BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 441 Here we see the full force of Kaldellis’s argument and the productive terrain it opens up. The fragility of the republican foundation of Byzantium prompted the court to invent a “theoretical principal of legitimacy” beyond the republic and outside history (174). Put another way, the instability of the republican model, which offered the possibility of popular sovereignty, was countered by a theocratic model, which offered a rhetorical justification for imperial sovereignty. Byzantium’s complementary republican and theocratic forces worked in tandem: the latter rhetorically ameliorated the reality that was created by the former. The imperial idea thus emerges as a “highly contingent stance that should be bracketed as operating in specific contexts” (170); it is also described as a “mode of rhetorical damage control” (175) and as “a rhetorical space in which all relevant parties could, without loss of face, signal their willingness to support a regime—until they chose not to” (180). This contingent rhetorical space was developed and deployed to control perceptions of the historical events engendered by the republic. Key to Kaldellis’s argument here is the recognition of the possibility of living with inconsistency. The people of Byzantium, he insists, could hold two sets of beliefs: they could believe both that the emperor was invested by God to rule and also that “they themselves had the right to depose him without impiety” (182). In some contexts, such as foreign diplomacy, the imperial idea with all its ceremonial trappings was dominant. In others, as when the people lost confidence in the emperor, that belief was trumped by republican actions. Current scholarship on Byzantine politics has left us with “an overtheorized ideal and an undertheorized reality” (183); Kaldellis calls for scholarly attention to the latter. In this adamantly revisionist enterprise, Kaldellis is quick to use italics, capitalization, and reiteration to underscore his points. Some readers may be put off by its tone; others may object to the contours of his argument and the limited role it accords to religion. Regardless, The Byzantine Republic is an important intervention from a highly prolific scholar. Kaldellis’s deep knowledge of the sources is matched by theoretical sophistication and field-defining ambitions. Establishing the republican nature of Byzantium is a foundational move from which he and others can chart new terrain. McGill University Cecily J. Hilsdale Heroic Offerings: The Terracotta Plaques from the Spartan Sanctuary of Agamemnon and Kassandra. By Gina Salapata. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2014. Pp. viii, 393, 3 maps, 25 plates, 2 appendices. Supplementary illustrations: http://www.press.umich.edu/3235848/heroic offerings. This book presents an in-depth study of 1273 decorated terracotta plaques (complete and fragmentary) from Lakonia. Datable from the sixth to the fourth century b.c., they were found in a deposit belonging to a sanctuary of the ancient kome of Amyklai, which Gina Salapata convincingly identifies as belonging to Kassandra/Alexandra and Agamemnon. Chapters One and Two provide a background for the analyses and interpretation of the plaques, with the former outlining the discovery of the deposit and the subsequent identification of the sanctuary, and the latter introducing the cult recipients , Kassandra/Alexandra and Agamemnon. Salapata refutes the prevalent theories that assume the original existence of two distinct female figures that somehow became identified with one another, an early Lakonian goddess named Alexandra and the Kassandra of the epic tradition. Instead, she argues that the epic heroine enjoyed this double 442 PHOENIX denomination from the beginning of her worship as a heroine in Amyklai. Alexandra was simply a local name for Kassandra (Paus. 3.19.6). The chapter thoroughly covers the tradition that ties Agamemnon and his grave not to Mycenae, but to Lakonia, and to its possible political contexts, such as a legitimization of Sparta’s ambition to dominate the Peloponnese. The following four chapters focus on the plaques. Chapter Three gives a technical analysis and presents the life cycle of the plaques, from local manufacture to the marketplace and from use to disposal. The section on use holds particular interest; for example, the provision of holes for hanging the plaques seems connected to certain scenes. Plaques with standing figures do not have holes, but...