This book has been revised from a doctoral thesis written at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan under the supervision of C. Bearzot.

After an introduction to the subject of Athens’ accounting procedures for officials and the evidence for and scholarship on it, Oranges devotes the bulk of her book to a discussion in chronological order of all instances of the procedure in the fifth and fourth centuries (summarized in a table on pages 269–76: 23 certain and nine possible instances). This was well worth doing, and has been done thoroughly and intelligently.

Many points remain uncertain, and inevitably there are some on which Iagree with her and some on which Ido not. On the Areopagites before Ephialtes’ reform, Oranges makes the interesting suggestion that their trials were occasioned by their activity as members of subcommittees (25–29); she believes in a ‘Peace of Callias’ with Persia in the mid-fifth century, whereas Isuspect it was invented in the fourth to be contrasted with the King’s Peace (35–41); she refers Androtion’s account of the euthunai (examination) of Phormio to his campaign in 429/8 whereas Ithink it belongs to some earlier occasion (49–59); we agree that Eratosthenes, the member of the Thirty, submitted to euthunai and was attacked by Lysias then (91–97); Iam willing to believe as she is not that Nicomachus the reviser of the laws was reappointed in 403 to the position he had held before (98–108); she thinks that Iphicrates, Menestheus and Timotheus were tried at the end of their year of office after the battle of Embata in 355, while Iam not sure whether they were tried then or deposed and recalled (128–38); we agree that Lycurgus held the position epi tei dioikesei (in charge of financial administration) from ca. 336 to ca. 324, but she thinks, as Ido not, that he held the office in person for the last four years as well as the first four (154–59).

In chapter 5 (165–201) Oranges discusses in general the Athenian system of the fifth and fourth centuries, and argues effectively against the view that there were major differences between the two. There are problems in the text of Ath. pol. 48.4–5, where we sometimes agree and sometimes disagree. We agree that there is no good basis for the argument that in the fifth century the euthunoi could themselves impose fines of up to 500 drachmae (as they could not in the fourth), and that the ‘thirty logistai (accountants)’ of some fifth-century inscriptions were different from the logistai who were involved with the financial accounts of officials. Oranges makes the credible suggestion that the system known to us began after the reforms of Ephialtes in 462/1.

She next summarizes her conclusions (203–08). Iam happy with her general approach, and her view that euthunai was an initiatory procedure, which could develop into a dikē (private suit) or graphē (public suit), or an eisangelia (‘denunciation’) as appropriate. Members of a board were examined not together but individually, sometimes with differing outcomes. She suggests that generals who were re-elected had to undergo euthunai not every year but only when they were not re-elected but demitted their office (and that must be true at least in cases where a general remained abroad from one year to the next).

In an appendix (209–25) Oranges turns back to Solon, at the beginning of the sixth century, and there we disagree: she wants to accommodate Aristotle’s Politics (2.1274a15–21, 3.1281b32–4, and find a role for the assembly and a lawcourt as early as that, whereas Ithink that Ath. pol. 8, from a detailed source, supersedes what had been written earlier in the Politics.

There is an extensive bibliography, and a series of indexes.

Oranges’ study of Athens’ accounting procedures for officials in this way was a well worthwhile undertaking, and it has been very well performed.