Of the seven Horatian explorations collected in G.'s libellus, four have appeared previously in other venues; the earliest of these dates from 1991, the most recent from 2011. Despite the attempt made in the introduction to provide an overarching theoretical framework for the studies assembled here, and although there are links between a number of individual chapters, few will be persuaded that there is a comprehensive unifying thread to these essays beyond their shared concentration on episodes in the reception of Horace's poetry; a better summary of the character of the volume is arguably offered by A. La Penna's preface, with its emphasis on ‘varietà di tematiche, di interessi, di metodi’ (p. 10). The first chapter presents a brief account of the appropriation of the motif of ‘danger escaped’ from Odes 2.13 in several epigrams of Martial. This is followed by an examination of the value of citations in the work of the late-antique commentator Servius for the constitution of the text of Horace. In seven instances G. argues that the ‘tradizione indiretta’ represented by Servius preserves a reading preferable to those transmitted by all or part of the manuscript tradition; in other cases the variants recorded by Servius are less favourably received.

The first of the previously published papers reconsiders the reputation of the pugnacious editor Richard Bentley, whose treatment of the texts of Latin authors has sometimes led to a critical caricature of the English scholar as contemptor codicum; G. points instead to ‘la complessa rete dei criteri applicati dal Bentley nell'edizione dei Carmina oraziani’ (p. 45). The following chapter analyses the editorial decisions made by the poet and scholar Giovanni Pascoli with regard to the text of items from Horace's Epodes printed in his anthology Lyra (1895); in the majority of cases where Pascoli's text departs from his source in the edition of Kiessling, the intervention restores the readings of the manuscript tradition. The nineteenth century is also the focus of a short survey of nationalistic readings of Horace in southern Italy during the period of the Risorgimento and in subsequent decades. Particular attention is paid to the scholars Carlo Lanza, Emmanuele Rocco and Paolo Fossataro; a fuller and livelier evocation of currents in the interpretation of Horace during this period would perhaps have been afforded by more extensive quotation from the works of these figures.

The longest study in the book surveys the Horatian endeavours of the meridionalista politician and historian Giustino Fortunato, who produced prose translations of selected Odes and of the Carmen saeculare. If this item takes a little while to get underway, the same cannot be said of the concluding piece, which offers an analysis of Francesco Pastonchi's translation of and commentary on the first book of Horace's Odes, published in 1939. Almost no background is given on Pastonchi; only occasional references to ‘il poeta italiano’ signal his literary activity, and even for his first name one has to resort to La Penna's preface, or infer it from the citation of an encyclopaedia entry in a footnote. The only context that emerges clearly from G.'s unfavourable appraisal of Pastonchi's engagement with the Odes is the latter's sympathy for Fascism – but might it not have been interesting or relevant for the reader of a volume on the reception of Horace to know, for instance, that Pastonchi's first collection of Italian poetry was entitled Saffiche? Having said this, G.'s introduction makes it clear that (as one might expect from his frequent use of the expressions ‘come si sa’ and ‘come è noto’) the primary readership envisaged for these investigations is ‘specialisti’.

The volume is generally well produced, although there are sporadic typographical errors, and it is a pity that the ‘indice dei nomi propri moderni’ was not compiled by a classicist, who would have been aware that Cruquius and van Cruucke were the same person, as were ‘Fraenkel, Edward [sic]’ and ‘Fränkel, Edward [sic]’. Despite these and other minor blemishes, this repository of careful and detailed scholarship will be a useful resource for future voyagers on the less charted waters of what La Penna calls ‘il gran mare della fortuna di Orazio’: cras ingens iterabimus aequor.