The present volume assembles 25 papers (some quite recent, some previously unpublished) that provide an exciting overview of W.'s scholarly writings since 1974. W. has silently updated most pieces in various ways (notably with additional references), added a brief introduction and appended a substantial epilogue; the volume concludes with a short concordance of Roman historical fragments cited in the text, a comprehensive bibliography and indexes. Although among the papers ‘there is no single or common theme, most of them represent some form of close reading’ (p. vii). This modest disclaimer, however, does not do justice to the impression of W.'s output that the volume creates. Taken as a whole, the collection testifies to the breadth of W.'s interests, his sensitivity as a literary critic and his profound historical acumen. At the same time, the essays demonstrate remarkable methodological and thematic continuities, suggesting the contours of an almost autobiographical narrative through a body of scholarship spanning nearly 40 years.

Although the papers are arranged according to genre, moving from poetry to history (as the title suggests), they also follow literary chronology. The first five chapters are pre-Augustan in focus, dealing with Cicero, Catullus and Virgil's Eclogues. Chapter 1, ‘Poetry and History: Cicero, De Legibus 1.1–5’, defends W.'s interpretation of the rhetorical nature of Cicero's conception of historiography. This paper, which has not appeared in print before, immediately establishes one of the overarching themes of W.'s career (rhetoric and historiography), prompts the reader to think about the relationship between poetry and history (an important leitmotif for the collection) and simultaneously reveals W.'s deep personal engagement with Latin texts and the scholars who read and write about them. The chapters on Catullus offer close readings of parts of poems 11, 51 and 68A. The most engaging of these is perhaps Chapter 3, ‘A Suitable Case for Treatment? Catullus 51’, which argues that medical terminology provides the key to understanding the unity of the poem, in particular the connection between the first three Sapphic stanzas and the notoriously un-Sapphic fourth stanza. (Medical terminology and metaphors constitute another theme of the collection.) Chapter 5, however, is sure to raise eyebrows. In ‘The Position of Gallus in Eclogue 6’, W. joins a chorus of influential scholars who feel that Gallus' appearance at lines 64–73 disrupts the chronological and thematic flow of Silenus' song, thereby constituting ‘a major problem’ (p. 36). To resolve this problem (as well as other supposed stylistic oddities), W. argues for a transposition originally proposed by Scaliger and Heyne: placing lines 64–73 after line 81, thereby producing the sequence of lines 1–63, 74–81, 64–73, 82–6. This kind of wholesale transposition is unlikely to find many supporters amongst twenty-first century textual critics (for W.'s thoughts on Housman, precisely the kind of scholar to whom this kind of large scale textual tampering might have appealed, see pp. 402–3), while others may question whether the alleged ‘problems’ really constitute ‘problems’ at all. Nevertheless, the paper itself showcases wonderfully W.'s deep engagement with the classics of classical scholarship and an uncanny willingness to unearth overlooked or neglected arguments from earlier eras.

Chapters 6–16 primarily address topics in Augustan literature and gradually move the reader into the realm of historiography. (Admittedly, ‘Community Health: Metaphors in Latin Historiography’ extends beyond the boundaries of Augustan Rome.) Despite such studies as ‘Propertius and Livy’ or ‘Virgil the Historian: Aeneid 8.626–62 and Livy’, Horace is the star of these pages. The seven studies devoted to Horace allow the scope of W.'s learning and the power of his critical faculties to shine through (‘Biformis Vates: the Odes, Catullus, and Greek Lyric’, ‘The Craft of Horace in Odes 1.14’, ‘Horace's First Roman Ode’, ‘Exegi Monumentum: Horace, Odes 3.30’, ‘Horace, Epistles 1.19.23–40’, ‘Horace and Historians’, ‘Poems to Historians: Catullus 1 and Horace, Odes 2.1’). In ‘Horace and Historians’, for example, W. detects fascinating allusions to Sallust and Cato the Censor in Sermones 1.2. But W. also argues that Horace's literary identity as the son of a freedman, especially as formulated at S. 1.6.45–6, draws on L. Calpurnius Piso's depiction of Cn. Flavius, the aedile of 304 b.c.e. The linguistic and biographical parallels are clear; W.'s argument will encourage readers to consider the implications for Horace's carefully constructed biography and persona elsewhere in the corpus. The highlight of ‘Poems to Historians’ is undoubtedly W.'s perceptive reading of Odes 2.1. The poem, which is addressed to Pollio, gives W. opportunities to explore such thorny questions as the dating of the First Triumvirate and the scope of Pollio's history of the civil wars. (According to W., Pollio, who is brilliantly connected with Sallust and Thucydides, traced the ultimate causes of the civil wars back not only to the First Triumvirate, but to the consulship of Q. Metellus Numidicus in 109.) Chapter 16, ‘Making History: the Heading of the Res Gestae’, deserves special mention among the non-Horatian studies. Here, W. develops a scintillating reading of the opening of the Res Gestae that problematises the actual title of the document, highlights its ‘rhetorical sophistication’ (p. 189), connects it intimately with Herodotus' preface and attempts to read its imperial message against the physical backdrop of Augustus' Mausoleum. This perceptive essay, another of the volume's previously unpublished studies, shows W. at his most dexterous.

The remaining pieces, Chapters 17–25, explore post-Augustan authors, especially Tacitus (note, however, ‘The Date and Genre of Velleius’ and ‘Pliny on Writing History: Epistles 5.8’). Taken as a whole, these papers amply demonstrate ‘the literary density’ (p. 394) of Tacitus' writings and make clear that a sensitivity to intertextuality enriches our understanding of Latin historical texts. (This impression finds further confirmation in the epilogue, a substantial portion of which addresses intertextuality and linguistic ‘reverberations’ in Latin historiographical prose more generally.) ‘The Preface to Tacitus’ Agricola' provides a conspicuous example. In the midst of a detailed investigation into the structure and overall argument of the treatise's first three chapters, W. detects a multi-layered, intertextual engagement with not only Cato the Censor, but Xenophon, and makes an unexpected connection between Agricola/agricola and the role of the farmer–soldier in the philosophical outlooks of Cato and Xenophon both (pp. 283–5). Although other chapters have much to recommend them (‘Tacitus and the Contemporary Scene’, ‘Not a Funeral Note: Tacitus, Annals 1.8.5–6’, ‘Mutiny and Madness: Tacitus, Annals 1.16–49’, ‘Tiberius and the Taste of Power: the Year 33 in Tacitus’), the collection's final chapter offers one of its richest and most subtle studies. In ‘Aliena Facundia: Seneca in Tacitus’, W. compares the language of Tacitus' Seneca with the language of Seneca's own treatises. The results are striking. W. shows that Tacitus often allows Seneca to speak with words and phrases drawn from the philosopher's own works, the original contexts of which add to the interpretation of Tacitus' own narrative (note, for instance, pp. 361–4). Even more striking, however, is W.'s analysis of Ann. 14.53–4, where Seneca and Nero exchange speeches. The speeches are odd, W. argues, for their conspicuous lack of intertextual allusions and the sheer number of phrases or word combinations that appear nowhere else in extant Latin literature (what W. at p. 370 calls ‘intertextual neutrality’). And yet, the language and phraseology of the speeches closely resemble one another: ‘Nero is speaking like Seneca; yet Seneca … is not speaking like himself; nor is he speaking like anyone else – apart from Nero. I suggest that Tacitus intends us to infer from this that over the years of their close association Seneca has turned himself into a cipher: he has developed a form of speech which is alien to himself but which he has placed specially at the disposal of the princeps’ (p. 374). The conclusion speaks for itself.

The volume concludes with an epilogue that touches on various themes from the collection, notably intertextuality, and muses passionately on issues in contemporary classical scholarship and education, particularly the role of translated texts in the classroom and the inability of any translation to capture fully the beautiful complexity of Latin texts – a fact to which the preceding 25 chapters bear eloquent witness at every turn. (From this perspective, the epilogue pairs closely with Chapter 23, ‘Readers and Reception: a Text Case’.) It is a thought-provoking, heart-felt and frequently polemical conclusion to an outstanding collection of studies that deserve to be read (or reread) by scholars and students of Latin literature everywhere.