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the extensive literary and epigraphic evidence to recreate the development and use of the Long Walls through two centuries of Athenian history. His careful use of thesematerials has allowed him not only to date speciμc events in the life of the Long Walls,but also to challenge commonly held scholarly assumptions concerning Athenianmilitary, social and political history. C.’s work will beneμt not only military historians,

but also any scholar interested in the complicated social and cultural developments inμfth and fourth century Athens.

Duke University C. JACOB BUTERAcjb19@duke.edu

DEMOCRACY AND KNOWLEDGE

O b e r (J.) Democracy and Knowledge. Innovation and Learning inClassical Athens. Pp. xx + 342. Princeton and Oxford: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2008. Paper, £17.95, US$29.95. ISBN:978-0-691-13347-8.doi:10.1017/S0009840X09000894

In this fascinating book O. attacks two in·uential views: the belief in ‘the iron law of oligarchy’ and the trust that experts are best placed to formulate policy. Instead, hepurports to show that Athenian democracy was able to outperform its rivals through‘superior returns to social cooperation resulting from the useful knowledge asorganized and deployed in the simultaneously innovation-promoting and learning-

based context of democratic institutions and culture’ (pp. 37–8). After anintroductory chapter (pp. 1–38) which sets out his agenda, theory and methodologicaltools mainly borrowed from modern social sciences, Chapter 2 (pp. 39–79) sets out toprove the superior performance of Athenian democracy compared with itscompetitors, as evidenced by the indicia of aggregate ·ourishing, coin circulation andfrequency of citations in literature. Chapter 3 (pp. 80–117) discusses the kinds andprocesses of knowledge and their importance for formulating, implementing andsuccessfully performing policy. Chapter 4 (pp. 118–67) is devoted to the aggregationof knowledge through social/knowledge networks and task-speciμc work teams. Itexamines the importance of incentives and punishments for aggregating citizen

knowledge; the function of demes and tribes as social networks which enabled thecirculation of knowledge; the Council of the 500 as a setting in which individualsplayed the role of bridging ties between di¶erent communities; the collegial patternsof aggregation in collegial magisterial boards and the importance of sortition androtation in spreading experience and knowledge among citizens. Chapter 5(pp. 168–210) examines practices that made possible the alignment of di¶erentinstitutions in the absence of command or ‘a strong form of ideology’. O. examinesthe role of precommitment rituals, like the ephebic oath, publicity, ‘rational rituals’and ‘inward-facing circles’, like theatres and assembly buildings, which allowedeye-contact veriμcation of other’s reactions. He also looks at the value of cascading

and the inbuilt mechanisms for avoiding its negative e¶ects in Athenian politics.Chapter 6 (pp. 211–63) looks at codiμcation as a process that promoted easy access,impartiality and a lowering of transaction costs. He examines in detail the Athenianlaw on silver coinage as an example, while also exploring the ambivalence betweensocial status and fairness in Athenian policy making. Finally, the conclusions

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(pp. 264–80) summarise O.’s μndings and argue for the relevance of the Athenianmodel of knowledge for contemporary democracies.

This is the μrst systematic exploration of how mass political participation createdits own consistent form of knowledge. O. does us a great service by introducing to thestudy of Athenian democracy models and theories with which classicists are largely

unfamiliar; this is a completely novel way of asking questions about Atheniandemocracy which will certainly generate signiμcant research in the future. Hisdiscussion of cascading, for example, has enormous potential for our understandingof Athenian decision-making, while his description of a dynamic balance betweenopen-ended discretion and codiμcation in lawmaking (p. 271) is highly intriguing.

Nevertheless, there are two important problems with the work. The μrst concernsO.’s use of evidence. Chapter 2 is very problematic. To give merely one example, it ishard to accept a comparison of coin circulations that fails to put into the equation thefact that Aegina had to procure silver for minting, while Athens got it from its mines.The general problem though is that his thesis rarely moves from assertion to historical

testing. O. makes a superb exposition of how a citizen assembly could theoreticallyexploit the various levels of knowledge that existed among its members to reachcollective decisions; his hypotheses of how citizens could evaluate proposals byobserving the reactions of more knowledgeable citizens they were acquainted with, orhow mass participation and rotation in o¸ce led to widespread citizen experience andknowledge sound convincing. But they remain mere hypotheses, and we are not givena single instance in which for example a citizen’s service in one magistracy was utilisedin another context, or a single actual illustration of the use of dispersed latentknowledge or the hypothetical social networks in practice. This lack of testing leavesmany questions unasked and unanswered: if the Athenians reached decisions

according to O.’s model of aggregation, why was there such widespread use of the graphê paranomôn?

The second problem concerns the linking of knowledge and performance. O. makesa sound theoretical argument about how the Athenian democratic model of knowledge could be coherent and sensible on its own terms, and in this respect hiswork is path-breaking; but he does not actually show that it was this hypothesisedmodel of knowledge which explains Athens’ superior performance in comparisonwith other Greek poleis and with command states like Macedonia (pp. 270–2). Even if one accepted O.’s criteria for assessing Athenian performance, the problem would bethat he builds no links between his indicia of Athenian performance and the model of 

democratic knowledge that he posits. Given his emphasis on successful performance,O. is strangely reluctant to test whether speciμc successes of Athenian policy can beattributed to his model of democratic knowledge or whether speciμc failures areunrelated to it. We get no explanation of how exactly democratic knowledge allowedAthenians to build more buildings, win more wars, engage in more internationalactivities, circulate more coins or be more ‘famous’ than their competitors. Given hisargument that the system got better with time (pp. 151, 166, 267), it becomes di¸cultto understand why Athens was relatively less successful in comparison with otherGreek poleis and Macedonia in the fourth century. Perhaps he should have askedwhether his model of democratic knowledge is equally useful for military, μnancial,

social or building purposes; perhaps it was μtter for certain purposes rather than forothers. Furthermore, O. fails to di¶erentiate su¸ciently between what relates ingeneral to the polis as a relatively small community of citizens and what relatesspeciμcally to Athenian democracy. Given his emphatic point that the democraticmodel of knowledge allowed Athens to outperform its contemporary Greek city-state

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competitors (pp. 75–9), a clearer distinction between them is needed. Characteris-tically, whenever he attempts a comparison of problems and challenges outsideChapter 2 it is always with Sparta (pp. 89, 179, 195, 275), a rather atypical case. Muchof his discussion of codiμcation would apply to any state: how exactly did theAthenian silver law di¶er from similar laws of non-democratic poleis? How did the

Athenian approach to transaction costs di¶er from that of Athens’ competitors?Faced with the problem, O. changes gear and argues that Athens was merely the mostsuccessful exemplar of a general pattern among Greek city-states (pp. 276–9).

It is possible, and in fact highly desirable, that O. or other scholars will be able toanswer these questions by further work; and the value of the book should be seen aslying primarily in setting out a new research agenda. In summary, this is an innovativebook that raises a really important issue that should be at the centre of our attention,both as classicists and as citizens.

University of Nottingham KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOSkonstantinos.vlassopoulos@nottingham.ac.uk

INTERSTATE RELATIONS

G i o v a n n i n i (A.) Les Relations entre États dans la Grèce antique dutemps d’Homère à l’intervention romaine (ca. 700–200 av. J.-C.)(Historia Einzelschriften 193.) Pp. 445. Stuttgart: Franz SteinerVerlag, 2007. Paper, €74. ISBN: 978-3-515-08953-1.doi:10.1017/S0009840X09000900

The relations between the states of ancient Greece have recently become a focal pointof ancient historical research. This book is an introduction to and survey of theexternal relations in Greece between the Homeric and the Hellenistic period. G.’sstudy is divided into μve chapters, the μrst two of which provide a generalintroduction to the salient facts. The μrst part (‘Les Relations sociales entre Grecs’,pp. 19–82) o¶ers a concise summary of the Greek world-view, its cultural basis,principles and values. Their relevance for both inter- polis relations and the relationsof the poleis to the Hellenistic monarchs is illustrated in the principles of  syngeneiaand euergesia.

In the second chapter (‘L’État grec’, pp. 83–136), G. provides an overview of the

di¶erent political constitutions in Greece, the main emphasis naturally being on the polis. Other constitutional types discussed are the federations, the ethnê and themonarchies, as is appropriate for a book that covers such a long period of time.

The next three chapters are dedicated to the book’s main subject, external relationsin archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greece. The book is structured according to topic,but the chronological aspect is reintroduced in the sometimes rather fragmentedsubchapters. In Chapter 3 (‘Les Con·its’, pp. 137–218) G. focusses on con·ictsbetween states, a good starting point given the fact that discord and confrontationwere frequent throughout Greek history. G. rightly rejects the idea of war as the normin antiquity, a view to which some classical scholars still subscribe. Instead, he o¶ers a

detailed and multifaceted picture of the possibilities and rules for con·ict resolution:violence was only one of several options. Besides the ‘morale de la guerre’ and thereasons, justiμcations and pretexts for war as developed by Greek historiography,G. deals with negotiation and mediation. He also addresses in detail the subject of Greek religious beliefs and how public opinion was in·uenced by them (‘L’Opinion

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