Prudentius began to publish at the age of fifty-six yet more survives of his verse than of Vergil and Horace combined, giving hope to late starters and to all others grace to persevere. Certainly the finest Christian poet whose native language was Latin, he has been of continued relevance to hymn-writers and literary historians if not so much to historians of doctrine. The present volume's substantial bibliography indicates the wide range of scholarly interest that the poet's varied opera have aroused. Cillian O'Hogan presents a revised doctoral thesis here; and if that shows in the meticulous acknowledgement of secondary sources, the fault is pardonable in a scholarly work. It draws principally, but not exclusively, on the Peristephanon, that most cheerful and chatty of Prudentius' works, to show how the old Roman Empire with its particular local traditions relates to the new vision of a world under Christ: a martyrdom hallows the place where it occurred and the spiritual presence of the martyr now guards its civic site. More generally, the rural landscape is Christianised with Christ as shepherd, and graphic art offers its, for Prudentius, suspect contribution. O'Hogan makes much of Prudentius as a ‘bookish’ author. What is true for Prudentius is what is ‘in the books’: not that he did not visit Rome or perhaps plan the Peristephanon as a kind of pilgrimage or travel-guide of the mind; but if so, it was only of the educated reading mind. O'Hogan rightly underscores what is evident to the reader of Prudentius in any annotated modern edition: that his language is deliberately the language of the classics of the old religion. Extensive quotations, especially from Vergil, are aptly introduced to illustrate the debt. Moreover, to read the Contra Symmachum in particular is to be left with the feeling that for Prudentius there is a true, ideal Rome which had been obscured by superstition but is now coming to light in the new faith. A not entirely dissonant culture is coming to birth. This aspect is illuminated along with others in a useful book whose theme and title may be vague but which demonstrates wider aspects of an author who is in the Peristephanon a pleasure and indeed generally a profit to read.