This volume contains a preface and introduction, six chapters examining case studies of tyrant-killing inscriptions, as well as an appendix containing data on regime types in ancient poleis. It is based on T.'s Ph.D. thesis submitted in 2007 at Princeton University. As T. notes in his introduction, an examination of tyrant-killing legislation is long overdue. The first and only previous attempt at cataloguing such legislation was that of H. Friedel, Der Tyrannenmord in Gesetzgebung und Volksmeinung der Griechen (1937), and two significant new pieces of epigraphic evidence (the Eretrian law and the law of Eucrates) have since been discovered. T. notes that many of the inscriptions have been investigated by scholars in isolation from one another, and as such the monograph is an attempt to consider the inscriptions in relation to one another, as well as investigating on a case by case basis how the laws would have worked in practice (p. 9).

T.'s argument is straightforward and well laid out. The essence of his argument is that tyrant-killing legislation was intended to overcome the ‘revolutionary co-ordination problem’ which democratic factions suffered from in the wake of a tyrannical coup. This concept, derived from the recent sociological work of T. Kuran, ‘Now Out of Never: the Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989’, World Politics 44 (1991), 7–48 and M. Chwe, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination and Common Knowledge (2001), explains why it is difficult for democratic factions to organise against tyrannical opponents. Despite the majority of citizens disliking the tyranny, none of the citizens acts against it because they are ignorant of how other citizens truly view the regime. This is because a simple cost-benefit analysis renders it better for the individual to hide their regime preference, rather than risk potential oppression and violence from the regime (pp. 21–5). T. relates this to Thucydides' description of the democratic faction in Athens as ‘lacking knowledge of one another’ (Thuc. 8.66) (p. 20). T. argues that the tyrant-killing legislation was designed to maximise the chance that one citizen would attempt to kill a tyrant by granting immunity from prosecution, state honours and financial rewards, thus starting a ‘bandwagon’ effect which would result in other citizens helping to overthrow the tyranny, knowing that their actions were more likely to be successful. The incentives offered to the potential tyrannicide in the extant legislation vary, ranging from lump sum payments from the tyrant's estate to public honours and state stipends for the tyrannicide and their descendants, and even the offer of citizenship for metics and slaves in some cases.

T. argues from the surviving evidence that Athens was the origin of tyrant-killing law, which emerged after the re-establishment of democracy in the wake of the coup of the Four Hundred in 410 (p. 5). The subsequent law, the decree of Demophantus, is regarded by T. to have been highly influential upon legislation in other poleis, particularly in Hellenistic Asia Minor. There are three other extant examples of tyrant killing law, which form Chapters 2, 3 & 6 of the book: the tyrant-killing law from Eretria, the Eucrates law from Athens and the Ilium tyrant-killing law. T. includes two further inscriptions as Chapters 4 & 5 which refer to tyrant killing, but do not retain the legislation: the anti-tyranny dossier from Eresus and the Philites stele from Erthyrae. T. claims that although we do not possess the laws in these two cases, the inscriptions are still important for understanding how democratic factions in the city chose to deal with tyrannical threats to their regime, and represent an important part of the pattern of tyrant-killing legislation (p. 6). T.'s discussion of each case study thoughtfully places the inscription within its political context, in some cases putting forward a novel interpretation. T.'s interpretation of the manipulation of the Philites statue in Erythrae by the oligarchs and democrats is, in my opinion, a convincing new approach to understanding the role of the statue in the political ideology of the city (pp. 150–64).

My concerns with the work are few, and do not detract from the important research which T. has undertaken. I was surprised by T.'s attempts to link the ancient struggle of democracy against tyranny to the revolutions against dictatorships of the last few decades (pp. xi–xii, 220). While in some respects this comparison is worthwhile, ancient tyranny and modern tyranny can be very different from a moral viewpoint. In particular, the stigma which the word tyrant bears in modern parlance was not always present in the ancient world, as V. Parker, ‘Tyrannos: the Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle’, Hermes 126 (1998), 145–72, demonstrates. The relationship between tyranny and democracy can also be more vague than T.'s stark factional interpretation of the tyrant-killing legislation, such as the example of Euphron of Sicyon (mentioned by T. on p. 8 concerning the praise expected to be given to a tyrannicide) whom Xenophon claims ‘was clearly a tyrant’, but was given a hero's burial in the agora by the citizens and hailed as founder of the city (Xen. Hell. 7.3.12; S. Lewis, ‘Καὶ σαφῶϛ τύραννοϛ ἦν: Xenophon's Account of Euphron of Sicyon’, JHS 124 [2004], 65–74). Another small issue was the lack of elaboration concerning the concept of ‘common knowledge’ which T. consistently refers to as an integral part of the success of tyrant-killing legislation, to the extent that the term appears as an entry in the work's index. While there was a sociological consideration of the potential of mass oath-swearing in the case of Athens based on Chwe (2001) (pp. 37–40) and a discussion of the nomothesia process in Athens (only attended by citizens) (pp. 93–5), there was not enough discussion concerning the practicality of common knowledge in the polis, i.e. how information was transmitted, or its potential unreliability as laid out by S. Lewis, News and Society in the Greek Polis (1996). Further examination of this issue would have benefited the monograph.

The volume has been well edited, with only a few small and insignificant typographical errors: ‘it supporters’ (p. 52); ‘On might reasonably conclude’ (p. 67); ‘Philipic’ (p. 68 n. 32); ‘these official’ (p. 144); ‘Lysimmachos’ (p. 160); ‘Safe return to him home’ (p. 185 n. 21); ‘This is unlikely correct’ (p. 190 n. 33). T.'s monograph lays down a strong interpretation of tyrant-killing legislation in the late Classical and early Hellenistic Greek polis, which will deservedly provoke debate amongst epigraphists and scholars of Greek democracy and tyranny alike, and become the definitive collection of Ancient Greek tyrant-killing legislation.