Anyone familiar with the St Jerome Publishing enterprise will know its sole focus is translation studies, and this volume addresses the lack of detailed studies by qualified scholars on translation in the ancient world. By ‘lack’ I do not mean that the names of Cicero and Jerome are not bandied about – they are mainstays on the via crucis of most potted histories of translation. But, as is further explored in McE.'s Roman Theories of Translation (2013), ancient translation is more often invoked than explored, and even less often understood on its own terms. A few obiter dicta of Cicero usually suffice to characterise the whole of antiquity's translational strategies in too many discussions, and this volume is a healthy change of direction. The mediatory intent of the book is evident: ‘We feel that there is much to be gained by prompting a dialogue between scholars of the ancient Mediterranean and the discipline of Translation Studies’ (p. 1). One odd concession to the publisher is the absence of original language texts for longer citations, which the scholar will miss.

There are 13 chapters divided into 5 parts with distinct focuses: ‘The Translator as Agent’; ‘Translation as Monument’; ‘Translation and the Co-Circulation of the Source Text’; ‘Translating Cultures, Cultural Responses, and Resistance to Translation’; and ‘Translation Before Translation Theory / Translation After Translation Theory’. A brisk introduction opens the agenda, making clear the editors' claims for how the study of ancient translation can contribute to translation studies generally – and this is echoed later in their brief afterword. Short introductions to each section then help to clarify the chapters' articulation in relation to the whole, and short abstracts at the head of each chapter summarise their claims. Thus the editors have been diligent in laying out the fare for the reader.

As is clear from the summary above, the thematic organisation is not yoked to a chronological scheme, and this suits a volume more geared to making soundings than to strip-mining the domain it explores. A guiding principle is ‘localization’, an approach that tries to escape the aridity of generalisation through thick description of real instances of translation. Their version of localisation is thus tied more to the issues in M. Cronin's work (Translation and Identity [2006]) than the commercial process of ‘localization’ found in translation studies manuals (where it is technically restricted to digital content). But the drive towards multiplicity is strong here, as the authors seek to save the phenomena of heterogeneous practices from the oppressive unity imposed by monolithic notions of ‘western’ or ‘ancient’ translation.

The first part sets the tone for how it will restructure the way we typically think of translation by thrusting us into contexts of agency. K. Fletcher focuses on Parthenius, a Greek freedman whose role as grammaticus was instrumental to introducing Greek poets like Callimachus and Euphorion to Gallus and Virgil. By digesting and decontextualising a variety of Greek myths into a ready handbook, Parthenius effected a translation of Hellenic cultural capital for the use of his Roman masters. He was thus ‘a living commentary of sorts’, a go-to man for Roman authors in need of information and literary material (p. 22). Fletcher rightly points out that one can read this two ways: as a simple parable of imperial domination and cultural extraction, or as a very clear instance of the peculiar permeability of Roman slavery, whereby a war captive came to captivate his masters with the culture at his command (a telling echo, then, of Horace's Graecia capta dictum, Epist. 2.1.156–7). Parthenius' displacement to Rome brings the infection of Alexandrian style and taste, and sets him up as a kind of arbiter.

The next two examples of agency bring us to more inevitable figures: Catullus and Cicero. E.M. Young points out the greater degree of self-exposure required of the Romans in approaching Greek lyric, which Catullus did with ambivalent intensity in translating Sappho. She argues, ‘the invasive intimacy of translation allows Catullus to evolve a new literary posture born of his struggle to, at once, embrace and rebuff Sappho’ in poem 51 (p. 29), which leads to a broader reading of miser Catullus as a product of confrontation with Greek lyric. H. Baltussen situates Cicero's philosophical work in the context of his grief and mourning for his daughter Tullia during the period of his removal from public life; this approach makes the whole project of writing dialogues à la Grecque an intensely personal response to adversity.

These three essays show how the first section makes good on the promise to focus on localisation. But the next two sections go further in showing how different the ancient context of translation can be. J. Larson and S. Pappaioannou address the world of bi- and multi-lingual inscriptions, something of much greater importance in the ancient world than in the modern (and here one does regret the lack of any photographic illustration). More radically still, Part 3 looks at the consequences of the ‘co-circulation of the source text’ – i.e. when the translation is always still in view of the original. D. de Crom examines the Hebrew–Aramaic–Greek tradition to show how the paradigm of source text → target text directionality does not apply in situations where cultures defy borders and communities are multilingual, not monolingual as the modern paradigm often assumes. E. Foster's chapter on Lucretius and D. Spencer's on Horace bring the co-circularity issue to especial significance in the context of Roman literature, where the elite's knowledge of Greek must always be the framing background for understanding the particularly emulative practice of Roman translation.

The last two parts appear to follow a strategy of estrangement, as each contribution further complicates our approach to translation by dilating the concept considerably. J.P. Stronk, for example, argues that Herodotus' and Ctesias' historical works are translations in various senses, in that they reshape eastern oral tradition into narratives digestible to the contemporary Greek audience. D. Richter then showcases Lucian as a case of a Syrian cleverly resisting the seamless transfer of Semitic material into Greek, revealing that ‘tensions about naming and identity are never far beneath the surface of all syncretism’ (p. 144). Similarly, B. Buszard explores Plutarch's resistance to Roman assimilation through his ‘subversion of Greek etymology’ (p. 155) in Numa and Romulus.

The final part covers, chronologically, the earliest period, with D.R.M. Campbell unpacking the complexities of Hittite translation texts (which abound), and T. Schneider briskly opening up the variety of ways one must consider the translation of ancient Egyptian. These include intralingual translation, an understandable phenomenon in the language with the longest documentation in history, and the curious case of Horapollo's Hieroglyphika, a late-antique interpretation of hieroglyphics as initiatory symbols that greatly shaped the early modern reception of Egypt. Thus cleverly, the book ends with the chapter treating the remotest period, but which also has the greatest overall scope in the collection.

There are, alas, some distracting glitches in the editing of the book. Along with the absence of original language texts, there are no photographs of the tablets described in Campbell's chapter. One could quibble with the exclusion of certain topics like Late Antiquity, which admittedly would overcomplicate their desire to ‘complicate the history of translation’. But given the importance of some late-antique translation, it is still worth a mention. Hopefully the volume will inspire others to continue the main project of integrating ancient studies and translation studies in more useful ways, and for that the authors are to be warmly thanked.