Introduced by a lively and affectionate biography by Tony Woodman, this volume in honour of David West is comprised of seven essays that, while perhaps appearing eclectic in the authors and topics represented, are unified by capturing the breadth of West's scholarship in Latin literature and in reflecting his famous attention to the text at the level of the individual word. The first, by Francis Cairns, compares Lutatius Catulus fr. 1 and Callimachus, AP 12.73, launching without preamble into an examination of the two poems that shows their differences to be as significant as their long-recognised similarities (the former having often been characterised as a ‘free adaptation’ of the latter). Cairns further argues that Catulus may in addition have had in mind another (now lost) poem, one that named the Theotimus named also in fr. 1, and he concludes that this second epigram was probably also by Callimachus and that it made use of legalistic vocabulary that subsequently finds itself reflected in Catulus’ poem. Also engaging with Callimachus is Ian du Quesnay, who offers a careful reading of Catullus 66.1–14 against Callimachus’ Coma Berenices. While the two texts are commonly considered together, du Quesnay goes beyond any simplistic attempt to reconstruct the latter from the former to elucidate rather their interplay, marshalling historical evidence in the service of this. He also works to refine the chronology of the 240s b.c.e. from the two versions of the Coma.

Co-editor A. J. Woodman offers a reading of Horace, Epodes 9 as the third piece. Beginning from a careful re-consideration of the opening ten lines and the three possible forms of the question contained within them (‘when will Caesar be victorious so that we may celebrate by drinking in Maecenas’ house?’; ‘since Caesar has been victorious, when may we celebrate by drinking in Maecenas’ house?’; and ‘although Caesar has been victorious and we are enjoying a celebratory drink, when will we be doing so in Maecenas’ house?’), he shows that the three sections of the poem that follow (11–16, 17–20 and 21–32) each serve to narrow down the possibilities to the third and last question. Woodman goes on to argue — drawing on Denis Feeney's understanding of the Epodes as ‘representation of speech’ — that the poem's three sections exist not to confuse the reader, but rather are uttered by three separate speakers in a sympotic context. The symposiarch, accordingly, whom Woodman understands as having posed the initial question, concludes the poem (33–8) by instructing a slave to bring more wine.

Separating Woodman's essay from another on Horace by Stephen Harrison, since the editors have arranged the contributions by date of publication of the poems under discussion, is that of Alex Hardie on Empedocles’ influence on Propertius’ Monobiblos. Ranging over Horace, Ovid, Ennius, Gallus, Virgil, Meleager, Apollonius, Lucretius, Plato and ancient medical writers, Hardie sees reflected in Propertius’ elegiac mens and the nature of his Amor/Eros a ‘creative interplay of reason and the irrational’ that is of Empedoclean inheritance. Next, fixing his attention on Odes 2.19, Harrison reads it as a ‘literary presentation of a divine encounter’ between Horace and Bacchus, akin to Hesiod's with the Muses on Helicon or Callimachus’ with Apollo and, therefore, as programmatic. The figure of Bacchus, through the parallels he evinces with not only Horace but also Augustus, brings politics and poetics into contact in the poem.

The late John Moles, whose contribution was finalised by Damien Nelis, ventures in the sixth essay the bold argument that the teachings of the Cynic Antisthenes underlie Aeneid 6.847–53 and that Dio (Chrysostom), aware of this ‘Antisthenic influence’, incorporated the Virgilian passage into his Thirteenth Oration. The chapter is challenging, dense with detail and convincing, with implications for how all three authors and passages should be read in their balancing of worldly power and moral strength/virtue. Finally, propelling the temporal focus of the collection later by a millennium into the medieval period, Bruce Gibson offers a compelling reading of a pair of poems by Hildebert of Lavardin that describe Rome. Having elucidated how Hildebert evokes Lucan, Virgil's Aeneid, Horace (Epodes 16, Odes 3.30) and Ovid in his descriptions of the city's former greatness and current ruined state, Gibson goes on to show that the described ruins possess an ‘abiding monumentality’ and ‘evoke the persistence of Rome's literary remains’, yet also, in this non-pagan milieu, communicate through their poverty and submission a different kind of greatness that Hildebert regards as superior for being Christian.

Originating in a commemorative colloquium held in Newcastle in 2014, the stimulating and exacting essays of the collection stand, as they were intended to, as a worthy testament to and emblem of West's call to ‘cast out theory, and get down to real work on the texts’.