Impressive for the breadth of its coverage of so many authors and works across so many literary epochs, this study of representations of Fama in the Western tradition nevertheless combines that vastness of scale with Hardie's characteristic acuity as a close reader of text (text that extends in this case far beyond the Greco-Roman canon). While the book tells a continuous story, it is loosely divisible into two movements, the first extending down to ch. 9. After a foundational first chapter in which H. sets out his stall, complicating his subject by introducing the tensions and instabilities, ‘the major duplicities and dichotomies’ (6) and the order and disorder (19) that are encased or implicated in the figure of fama, he moves to the task of ‘plotting fama’ (cf. 43) by first dwelling (ch. 2) on aspects of κλέος in Homer and Hesiod before moving to Virgil via the latter's response in Aeneid 1 to the ‘plot of fama’ that H. discerns in Iliad 2. Chs 3–5 carry important weight in the book as a whole because of their focus on Virgil and Ovid, those hardy perennials whose influence pervades so much of the volume. Ch. 3, on Virgil's personification of Fama in Aeneid 4, skilfully relates the monstrous vision of 4.173–97 to ‘structures and homologues’ (78) extending over the epic as a whole; after this fundamental treatment (78–125), H. moves in a related but somewhat unexpected direction by probing in the briefer ch. 4 (126–49) ‘the limits of rhetoric within the Aeneid’ (129) through the test case of the Council of Latins in Aeneid 11 (is the fama that the epic poet offers Rome and her heroes insulated from, or potentially compromised by, the fragility or potential guile of rhetoric as showcased in H.'s sensitive reading of the Council?). After Fama in Aeneid 4, Fama in Metamorphoses 12 takes centre stage in ch. 5, with questions of ‘engagement with and comment on its Virgilian predecessor’ (151) naturally central to the discussion; but H. also deftly exposes the fault-lines of Ovidian Fama as a construct riven by internal tension and contradiction (e.g., the appearance of this Fama ushers in an Ovidian epic cycle within the Metamorphoses, but at so momentous a narrative moment Fama herself appears comparatively unimportant in the plot; cf. also p. 156 for Ovid ‘keep[ing] a certain distance from the Fama who at the same time is a personification of the poet's own verbal makings’).

H.'s subsequent excursion into ‘Later Imperial Epic’ (ch. 6) explores the profound Virgilian and Ovidian imprints on Lucan, Valerius Flaccus and Statius; but then a sudden leap to Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, and to a brief but insightful section (214–25) on the Nonnan Typhoeus as ‘an avatar of that virtual personification of the epic tradition that I wish to see in the Virgilian Fama’ (215). At this point the book appears to take on a different momentum, surging into two related chapters on ‘Fama and the Historians’ (ch. 7 on Livy, ch. 8 on Tacitus, with extension to the younger Pliny and Martial); both show a formidable control not just of the texts, but also of the larger cultural narrative in which the forms and functionings of fama are themselves affected by the transition from Republic to Principate. At the beginning of ch. 9, on ‘The Love of Fame and the Fame of Love’, brief recapitulation (330–1) offers a pause before a change of gear: while Ovid and especially Virgil remain key influences, in and after ch. 9 the book enters its second general movement by focusing on post-Classical representations of Fama. H. ranges from Spencer's The Faerie Queene (ch. 10) to Renaissance Christianizing responses to the fama tradition in the neoclassical, epic narrative form of Jacopo Sannazaro's De partu Virginis, Girolamo Vida's Christiad and Milton's In quintum Nouembris (ch. 11); from Petrarch's Trionfi and Africa (ch. 12) to the early modern period, represented in ch. 13 by Shakespeare's ‘Henriad’ (Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V) and Ben Jonson (with brief additional glances at George Chapman and Thomas Scot on pp. 537–41); and from Milton's Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes (ch. 14) to Chaucer's House of Fame and Pope's Temple of Fame (ch. 15) before H. finally samples (ch. 16) visual representations of Fama, in the quest for continuities and discontinuities between the visual and the textual materials.

Given the scale of H.'s undertaking, occasional summaries of the ground travelled so far in the volume offer helpful orientation, especially in the later stages (e.g., 391, 570). But despite the vastness of the enterprise and the book's spacious dimensions, the compactness of the writing and the relentless closeness of the readings that are offered create a sense of urgency and of tight construction — an impression reinforced by the additional materials that are concisely incorporated through appendices or postscripts (so 123–5,174–7, 270–2). The sheer array of materials is dazzling, but sudden shifts of direction can sometimes disconcert, as (e.g.) when the focus unexpectedly moves to The Faerie Queene (20); to Joannes Sambucus’ Emblemata (26–7); to Augustine and Boethius (33–4); or to Fulke Greville (36). Through fast-moving changes of scene in this fashion, H. combines deep learning with a lightness of touch, as if broaching his fama-theme from a synchronic rather than a diachronic perspective. In this respect, the book is not so much about the later reception(s) of a static Classical concept of fama, but about the dynamic evolution of a flexible, multiform idea from antiquity down to the early modern period; and H. comes to his theme not as a classicist who steps tentatively in the later literary tradition, but as a scholar of rare breadth with a totalizing grasp of the materials he covers. The book is not for the faint-hearted, and it is hard not to feel overwhelmed at moments by the sheer dimensions of the work, the uncompromising rigor of analysis and the density of exposition. But there can be no doubt about the monumental importance of this remarkable work of scholarship. The book is also beautifully produced, with ample margins, thirty-seven illustrations, thirty-six pages of bibliography and thorough indices of passages discussed and of general subjects; unfortunately, the price is in proportion to the scale of this impressive work.