This new edition of Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists (Vitae Sophistarum, hereafter VS) will be gratefully received by all scholars interested in the text. Despite the flourishing interest in the Corpus Philostrateum in recent decades, we remain for too many of its works at the mercy of C.L. Kayser's edition, which was first published in 1838 and revised in two subsequent editions in 1844 and 1870–1. This text was not, in any case, entirely satisfactory at the time of its publication. See, for instance, M. Schanz, ‘Zu Philostratus’, RhM 38 (1883), 305–6. S.'s new edition of the VS is published along with new editions of the two surviving declamations of Polemon of Laodicea, who was himself a leading light of Philostratus’ ‘Second Sophistic’ and who receives one of the longest biographies in the VS. These two speeches, which are delivered in the characters of the fathers of two heroes of the battle of Marathon, have received an edition in 1996 (W. Reader with A.J. Chvala-Smith, The Severed Hand and the Upright Corpse. The Declamations of Marcus Antonius Polemo). S. has previously offered penetrating criticism of this edition (‘Die Überlieferung der Deklamationen Polemons’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 55 [2013], 113–14), considering it a backward step from that of H. Hinck (Polemonis Declamationes Quae Exstant Duae [1873]). The other major recent publication concerning Polemon is the edition of the surviving versions of his Physiognomica, with substantial commentary and essays, edited by S. Swain (Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon's Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam [2007]).

A new edition of a major work of Philostratus, and indeed of the speeches of Polemon, is heartily to be welcomed, especially one which is, like S.'s, a model of scholarly method. S. draws on all independent manuscripts and includes some conjectures from the apographa; he has also collated all previous editions of the VS and of Polemon's speeches. The result is a text that is a marked improvement on the editions previously available and that will be the standard for the foreseeable future. Of the extant twenty-five manuscripts of the VS, S. identifies ten as independent witnesses. These divide into two families (α and β), the first of which is represented by four and the second by six of the ten.

S. has previously published two important articles on the transmission of the VS: ‘Zur Überlieferung und Textkritik der Sophistenviten Philostrats’, WS 123 (2010), 63–93 and ‘Die Handschriften der Sophistenviten Philostrats’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 55 (2014), 137–206. Engaged readers will wish to consult these in conjunction with the new edition to appreciate more fully S.'s reasoning, which is expressed, naturally, in only the most succinct form in the apparatus criticus. His article on the textual tradition of Polemon's speeches (‘Die Überlieferung der Deklamationen Polemons’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 55 [2013], 99–154), similarly supplements his edition of these speeches. S.'s apparatus fontium (to Philostratus, not to Polemon) includes only texts to which Philostratus directly refers; this is a wise decision, as the inclusion of the numerous, more oblique echoes of earlier literature would have bloated such an apparatus for little real gain.

The majority of differences in reading between S.'s text and earlier editions are, as one would expect, small in themselves, though cumulatively important. I will discuss only a few instances involving notable changes with particular importance for how readers will interpret and translate the text. In the opening of the VS, following the dedicatory letter, Philostratus discusses the differences, as he sees them, between the ‘Ancient’ and the ‘Second’ Sophistic. In addition to some small changes (καὶ κατὰ σμικρὰ, following Reiske's conjecture, for καὶ τὰ σμικρὰ; προσβιβάζοντες for προβιβάζοντες), S.'s text gives μορίοις ἀστέρων στοχαζόμενοι τοῦ ὄντος rather than Kayser's μυρίοις ἀστέρων στοχαζόμενοι τοῦ ὄντος. The latter reading, as the apparatus criticus reports, is found in Laur. Plut. 59.15, and is the consensus of Mosq. Synod. gr. 239, Ambros. T. 122, Esc. Ψ IV.1, Guelferbyt. Gud. gr. 25 and Par. gr. 3059. S.'s choice, a technical astrological term, is certainly the lectio difficilior and apt for the analogy that Philostratus is developing here between the practice of rhetoric and various forms of divination.

At the end of the life of Polemon (VS 544), readers of Philostratus will remember the dramatic scene in which the sophist has himself buried alive, commanding ‘Hurry, hurry, do not let the sun see me silent’. In these penultimate words of the great sophist, S. adopts Cobet's conjecture ἔπειγε, ἔπειγε for ἔπαγε, ἔπαγε (the reading of the archetype). There is a more striking choice to be made in Polemon's final sentence. S., like Kayser before him, has ultimately opted for δότε μοι σῶμα καὶ μελετήσομαι (‘give me a body, and I shall declaim’), apparently changing his mind from his 2010 article, in which he argued for μετεμβήσομαι (‘give me a body, and I shall embark upon [it]’). This latter option would indeed, as S. has previously argued, be better suited to comforting the members of his household (WS 123 [2010], 91), to whom Polemon is speaking. The former reading is that of Vat. gr. 140, the latter of Vat. gr. 99, Laur. plut. 59, Marc. gr. 391, and of β (as S.'s apparatus criticus records). Despite the appeal of a reincarnating Polemon, given Philostratus’ interest in Pythagoreanism elsewhere (in the Life of Apollonius and in a different way in the Heroicus), one must concur with S.'s change of mind. Speech, and the importance of declamation to Polemon even at the point of death, are the key themes of this passage, and a Polemon who wishes for a new body in order to declaim is entirely in character. For the sophists of the VS literally nothing is more important than μελεταί.

S.'s edition of these key ‘Second-Sophistic’ texts will be standard for the foreseeable future. All serious readers of Philostratus and of what remains of Polemon will want to acquire them.