This volume begins with a question: ‘what if Roman readers did not read literary character the same way we do?’ (p. ix). S. argues that characterisation for Roman poets was essentially a process of literary allusion: in each character, readers could detect a particular configuration of previous poetic models, which in turn generated expectations for that character's narrative and behaviour. Moreover, rather than seeking psychological realism or ‘roundedness’ in poetic characters, Roman readers were highly attuned to each character's allusive interaction with other figures in the literary tradition. S. demonstrates this thesis through readings of Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan, Seneca's Oedipus and Statius' Thebaid, with the Metamorphoses of Ovid as a constant reference point between them. While the scope of the enquiry turns out to be rather more limited than it first appears in the book's broad introductory remarks, the volume is none the less distinguished by strong close readings, which do indeed demonstrate that characterisation, at least for these Roman poets, offered ample opportunity for intertextual play.

The book's introduction makes some of its boldest moves, arguing that this distinctive Roman mode of literary characterisation has its origins in distinctive Roman ways of thinking about the self. S. establishes the Hellenistic poetic background to her poets' allusive practices with a succinct and effective close reading of Thetis in Apollonius' Argonautica, a character whose patterning on Thetis in the Iliad is ‘mediated’ by reminiscences of Demeter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. But she also establishes a persuasive cultural background by linking poetic allusion to the discourse of exemplarity in Roman rhetorical and ethical theory. Just as Romans themselves were expected to pattern their character and behaviour on historical exempla, so characters in poetry were patterned, in complex and shifting ways, on exempla from the literary past. As S. puts it, the ‘Roman self, understood here as aemulatory, referential, and circumscribed by traditional expectations of society, may in turn define the rules and referentiality of Roman characterization’ (p. 15).

The notion of ‘referentiality’ is given broad compass in the close readings. S. begins with the Aeneid, and argues that Virgil's epic illustrates the dynamic process by which character is constituted by fama. Aeneas, initially a ‘tentative, inchoate’ character and a ‘vacant sign’, comes to be defined partly through references to Paris made both by the characters and, implicitly, by allusion. A particularly well-argued section shows how references to Mount Ida illustrate ‘seeming coincidences between the Paris tradition and Aeneas’ quest' (p. 61). The second chapter shows how patterns of imitation and exemplarity circulate within a single literary work. S. details the representative characteristics of Cato's suicide in the exemplary tradition, and then examines a series of characters in Lucan's Bellum Civile as failed imitators of Cato: Vulteius (Book 4), Scaeva (Book 5), Domitius Ahenobarbus (Book 7) and even Pompey (Book 8), whose sorry demise is ennobled, she argues, by strategic (if paradoxical) allusion to Stoic suicide. Finally, she examines Cato in Book 9 as ‘a personification of the idealized Cato-exemplum’ (p. 92): ultimately, Cato himself is only the last of the epic's long line of Catonian imitators.

While the literary self-consciousness of characters in Senecan tragedy is by now a familiar trope in Senecan scholarship, S. none the less makes some new observations about Seneca's Oedipus in Chapter 3. Oedipus' excessive neurosis at the outset of the play hints, she argues, at the character's foreknowledge of events in the Oedipus tradition. Particularly prominent in the play's textual background is the Thebes of Books 3 and 4 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and S. demonstrates how Seneca constantly alludes to Sophocles and Ovid as a kind of ‘literary limit’ that he will gleefully transgress, a ‘floor that continually drops to reveal even further depths’ (p. 121). The fourth and fifth chapters turn to Statius' Thebaid, and particularly to two characters, Parthenopaeus and Amphiaraus. S. argues that Statius has distilled each character into a ‘super-trope’ for the ‘Doomed Ephebe’ and the ‘Predestined Prophet’ respectively, and has limited their characteristics to those that pertain to that type. If these characters seem over-drawn, it is because Statius seeks to epitomise in each an entire textual tradition. Perhaps not closely related to this main argument, but none the less convincing and worthwhile, is S.'s detailed explanation of the ‘multiple-causation’ Lucretius pastiche within Statius' description of Amphiaraus being swallowed up by the earth (Theb. 7.809–16). Rather than dismissing this excursus on seismological causes as distracting pedantry, she shows how Statius' allusions to didactic poetic technique contribute to Amphiaraus' characterisation as a didactic vates in the work (pp. 171–8).

Throughout, S.'s close readings are convincingly argued, fast paced and well written, and make space for passing references to Woody Allen (p. 45), Ian Fleming (p. 122) and Quentin Tarantino (p. 185) among other modern figures. Most frequently invoked, however, are S. Hinds and A. Barchiesi, and S.'s own literary genealogy clearly stems from their brand of sophisticated intertextual analysis. Tellingly, although no chapter is devoted to Ovid, all her readings of Latin poetry are shaped by what she calls the ‘Ovid code’ (p. 17), a now-familiar conception of Roman poetry that emphasises playful rhetoric, the testing of generic boundaries and the ‘inquiry into contemporary cultural norms and engagement with the present’ (p. 18). Like Barchiesi and Hinds, S. convincingly demonstrates that Ovidian self-consciousness and intricate allusiveness permeate Imperial Latin poetry.

Yet it is precisely the focus on these highly allusive Imperial poets that limits the scope of her overall thesis about Roman literary characterisation. The argument that characterisation was essentially a process of literary allusion is a potentially surprising one, especially with reference to some of the texts mentioned in the introduction (Cicero's letters, Livy's histories, Seneca's philosophy). But it is hardly surprising in the case of Imperial tragedy and epic, genres so transparently indebted to their predecessors, and so self-conscious about poetic tradition. It is hard to imagine Seneca's Oedipus being anything but allusive. S. makes a valuable addition to existing scholarship in demonstrating these poets' pervasive transformation of language and imagery from Virgil and, especially, Ovid. But by limiting the evidence for her argument to works as self-evidently allusive as these, she misses the opportunity to demonstrate in a far broader way the foundational role of allusion in Roman literary characterisation.

Moreover, it is hard not to feel that S.'s focus on the intertextual practices of the poets comes at some cost to her original question: the way in which Roman readers approach characters in Roman poetry. She dismisses the idea early on that Romans might have ‘read texts to “identify” with characters in some subjective, Flaubertian mode’ (p. 6), and mentions but does not explore surviving depictions of Romans empathising with literary characters, such as Augustine's picture of himself as a student weeping over Dido (p. 4). While S. regularly says that certain allusions generate or subvert readers' expectations, there is little sense of any more complex emotional engagement by ancient readers with literary characters. Such questions perhaps ‘prioritize psychology’ (p. 5); her putative readers gain pleasure only in their appreciation of poets' endless play with textual models. But in a book subtitled ‘reading characterization’, the emotional, social or cultural aspects of reading practices in Rome – or the differences in reading by men and women – remain largely unexplored.

None the less, S.'s book offers many useful insights on the constant renegotiation of literary influences that brings such creative energy to Imperial Latin texts. This is a coherent and convincing book, and it will be valuable reading for all who study Imperial Latin poetry.