[Collins] succeeds in highlighting the carefulness by which fourth-century philosophers addressed possible students of their new form of education that required an unseen commitment to the art and challenged traditional values of political prestige. The book offers valuable new perspectives and refreshing insights about important texts, especially concerning the interplay of intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative levels. Less attention is given to the problem of identifying the ideal reader of these texts, the study of which would be a useful supplement to contextualise the results of this welcome addition to the scholarship on the intellectual world of fourth-century Athens.
Thomas G.M. Blank, The Classical Review
The organization of the work is unbalanced...This imbalance, however, works well in proving the main thesis of the book: that, in the fourth century, there is no protreptic genre, but only progress towards it. Collins has given a modern facelift to this type of study, which broadens the readership of the book to include not only the handful of specialists in generic composition but also scholars of philosophy, rhetoric, education, and intellectual history.
Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, The Classical World
welcome contribution to our understanding of the cultural context in which Plato's philosophy originated.
Diego De Brasi, Bryn Mawr Classical Review