This is a rich and ambitious book. D.A. himself previously laid bare the colonialist deficiencies of T.J. Dunbabin's classic The Western Greeks (1948). By focusing on social and economic aspects, through the archaeological data, D.A. aims to overcome the challenges of a hellenocentric and literary-text-driven narrative of the Greeks in Sicily, and so to offer something more than previous syntheses such as those of L. Braccesi and G. Millino (La Sicilia greca [2000]) or N. Luraghi's Tirannidi arcaiche in Sicilia e Magna Grecia (1994). Nonetheless, the reader should be clear: this is not a history of Sicily c. 800–320 bc, but a singular study of the Greeks in Sicily.

The introduction covers questions of historiography and theory. D.A. neatly sketches the classic fault lines of Sicilian history, between constant incomers and dominant cultures. The answer lies in better methodology, new theoretical approaches and better (use of) evidence. Chapter 1 contextualises the Greek arrival by exploring the geographical and historical conditions of Sicily within wider Mediterranean networks from c. 1200 bc: Sicily dropped out of major networks of interaction in the transition from the LBA to the EIA, and so by the time of the Greek arrival was fairly wild and heavily vegetated (p. 53 with pp. 229–38); the pre-Greek population numbered perhaps 100,000. Consequently, the Greeks found a wild and empty frontier land, in which the ownership and control of labour was to be key.

The meat of the book lies in three lengthy chapters, covering ‘Settlement and Territory’, ‘Societies’ and ‘Economics’. Each chapter is divided into four chronological periods: foundation to centralisation (c. 800–c. 500 bc); political centralisation (500–465); collapse and return of centralisation (465–405); between centralisation and independence (405–320). The rationale for this emerges from the narrative framework that is constructed through these divisions in Chapter 2 and that is deeply Syracuse-centric, with a secondary role for Akragas. The importance of tyrants and the associated territorial centralisation that takes place under them in periods 2 and 4 is key to the overall thesis of economic growth. Periods of ‘economic take-off’ are suggested to fall in the half centuries from c. 650, c. 550, c. 450 and c. 350 bc, and are broadly suggested either to inspire the ambition for, or be consequent upon, moments of state centralisation, associated militarism and corresponding shifts between agricultural economies and territorial states with consumer cities. The cautious reader may wish to push a little harder at the foundations for some of these ‘take-offs’ (e.g. pp. 267–8 on the ‘guesswork’ involved in arguing for an economic take-off based on grain production) and at the precise theoretical and causal relationships involved, which can feel somewhat ‘chicken or egg’ (e.g. p. 302).

Needless to say, these chapters are founded upon a very strong knowledge of the archaeology and history of Sicily. As readers familiar with his earlier work might expect, D.A. is particularly strong when it comes to exploring the possibilities and implications of quantification. Territories and urban settlements are mapped, assessed and compared, manpower requirements, populations and agricultural output are all estimated (although for the latter one is largely referred to D.A.’s earlier work; on the former, see below). Coinage is tabulated in a limited way, but numismatics are a weakness, and D.A. misses the opportunity to exploit circulation or die studies or their potential for considering size of issue (calculations for many of the Greek cities are available in F. de Callataÿ, Recueil quantitatif des émissions monétaires archaïques et classiques [2003]). Nonetheless, in some cases the archaeology still is simply not up to the task being asked of it: the periodisations are themselves unequal, and unequally treated across the volume (a period of 35 years is rarely amenable to serious analysis of archaeological trends); furthermore the gaps are sometimes still substantial, as D.A. acknowledges (pp. 129, 135–6, another generation's work is needed to reassess the ‘Timoleontic revival’). For all that literary historians are rightly castigated for excessive reliance on anecdotal and tendentious material, can one realistically generalise about rural settlement in fifth-century Syracusan territory on the basis of one excavation near Akrai (pp. 117–20)? Should Megara Hyblaia's unique set of data really be generalised to the rest of the island (p. 263)?

‘There is, however, one curious difficulty, and that is created by the Greeks’, as Moses Finley wrote to Denis Mack Smith in 1966. Finley was clear: ‘I think we must treat the Greeks apart, not as colonialists but as genuine Sicilians (they were there long enough).’ It remains, to me at least, unclear exactly where D.A. stands on this, notwithstanding the critiques levelled in the introduction. To resume my initial point, this is a study of the Greeks in Sicily, and fundamentally of the ten primary ‘colonial’ foundations in Sicily. D.A. is careful almost always to refer to Greek Sicily or the Greeks in Sicily (occasionally Syracuse elides with Sicily, e.g. pp. 135, 289). However, D.A. never addresses explicitly the question of why he is focusing on the Greek urban foundations (parallels with the Copenhagen Polis Inventory, see p. 62 n. 1). There are brief hints and acknowledgements that there were others around (‘the rest of the island was under the control of Carthage and the native population’, p. 110; oddest is a reference to Carthage as a ‘non-subject state’ on p. 279). Phoenicians, natives and others are largely absent. This becomes something of an elephant in the living room when tackling the question of population estimates: the actual total population of the island throughout this period is not directly confronted, only pre-Greek and Greek colonial (cf. pp. 53, Table 5, 184 and 197). This in turn begs the question of precisely what models of exploitation D.A. has in mind, given his opening emphasis upon the importance of ownership and control of labour. Centralisation equates to the acquisition of larger territories, but there is little explicit consideration of how this might work (pp. 270, 300 are rare allusions to possible taxation). At times he writes enthusiastically of heterogeneous urban populations (p. 172), the ‘cosmopolitan nature’ of Gelon's Syracuse (p. 184), cosmopolitanism more broadly, ‘open societies’, even a ‘common market’ (pp. 267, 279). Infrequently, the necessity of dependent labour is noted (p. 267 together with 57 are the key passages, although the former escapes the brief index references to slavery), but there is very little sense of possible oppression or exploitation.

In his wide-ranging introduction, D.A. singles out the nineteenth-century historian E.A. Freeman (author of a monumental history of Sicily to 289 bc) for his world-historical and comparative perspectives (p. 9): ‘Freeman's thinking was both characteristic and uncharacteristic of the time in adopting a middle-ground cultural approach that still recognized the dominance of Hellenism, but played down the racial factor’. Some may read this last phrase with a little surprise, given Freeman's often explicit Aryanism. D.A. returns to Freeman in his conclusions, with a lengthy quotation (p. 325), which includes ‘It was the coming of the Greek which made Sicily all that we understand by Sicily … it is the presence of the Greek, not that of the Phoenician, which gives Sicilian history its special and abiding charm’. The latter claim is then repeated by D.A. (p. 326), omitting reference to the Phoenician, but with the rider, ‘if that statement is today first qualified and supported empirically, and also includes the collaboration of native and other peoples’ (my emphasis). This is a singularly positive view of colonialism and labour relations. Readers should also be aware (since there is no hint in this book) that the extended quotation from Freeman continued in the original (vol. 1, pp.10–11) thus:

Freeman exemplified the dangers of hellenocentrism taken to extremes. D.A., by contrast, offers a fine and progressive study of the Greek colonial cities of Sicily in their heyday; but it is still a remarkably hellenocentric one, albeit for different reasons.