Chrystina Häuber has devoted her scholarly career to documenting and analysing the remains — often fragmentary or lost (but recorded in ancient written sources, and post-classical maps and accounts of finds in the area) — and the ancient topography of the Mons Oppius, research which she began to publish in the early 1980s and of which this huge volume forms the culmination and conclusion. In the course of those decades, H. has greatly enhanced our understanding of the Horti Maecenatis which dominated this section of Rome during the reign of Augustus and continued to influence its topography even after parts of it were consumed by Nero's palaces (first the Domus Transitoria then, after the fire of a.d. 64, the Domus Aurea) and then Trajan's Thermae (c. a.d. 104–109). H.'s initial focus was on the large quantity of ancient statuary discovered in the area. In subsequent research, she turned her attention to the complexities of the topography of this region, especially the course of the Servian Wall (sixth to fourth centuries b.c., but surviving as a topographical feature into the first) through it, and the many buildings — seldom preserved as more than substructures — that were incorporated into Maecenas’ garden estate (Horti Maecenatis) in the late first century b.c. Here she reviews, adds to and reaches final conclusions on many of these topics. Her topographical reconstructions are greatly enhanced by the computer-generated maps which she has produced together with her collaborator F. X. Schütz on which they locate findspots and remains with remarkable precision. The maps are included on a CD-ROM provided with the book and reference is made to them on almost every page. These maps will be essential to scholars studying this material from this time on.

H. organizes the book into a methodological introduction (1–48) followed by two immense sections (which she calls Book I and Book II) that could stand almost independent of one another. Book I is a detailed topographical survey of the area, followed by individual studies of specific topography and excavations (which H. labels ‘Appendices’ (49–490)), and Book II, a treatment of specific artifacts, mostly sculptures, found in the area (491–844), plus the usual referential apparatus (845–945). Unfortunately, this organization forces the reader to move back and forth through the text in order to follow all H.'s arguments and evidence on any one topic, which is inconvenient and irritating. It is essential to refer constantly to the maps, which involves searching through them on the CD-ROM, as well as to the figures which are included in batches (29–48, 139–50, 185–96, 239–48, 447–88 and 813–32) throughout the book. The huge size of the volume makes it a challenge to lift, read or use, and its organization compounds the difficulty. Two fascicles would surely have been preferable. Publication in an online format, in which the maps could have been incorporated and the figures included at the points where they are referenced, would have made the work more accessible, user-friendly and affordable. The volume's sheer size will, I fear, impede access to H.'s research.

That would be a pity for the book contains an impressive summation of, and conclusion to, H.'s decades of study of the eastern part of the Oppius and the western Esquiline in Roman times. In Book I, H. establishes convincingly the precise location and extent of the sanctuary of Isis and Serapis in Regio III, the location of the temple of Fortuna Virgo, the fons Mucosus and therapeutic water sanctuaries of the Oppian, and the correct location of the sanctuary of Minerva Medica. Appendix I details the exact course of the Servian Wall in the area as well as its effect on the shrines and residences there throughout the Republican period (her previous publications on this have been much praised, for example, by T. P. Wiseman in M. Cima et al. (eds), Horti Romani (1998), 13–22, and here H. reinforces and elaborates her reconstructions). Likewise, in Appendix V, H. expands on her previous publications to establish not only the boundaries of the Horti Maecenatis but also their nature as ‘an inhabited sacral landscape’ (235–6), which explains the numerous shrines and sanctuaries recorded within them. In Book II, H. first documents the importance of the cult of Apollo in this area of Rome at least by the reign of Augustus (495–517), and then enters into detailed discussion of the many antiquities certainly, or possibly, discovered in the area through the centuries, their precise findspots when that can be determined and the implications for dating. In her discussion of statues from the temple of Minerva Medica (611–26), H. addresses the long-disputed dating of the Vatican Laocoon group and makes the best case so far for assigning it to the Augustan age (in agreement with, but more convincingly than, P. Liverani in F. Buranelli et al. (eds), Laocoonte (2006), 23–40, or E. La Rocca in La Rocca et al. (eds), Augusto (2013), 184–207), as well as identifying its original location — said by Pliny (NH 36.37) to have been the domus Titi imperatoris — as the main domus of Maecenas within his Horti, which by Pliny's time had passed into imperial possession and in which Titus likely resided between a.d. 71 and 79 (622). H. is equally convincing in her lengthy treatment (652–735) of the so-called ‘Esquiline group’ of statues — which includes the ‘Esquiline Venus’ and others now displayed in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, among which (H. argues) should be included the well-known bust of Commodus as Hercules Romanus — all of which she would date to the reign of Septimius Severus.

In sum, H offers a wealth of detailed and convincing topographical and art historical research on an important sector of the ancient urbs. It will remain essential to scholars of topography and sculpture for the foreseeable future, especially the valuable new maps of the Oppius and Esquiline, and at the same time stands as a monumentum to the scholarly achievements of its distinguished author.