This is a somewhat idiosyncratic volume, but none the less interesting for that. It may be viewed as a sort of culmination of many decades of reflection by the distinguished ancient philosopher Ilsetraut Hadot on the life and achievement of the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius and in particular on the vexed questions of his settlement in the border town of Harran (ancient Carrhae) in Eastern Syria – or, more properly, Northern Mesopotamia – after the return of the philosophers from their taking refuge from the persecution of Justinian at the court of King Chosroes of Persia in 532 and of his founding of a school there that lasted for many centuries, well into the Islamic era; and then of his authorship, which has been fairly widely disputed, of the commentary on Aristotle's De anima that survives under his name. The first of these issues takes up the first half of the book, while the second half, devoted to a discussion of, not all of his commentaries, but just of three of them, which the author regards as being the subject of a particular degree of controversy (viz. his commentaries on the Handbook of Epictetus, on the De anima and on the Categories), is dominated by the latter.

What we have before us is billed as ‘an updated (unpublished) version of the French text’, translated by I. Drummond. H. is referred to throughout in the third person, though she is undoubtedly the author of the book, and the protagonist in the controversies aired therein. However, one eventually gets used to that.

I must confess that I would have been rather sceptical of the Harran story, mainly for the reasons that (a) it hardly seems to amount to a return to the embrace of the Roman Empire and of Hellenic civilisation, such as the historian Agathias claims that the philosophers were anxious for; and (b) it is hard to imagine that the scholarly library resources of Harran would be adequate to the researches of a man like Simplicius, especially in view of the amount of commentary work that he is reckoned to have got through after his return from Persia, not least the commentaries on the Categories and on the Physics. However, H., with much reliance on the investigations of M. Tardieu – and, for the Islamic Nachleben, of P. Vallat, produces a highly persuasive case. There was certainly a distinctive scholarly and religious tradition in Harran, with Manichaeans and Sabians prominent in the city, and much attention given to mathematics and astronomy as well as other aspects of Hellenic philosophy. After all, what do we really know about library facilities, even in Athens or Alexandria, at this time? It occurs to me that, even in Apamea, back in the early fourth century, Iamblichus must have had a pretty comprehensive library, to be enabled to carry on his voluminous studies. So, I am largely converted on that point, and in the process I have learned a great deal.

On the second major issue, also, I have modified my views, once again learning quite a lot in the process. Largely persuaded by the arguments of C. Steel – with whom H. is here locked in battle, as well as with such followers of his as M. Perkams and H. Baltussen –, I had accepted that the surviving Neoplatonic commentary on the De anima, attributed to Simplicius, was not by him, as having a significantly different ‘feel’ to it from his other commentaries, and was most probably to be attributed to his colleague Priscian. In fact, in our edition of Iamblichus’ treatise On the Soul (J.F. Finamore and J.M. Dillon [edd.], Iamblichus: De Anima. Text, Translation and Commentary [2002]) (which the author of the commentary professes to be following closely), Finamore was inclined to be more cautious than I on the identification with Priscian, and we therefore left him as ‘Pseudo-Simplicius’. However, after absorbing over 70 pages of closely-knit argument, I am prepared to admit that the case for Priscian is far from proven and that the author may well be Simplicius in a rather different mode, closer to his commentary on the Handbook of Epictetus, on which H. also has an enlightening chapter. The matter could perhaps be settled by the application of a more rigorous stylistic analysis than has yet been devoted to the relevant documents.

Apart from these major issues, H. also provides useful discussions of Simplicius’ Categories commentary and of the question of the evidence for a commentary by him on the first book of Euclid's Elements (which would tie in with the establishment of a school of mathematics in Harran). With the help of Vallat, she produces voluminous evidence of the Nachleben of both these documents in the Islamic era – but the heads of non-Islamic scholars will, I fear, begin to swim after a certain amount of this!

By way of conclusion, she appends a warm commendation of the achievement represented by R. Sorabji's great enterprise, the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series – accompanied, however, by a lament concerning the takeover of the learned world by works in the English language (to which, of course, she has just added!). The volume is rounded off by a useful bibliography, but, I am sorry to say, no indexes.