As the editors note, “there was a time when all ‘proper’ historians turned their critical and quizzical eyes to kings and courts” (p. xv). The Hellenistic Court rigorously challenges this view. After a survey of pivotal studies on the function and structure of court systems in Tudor England, Bourbon France, and the Persian Empire, they define the Hellenistic court as ” a circle of elite people and attendants in orbit around the monarch as well as being a larger environment of political, military, economic and cultural structures which converged within the monarch’s household” (p.xxi). It was a movable space where the central and the local Empire encountered each other. The chapters engage with this theme while expanding on the Hellenistic world’s vastness and diversity. The eighteen papers offer a broad, diverse and yet consistent overview. They address a selection of critical overarching aspects, i.e., origin and development of the court, its functioning, courtiers’ loyalty to the king and the dangers of the court life, the wedding symbols and ceremony, the court interactions with the institutions beyond the Palace, and those with non-Greek cultures. Moreover, through a comparatist approach, the volume highlights differences and commonalities among Hellenistic courts from royal Egypt, Syria, and Iran, to Sicily and the Balkans.