There is no shortage of recent monographs on or companions to the history of Archaic Greece. One of the latest additions to the ever-growing scholarship on this period is R.'s dense and thought-provoking book. R. considers ‘the most relevant form of class conflict in this period [to be] over control of … agricultural land’ (p. 54) and traces this class struggle as it plays out on the ideological plane. R.'s intellectual debt is not only to Marx but also to Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson, as well as Walter Donlan (in a sense, the volume is a homage to this great classicist). The argument essentially is that class struggle underlies all the milestones of the Archaic Period: the creation of the polis, the expansion of the Greek world in the eighth and seventh centuries, the appearance of tyranny in many poleis, Sparta's constitution and, of course, Athenian democracy and even imperialism, as well as the construction of gender, pan-Hellenism, and the legal and religious practices of the Greeks.

The long introduction is an asset, even if at times R.'s combativeness against or dismissal of other classicists, who he claims – sometimes falsely – avoid (Marxist) theory, is a bit off-putting. In it he offers a defence of Marxist theory as a tool with which to analyse the Archaic Period, as well as an exploration of why most twentieth- and twenty-first-century classicists have shied away from it. These historiographic themes are reprised in extensive footnotes throughout the book. Each of the subsequent chapters, with the exception of the first one on the Dark Ages, is organised chronologically and centres on a poet or poets: after an introduction on the poet's dates, work and audience (always heterogeneous in terms of class), R. uses the poet's œuvre as a vehicle through which to examine the ideological constructs of the period in question.

R. starts from the so-called Dark Ages where, using archaeological evidence and other scholars' reconstructions of the history of this period, he argues that following the collapse of the Mycenaean palace system, a meritocratic, and even proto-democratic form of big-man leadership was predominant. Wealthy aristocrats then supplanted these big men and ‘invented’ the polis. In terms of ideology, the emphasis on defending the home territories and participating in a shared religion created a sense of solidarity among the members of the polis, while hero-cults invested the aristocracy with belief in their inherent superiority. Thus, both groups could construct distinct identities, while at the same time both could accept the possibility, if not reality, of exploitation – of slaves, the poor or middling-class farmers – and the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the aristocracy.

For R. everything that happened in the Archaic Period is a reaction to these Dark-Age events and against the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few. Homer's Iliad, for example, through the figure of Achilles, voices the discontent of the masses against the new leaders who held power in early poleis. Achilles derides the idea of divine kinship and tutelary deities (the religion created by the new aristocracy in the early polis), and hearkens back to the Dark-Age meritocratic big-men and their redistribution of surplus, as opposed to the greedy aristocrats demanding subordination of other wealthy men represented by Agamemnon. The Odyssey also criticises inherited one-man rule through the suitors' challenges to Telemachus' rule, and the portrayal of beggars, traders and slaves allows the poet to appeal to those discontent in the early polis, which R. calls the ‘colonizing element’. These were smallholders and landless men who were either forced to leave or chose to do so in the hope of finding a better situation and access to (more) land in new settlements.

Hesiod in his Theogony, like Homer, reminisces about meritocratic one-man rule, and in Works and Days portrays the downward mobility that small and middling farmers experienced, while prosperity was enjoyed only by the few. R. argues, therefore, that these farmers were class-conscious and, in his next chapter, explores how they rebelled and opted for one-man rule in the form of a tyrant. Solon, in his account of the crisis in Athens, suggests that the inequalities of power were so great, especially in terms of access to land, that the poor and middling farmers resorted to open conflict. Noting that laws appear at the same time as tyrants, R. contends that tyrants used the legal apparatus to control the ruling class, while at the same time co-opting their lifestyle and privileges. They also created a sense of citizen identity for the rest of the community while also commanding its awe, through their elaborate building programme, altering the traditional tribes and organising religious festivals, among other reforms. The developing sense of identity and the laws regulating the ruling class led to the demos taking itself seriously, and to the development of Athenian democracy.

Athens and Sparta present parallel cases in the last two chapters, though the responses in each polis to the crises stemming from class struggle were different. The importance of land is clear in Tyrtaeus' poems on the Messenian Wars, as it is in Solon's poems. Both Solon and the Great Rhetra suggest that Athenian and Spartan reformers gave their respective assemblies more of a political say. Both poleis attempted to homogenise their citizens: Sparta by creating the ideal of the homoioi, which meant that any Spartan citizen could co-opt aristocratic values, especially through displaying valour in battle and through claiming descent from Heracles; Athens by using the myth of autochthony, which R. dates to the eighth century b.c.e. since Homer mentions the birth of Erechtheus. In Athens, in contrast to Sparta where the helots were the most rebellious element, the demos seems to have been assertive in the sixth century, which explains why Solon and Pisistratus succumbed to a degree to the wishes of the demos, gave it more political say and made justice available to all. Cleisthenes' reforms responded further to the demands of the demos: they curbed factionalism, prevented the possibility of one-man rule and gave even more political power to the demos.

R.'s is an important book on this period, and students and scholars of Greek history will have to engage with it whether they agree or not with R.'s argument that class struggle over land is the singular explanation for all the changes that took place in the Archaic Period. The narrative that R. presents is a traditional one: the polis is the only type of polity discussed, religion is specifically understood as polis-religion, the model of colonisation followed is the conventional one and Athenian democracy is highlighted at the expense of other democracies. There is a wealth of recent scholarship that challenges these traditional viewpoints that perhaps would have modified some aspects of R.'s argument if he had engaged with it. None the less, the strength of this book lies in the close reading of poetry from this period, and the many complex insights that R. offers that reveal evident patterns in the poems' audience, subject, sociological and political context, and ideological power.