an eye to Athenian policies and attitudes towards metics in the fifth century. His approach entails a constant shift between text and sociopolitical context, yields a number of sensitive and often stimulating interpretations of individual passages, and offers a new reading of the play as ‘an immigration tragedy’ – to adapt his subtitle – which, contrary to what might have been expected, focuses on the suffering that these exotic, charming and threatening immigrants and their insidious father will inflict on the native Pelasgus and the citizens of Argos. As becomes clear from B.'s forays into the sociohistorical background of the play in all four chapters, his reading privileges the fear and threat that metics, mythical and contemporary, cause within and outside the dramatic reality.

In the introduction B. offers an overview of scholarly interpretations, sets out his methodology and offers a summary of the following four chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Charter Myth of Metoikia’, discusses the range of Aeschylean dramaturgical devices whereby the transition from immigration to partial incorporation is effected. Chapter 2, ‘Spoken Like a Metic’, examines the Danaids’ speech, dominated by overt and covert threats, and Danaus’ deceitful and comparably dangerous speech, which B. contrasts with the parrhesia and peitho that are characteristic of Pelasgus’ speech, who is depicted as an accomplished democratic orator and leader. In the concluding section of this chapter B. attributes the three different kinds of speeches to Athenian perceptions of different speech habits depending on one's civic status. The chapter concludes with an interesting interpretation of the aim of Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/50, i.e. fostering a civic rhetorical ethos whose cornerstone was peitho, which B. identifies in Pelasgus’ speech as well. Chapter 3, ‘The Cypriote Stamp’, focuses on the Danaids’ exoticism and eroticism, and the dangers of intermarriage within the play and in fifth-century Athens. Here B. brings various strands of his argument together and offers a reconstruction of the trilogy. Following the majority of scholars B. posits a battle after the departure of the Egyptian herald in which Pelasgus dies and the Argives are defeated; Danaus becomes ruler, his daughters marry their cousins and, urged by him, kill them except for Hypermnestra who spares Lynceus. B. argues against there having been a trial of Hypermnestra and, drawing on the closure of Pindar Pythian 9 and Pseudo-Apollodorus, follows Sommerstein in postulating that Aphrodite's speech (fr. 44) heralds the Danaids’ second marriage at Argos after their expiation by Hermes and Athena at the command of Zeus. The chapter ends with a comparison of Danaus’ daughters with Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea. B.'s reconstruction is the stepping stone that leads to the last chapter, ‘Sons of Earth’, which explores the similarities between the autochthonous Pelasgus and the Argive γαμόροι with the Athenian myth of autochthony, provides an overview of Athenian legislation on citizenship and land ownership from the time of Solon to the end of the fifth century, and treats autochthony as a means to differentiate citizens from non-citizens.

In the first edition of his discussion of Aeschylus’ Supplices (1969) A.F. Garvie prefaced his meticulous discussion of the various reconstructions of the trilogy by stating that the task is thankless (p. 163) and concluded it by pointing out that all the theories that had been developed up to that point, some of them more plausible than others, could be demolished ‘by a single fortunate papyrus find’ (p. 233). Almost 50 years later the picture has not changed, but B.'s reconstruction and interpretation strike me as highly plausible, for Aeschylus’ interest in metoikia is evident in the Eumenides, which B. discusses briefly in the concluding section of his monograph. B. is certainly right that there are differences between the Danaid trilogy and the Oresteia, but I believe that an extensive and in-depth comparative study would have brought out their significant similarities, thus offering stronger support to his overall reading of the Supplices. This is a path that B. chose not to take, but nevertheless he has clearly succeeded in showing the relevance of the Danaids’ unsettling arrival and admission into the polis to Athenian concerns about the influx of metics in the 460s.

Except for some typos in Greek accentuation, the book is well produced and contains an extremely useful and detailed general index of passages, proper names and topics. The extensive discussion of the sociohistorical background makes it a very useful graduate student assignment. When I started reading the book I was rather sceptical about its main thesis, but in the end B. convinced me that he offers a fruitful way of approaching Aeschylus’ optimism concerning the city's ability to integrate foreigners in the 460s, which can be taken further by him or others.