In this brief volume, part of Princeton University Press's Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, H. provides an introduction, brief commentary and new translation (with facing Greek text from the Loeb editions) for a selection of Athenian speeches from the work of Thucydides. Divided into six chapters, the speeches cover much of the chronological and thematic range of Athens’ war against the Peloponnesians as Thucydides conceived it. These speeches include: three of Pericles, namely his first speech about not yielding to Sparta, his Funeral Oration and his last words on holding firm; the Mytilenean Debate; the Melian Dialogue; and the paired speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition. H.'s vivid translations and thoughtful notes furnish a delightful entry point for one wishing to wrestle with some of the most studied, and still relevant, passages of Greek literature.

H.'s rendition of Thucydides’ notoriously difficult prose is effective and will appeal to the Thucydidean neophyte. The speeches are given just the right amount of colloquial language to be accessible without being flippant. Consider this version of a famous line from the Funeral Oration: ‘No, instead you must truly marvel every day at the power of the city and become to her as a lover’ (pp. 63–5). Compare R. Warner's Penguin translation of the same line: ‘What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her’. H.'s version is both more elegant and retains the literal sense of erastēs, which would have surprised an Athenian audience, as it surprises us, much more than an ambiguous notion of falling in love that softens the sexually-charged language of the Greek. Sometimes, H. errs on the side of idiomatic English in a way that obscures the original sense of the passage. For example, in Cleon's speech during the Mytilenean Debate, H. renders sophistai as ‘gurus’ (p. 117), which might prevent readers from recognising a mention of the sophists, who were so influential at Athens in the latter half of the fifth century bce. Overall, though, the speeches are translated faithfully and, in true Thucydidean fashion, according to the general sense of what the Greek says.

With H. as their guide, readers will be aware that they are encountering a serious work of literature, but they will be able to do so while spending a pleasant evening with a cup of tea rather than hunched over a desk trying to make sense of arcane turns of phrase. The small size and relatively short text of this volume, along with others in the series, seems aimed at precisely this kind of leisurely reading experience, which causes me to wonder for whom the facing Greek text is meant. Thucydides’ prose, especially in the speeches, is so fiendishly difficult that only an advanced student of Attic Greek will be able to spot to which point in the Greek text a particular English passage responds – and someone that adept at Greek will surely rely on the more standard editions of Thucydides’ complete work. (H. provides the most useful modern translations in a short bibliography.)

My confusion over the utility of the facing Greek text brings me to a broader question concerning this volume, namely whether it fills a gap in the existing literature and resources for Thucydides’ work. I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, H.'s introduction to the book admirably situates Thucydides’ History within our current context and political moment. The reverence for Thucydides held by American Neoconservatives has had a marked impact on real world policy, which is both noteworthy and worrisome, given that such reverence seems to stem from fundamental misunderstandings of Thucydides’ interpretation of the Peloponnesian War and the disaster imperial Athens brought upon itself and much of Greece. H.'s considered opinions on this point, brought out in the general introduction and in the introductions to the various speeches, perhaps make this book a good addition to any shelf. On the other hand, H.'s arguments about the importance of Thucydides and his place in today's discourse would only be strengthened by the consideration of many other key passages from the History. Thucydides’ treatment of the Plague at Athens, the Stasis at Corcyra, and the Tyrannicides represent three sections that speak directly to the power of ‘fake news’, authorial bias and the perversion of language in times of crisis and conflict. When I teach Thucydides to undergraduates, or even recommend him to interested members of the public, I tend to include passages such as those, along with several others, as necessary reading along with the speeches included in the volume under review. One of the reasons Thucydides is so often abused, as H. rightly points out, is because passages like the Melian Dialogue are read outside of their context and without a consideration of Thucydides’ work as a whole. H.'s notes mitigate this danger to a great extent – few will read the Melian Dialogue as presented in this volume and come away thinking that amoral realism is necessarily the right approach to international relations –, but maybe the best remedy for misinterpreting Thucydides is more Thucydides.

H. closes the book with a thematic bibliography to introduce readers to the tip of the iceberg of Thucydidean studies. It is my hope that many eager students of history and human nature who encounter Thucydides for the first time with the aid of H.'s deft guidance take the opportunity to explore the work of this brilliant, complicated and often aggravating Athenian in more depth.