Francesco Ginelli provides a commentary on the first eight lives of Nepos’ On Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus), namely Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Pausanias, Cimon, Lysander, Alcibiades and Thrasybulus. All these men were Greek generals of the fifth century BCE, particularly of Athens and Sparta. All eight are also well known from other sources, historiographical and biographical, and as such provide an excellent vehicle by which to compare Nepos’ method and sources with other, perhaps better studied, classical authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plutarch, and important fragmentary sources such as Ephorus. While there are substantial historical notes throughout this commentary, Ginelli’s primary focus and expertise is on Nepos’ style and issues pertaining to genre, offering comparisons to contemporary Latin authors such as Cicero and exploring how Nepos comments on events and personalities of the Late Republic through the vehicle of fifth-century Greeks. Those interested in a careful philological study of Nepos will therefore benefit the most from Ginelli’s work.

In a lengthy and wide-ranging introduction (spanning fifty-three pages), Ginelli covers the standard topics for such a commentary, including what we know about Nepos’ own biography and the broader work of which the eight lives were a part. This reviewer found Ginelli’s argument that Nepos modelled his work on epideictic oratory, especially the encomium, to be the most important contribution (20–27). Since there was little in the way of Latin biographical tradition on which Nepos could draw, the literary genre of encomium was the closest model, to which Cicero provides a salient analysis in On the Orator. As Ginelli posits, ‘the exercises of praise and blame, common in the rhetorical schools and probably practiced by Nepos and Cicero, represented the ‘first contact’ between encomia and biographies’ (24). As stated in the preface (vii–viii), Ginelli’s work is one of rehabilitation, to present Nepos as an author worthy of respect and a place in the literary canon. Nepos’ inspiration from and innovations to oratorical genres as a pioneer of Latin biography is the most compelling evidence in the service of Ginelli’s aim.

The introduction’s treatment of the connections between biography and historiography is not quite as strong. Ginelli states that biography ‘looks at minute details’ while historiography ‘takes a more general overview of events’ (27). To support this assertion, Ginelli quotes from Plutarch’s parallel lives of Alexander and Julius Caesar in which the famous biographer defends his practice of not cataloging in detail all the great events and achievements in the lives of these two leaders, but instead aims at a portrait of their characters based often on a selective recording of seemingly small and insignificant things. However, the historiographical method of Thucydides, a key source for several of the biographies in this volume and a historian who was (in)famously selective, largely centered on detailed descriptions of sometimes relatively insignificant events (such as the massacre at Mycalessus at 7.29) to serve as a paradigm for other events that go undescribed, and to provide a portrait (of sorts) of, in this case, declining Athenian character.

I defer to my colleagues better versed in Latin philology to judge the commentary’s strengths in terms of evaluating Nepos’ style, grammar and syntax. I only mention that the notes on these points are fulsome and rich with comparisons to other Latin authors, which I found quite informative and which will surely aid further research. For this reviewer, the strongest passages in the commentary deal with Nepos’ allusions to the persons and politics of Late Republican Rome, certainly a prime motivation behind Nepos chronicling the lives of fifth-century Greeks in the first place. The discussions of the nature of Miltiades’ tyranny in the Chersonese and its parallel to tyrannical aspirations among Roman leaders (113–14) and Alcibiades’ rhetorical style and how it relates to the oratorical theories of Cicero (233) are two especially effective examples. Also insightful are Ginelli’s remarks on how Nepos viewed Athens and Sparta respectively, and how that is borne out in the biographies. Lysander’s fall from grace suggests that Spartan society is a good one, and those leaders who stray from it are to be blamed, while Athens drove out many of its best leaders unnecessarily (217–18). In terms of the nitty-gritty details of Greek history, Ginelli touches on some of the key issues, but the bibliography is frequently not up to date (such as in the discussion of the Battle of Marathon, 98–99).

Ginelli’s commentary should be a necessary resource for those engaged in scholarship on Nepos as a Latin stylist and innovator in the biographical genre. Hellenists, including historians, will find quite a bit of use here, and should certainly avoid consulting Nepos as a source for the fifth century without a copy of this volume in hand.