This book fulfils a need that has long been felt, or ought to have been at least, for the testimony of Photius has often been produced but seldom weighed when scholars attempt to write a systematic theology for Clement. In fact it is not so much a testimony as an indictment on the following counts: (1) that Clement maintained the eternity of matter and the autonomy of the ideal realm; (2) that he posited the existence of many worlds before the creation of the present one; (3) that he did not believe the incarnate Word to be the true Word of the Father; (4) that he made the Son of God a creature; (5) that he held a docetic view of Christ; (6) that he embraced the Platonic doctrine of transmigration; (7) that his account of the creation of Eve from Adam was obscene; and (8) that he imagined sexual unions between angels and human women. Ashwin-Siejkowski does not conclude that all these charges are chimerical. With regard to the first he argues that the patriarch, while quoting Clement with tolerable accuracy, failed to grasp that his object was to explode the Gnostic belief in the tragic origin of matter. And it was Clement himself, he suggests, who brought the third charge on himself by his application of the term ‘Logos’ to the Father, which was naturally construed as a reference to a second Logos, distinct from both the Father and the Son. The fourth and eighth, insofar as they are true, would not be accusations at all in Clement's day; the fifth holds good for those who believes that any revelation in this world of a humanity which is not marred by the frailties of the body must be docetic. The second and sixth are unsubstantiated in the extant works of Clement, while the seventh gains only weak support from his ‘Gnosticising’ precept that the female achieves perfection only by becoming male. There are points at which I would be inclined to pronounce a less qualified sentence of acquittal. It does not seem to me that any of the passages cited from Clement prove beyond doubt that he maintained the pre-existence of the matter from which the physical world is made, and it is surprising to me that a study in which Philo's pervasive influence is so ably documented should omit to note that his Greek translation of Genesis vi.1 reads ‘angels’ rather than ‘sons of god’. Clement's theology of the Second Person will perplex us less if we follow those who assign the nineteenth of his Excerpts from Theodotus to his Valentinian interlocutor. But even those who disagree with Ashwin-Siejkowski in certain details will not wish to impugn the value or the rigour of his diagnosis of Photius’ animosity to Clement as an early case of scholarly myopia, induced (as it still can be) by the practice of reading ancient books under modern lights.