BOOK REVIEWS 459 sharp and amusing words about the fashionable concept of performance culture, which further erodes the distinctiveness of drama: “[i]t seems that everyone in ancient Greece was performing, and they were doing it all the time” (78). The book is elegantly and often wittily written, with a wide range of cultural reference, and can strongly be recommended to anyone interested in the drama of any period . MICHAEL LLOYD University College Dublin,Michael.Lloyd@ucd.ie ◊ Reading Herodotus: A Guided Tour through the Wild Boars, Dancing Suitors, and Crazy Tyrants of The History. By DEBRA HAMEL. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. xxiii + 329. Hardcover, $60.00/£29.45. ISBN 978-1-4214-0655-8. Paper, $29.95/£15.50. ISBN 978-14214 -0656-5. erodotus’ famous volume can be bewildering indeed for lay (not to mention professional Classicist) readers, and Hamel sets out to provide “a ‘good parts’ version of The History, … a loose retelling of Herodotus ’ account, with obscure references explained and the boring bits left out” (3). Hamel frankly admits the subjectivity of such a project, and that her own interests “tend to the scatological, sexual, and sophomoric” (4). Taking us from Croesus (Ch. 1) through to Plataea, Mycale, and Sestus (Ch. 13), the shape of the book follows closely that of the original, with just occasional divergences from the sequence ofHerodotus’ presentation. “Psammetichusand the Antiquity of Egypt,” 2.2 (67–8), for example, is held back until the middle of the chapter dealing with the Egyptian logos; the Arion digression (1.23–4), with its brief mention of Periander, is saved up until the end (107–8) of a chapter that retells the stories of Polycrates and Periander (Herodotus Book 3). Herodotus’ complicated Ionian revolt narrative is clearly and engagingly retold, with its connections to the later War well brought out. Ethnographic material receives shorter shrift than H 460 BOOK REVIEWS the historical narrative,but there is coverage of the more sensational, e.g. prostitution of the Lydians (33), or “Gilded Skulls and Merry-Go-Rounds: Scary Scythian Customs(4.16-82)” (138–40). As the back cover of the book promises, the experience of reading it is rather “like reading Herodotus while simultaneously consulting a history of Greece and a scholarly commentary on the text.” There is much helpful parenthetical explication of historical background (e.g. on the importance of burial to the ancient Greeks, in the discussion of Arion) as well as lengthier treatments of such historical cruces as whether the False Smerdis was really false, or why the 300 Spartans were chosen from among Spartans with living sons. Just occasionally I noted an inaccuracy (e.g. twice “Herodotus says” of 3.80—which is not authorial statement but character speech), or wondered at the interpretation (would a Spartan combing his hair really be as jarring an image to a Persian spy as “a marine checking his lipstick before battle would be to us” (233)? It would perhaps be more jarring to non-Spartan Greeks of Herodotus’ audience than to the well-coiffed Persians). With glances out to fifth-century literary works (Bacchylides’ Ode on Croesus on the pyre, Aeschylus Persians) and forward to the Macedonian conquest of Persia and beyond, Hamel opens up a broad historical and cultural perspective. She includes much wondrous comparative material that the Father of History himself would doubtless have appreciated, for example on Vlad the Impaler (whose grim techniques are compared to Astyages’: 45), on the fascinating modern reception of Herodotus’ account of Amasis’ fart (76), and on other people reputed, like Pheretime, to have died by worms. We hear even of a genus of earthworm named Pheretima (296 n. 1). In some instances, the retelling becomes too glib or reductive, e.g. the dramatization of the Spako-Mitradates’ story (39), which elides its power; the rather odd interpretation of Spargapises’ suicide (as having killed himself rather than “face his scary mother again”: 50—which robs the narrative of much of its pathos), or the paraphrase of Amasis’ letter (“Amasis, that is, wanted Polycrates to keep throwing stuff away in order to offset the successeshe wasenjoying inother respects”: 99–100). Hamel interjects...