This work is part of the Aristotelian tradition and it is attributed to Aristotle, although it is definitely not his own, but was written much later, circa the second century BC. It is commonplace in the Aristotelian school to discuss ‘economy’: that is, household-management issues and their relation to ethics and politics. Diogenes Laertius refers to such a lost oeuvre attributed to Theofrastus (V.49). The fake Aristotelean Οικονομικά contains three books; the third exists only in the Latin translation made by William of Moerbecke in 1267. The first book focuses on oikos, and the second focuses on aspects related to polis. The third elaborates on elements from both areas from a doxographic point of view without adding anything substantial on the matter; this might be the reason why it was not preserved in Greek.

The editors completely follow the conventional way of thought in downplaying the importance of those anonymous and probably fake Aristotelian works. This is evident in the emphasis they place on the influence of Xenophon’s Economics (p. 29) or in their mere assertion that it is the work of an ‘imitator’ (p. 26). It has to be noted that ancient schools created a tradition of books attributed to Aristotle without thereby being a mere imitation of Aristotelian works. It is quite often a case of evolution of ideas within the frame of this tradition. Therefore, the interest shown in ‘economy’ during the II–I centuries BC with the publication of similar works, such as the Epicurean Philodemus’s Peri Oikonomias, is due to an ongoing competition between schools. The latter dimension often goes unnoticed in this edition. Moreover, the split of the second book into a theoretical and an empirical/historical part reflects an overall methodological concern, clearly a trademark of the Aristotelian tradition, proper to economic matters. It is therefore more than an internal, structural division of this specific work as the editors suggest (pp. 125–126), but rather a commonplace encountered in the moral and political philosophy of the abovementioned Philodemus or in the Stoics of the same period.

The translation fills an important gap in the scholarship on the history of economic thought in modern Greek. There are a few controversial elements in the choice of modern Greek terms, essentially regarding ancient and modern Greek terms derivative of oikos: it is not always clear whether the “household management,” in the modern Greek term νοικοκυριό, for instance, includes private and public property issues, as is the case with oikos. Having said that, it is quite hard to go beyond connotations around the private/public dichotomy in contemporary Greek terminology containing oiko—as a component or root. Overall, this is a systematic and rich edition that, it is hoped, will open up the path for a renewal in the editions of ancient and early modern classic texts in the history of economic thought.