L.I. HAU, A. MEEUS and B. SHERIDAN (eds) Diodoros of Sicily: Historiographical Theory and Practice in the Bibliotheke (Studia Hellenistica 58). Leuven: Peeters, 2018. Pp. x + 612. €115. 9789042934986.

on his fellow Attic orators. However, in recent years, scholars such as Michael Edwards (Isaeus, Austin 2007) and Brenda Griffith-Williams (A Commentary on Selected Speeches of Isaios, Leiden 2013) have rightly brought Isaeus’ corpus into the limelight with their fresh evaluations. Hatzilambrou’s book successfully continues the movement to offer an unbiased view of his work. This is the first volume on Attic oratory from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. It begins with an extensive introduction to Oration 3, which is divided into six parts: Hatzilambrou clearly maps out information on the orator’s life, the legal dispute that led to the trial, the speech’s structure and style, the manuscript tradition, previous translations of the text and, finally, the need to provide a new, ‘self-contained’ edition of Oration 3. Hatzilambrou’s inclusion of the testimonia (1–6) is noteworthy. By gathering all the sources relating to Isaeus’ life (for example Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Harpocration, etc.) and presenting both the original Greek and her own translation of each source, she has created a valuable resource. Another indispensable inclusion, and very well placed at an early stage in the introduction, is the stemma familiae, depicting all the named people involved in the inheritance case (9). Overall, the introduction is thorough and clear. This is particularly appreciated when considering a writer like Isaeus, since the points of law and the familial details surrounding the case require careful explanation. Hatzilambrou gives due consideration to the effectiveness of Isaeus’ rhetoric and the logical construction of the speech (10–28, 35–41), both of which she evaluates considerably more positively than Wyse, who maintained that he knew ‘few examples of Greek oratory that leave on the mind a more disagreeable impression of trickiness and dishonesty’ (The Speeches of Isaeus, Cambridge 1904, 276). Along with the anonymous hypothesis to the speech, Hatzilambrou presents a new version of the Greek text based on a full collation of the manuscript evidence, complete with her own apparatus criticus. Though she reflects upon the suggestions of other commentators, her guiding principle is to deny any emendation to the text unless the reading of the manuscript cannot be explained (54). The Greek is accompanied by an English translation of both the hypothesis and the text, which allows the speech to be accessible to those without knowledge of Greek. But beyond simply providing an accurate translation, I hasten to add that Hatzilambrou’s rendering enables any reader to follow readily Isaeus’ argumentation on Athenian inheritance law. The edition includes a detailed commentary on the linguistic, textual, stylistic and legal issues encountered in the speech. Although the speech may be read independently, the notes on matters of 267