Of the pseudo-Virgilian Culex, from which he had just quoted at some length, the late A.S. Hollis was heard to remark: ‘Lucan may have regarded the Culex as genuine; which would be rather depressing, because its quality is not high’.Footnote ¹ This view (a considered reading of the Suetonian Vita Lucani 5–8) would suggest that it is a tall order to rehabilitate the Latin literary fake, but that is precisely what P. achieves in her well-researched and thoughtful book on this intriguing subcategory of pseudepigrapha (‘erroneously/falsely entitled texts’). Without necessarily requiring us to reject the aesthetic component of a response such as Hollis's, P. ably justifies her refrain, first argued in the introduction, that traditional Echtheitskritik fails to appreciate how the text exposed as counterfeit might, like any ‘authentic’ text, have an agenda worthy of consideration. P. thus takes as her starting point the conclusions of ‘priority-criticism’ (i.e. that the authorship and/or context of these texts are other than they purport to be) and seeks to break a scholarly deadlock. The pseudepigraphic agenda of the fake emerges when it is read according to the literary dynamics of its original context, here identified as the rhetorical culture of the early empire, by which its ‘grammar’ and ‘idiolects’ are coloured (hence the ‘rhetoric’ of P.'s title).

In highlighting the relationship between poetry and rhetoric, this book offers a new perspective on a literary symbiosis brought to prominence in the theory of ‘generic composition’ evolved by Francis Cairns. Moreover, P.'s rhetorical reading of these highly imitative texts adds an important and fresh chapter to the study of allusion and imitation at Rome; the pages on the imperial literary scene (pp. 12–24) in particular should be consulted by those interested in intertextuality in Latin literature. As P. argues, the hyper-imitative nature of the fake stems from Roman rhetorical education, in which declamation and its various preparatory exercises (progymnasmata) frequently involved the creative refashioning, supplementation, paraphrase and quotation of canonical texts.

One of the most recurrent rhetorical moves this book witnesses is anaplerosis or creative ‘supplementation’. The ‘youthful’ (and hence neoteric, Catullan and iambic) Catalepton and, more implicitly, the Ciris (discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4, respectively) fill in the gaps of Virgil's early career, i.e. prior to the Eclogues (which, after all, are the work of Virgil's thirties); the controversial ‘Helen Episode’ (the case study of the epilogue) bridges the narrative gap that would otherwise follow Aeneid 2.566; the ps.-Tibullan Panegyricus Messallae, addressed like Catalepton 9 to Messalla (the consul of 31 b.c.), supplements the history of patronage in the Augustan period. These pseudo-panegyrics, discussed in Chapter 3 alongside the anonymous Laus Pisonis (addressed to a Calpurnius Piso, perhaps the Neronian conspirator of a.d. 65), take their cue from the epideictic subgenre of fictitious encomium (and, in the spirit of Martial and Juvenal, implicitly ironise the poet–patron relationship of their day). A further rhetorical genre of impersonation, the pseudo-historical consolation, spawned the anonymous ‘Augustan’ Consolatio ad Liviam and Elegiae in Maecenatem (Chapter 5), the latter of which also partakes of the defence-speech (perhaps specifically to counter Seneca's criticism of Maecenas' mollitia). Again, the deliberative mode characteristic of the rhetorical suasoria and ethopoeia is reflected in Aeneas' soliloquy in the Helen Episode. As impersonations of one kind or another, fakes are a kind of verse-prosopopoeia (a rhetorical comparand to which P. helpfully draws attention): like the jury who watched Cicero ‘become’, for example, his arch-enemy Clodius or the long-dead App. Claudius Caecus, so the ancient readers of, for example, the pseudepigraphic ‘Virgil’ or ‘Tibullus’ were collaborators in, rather than victims of, the fiction.

In this way, on P.'s analysis, verdicts of ‘fraud’ and ‘deception’ do injustice to the literary fake. How, then, could Lucan and other worthies (e.g. Statius, Martial and Suetonius), steeped though they were in the rhetorical culture of the early empire, have been duped by the Culex? Did Pliny not think ‘Ovid's’ Halieutica rather fishy’? P.'s first chapter on the ancient reception of pseudepigrapha addresses this issue. Emphasising the importance of context and genre, P. argues for the possibility that some of these apparent instances of gullibility may themselves be playful collaborations with the pseudepigraphic charade. Indicative for P. of the ludic sensibility required of the reader is Diogenes Laertius' condemnation of Heracleides Ponticus as a literary unsophisticate for taking as authentic a ps.-Sophoclean play by Dionysius of Heraclea, notwithstanding the latter's revelation of his authorship in an acrostic and metapoetic allusion. (Though it might be wondered whether Heracleides, himself a notorious fraudster, was not here having the last laugh.)

One genre that has much in common with the fake is biography, it too being constituted by extrapolation from the literary record. The chapter on the Catalepton suggests that the collection conceives of itself as a survivor of the flames to which Virgil allegedly consigned the Aeneid, thus preserving a ‘first-hand’ account of Virgil's life-experience that, in reality, is merely another allegorical reading of the eviction narratives of the Eclogues (an invitation encoded in the Virgilian corpus and taken up by the exegetical tradition). By extension, it emerges that the fake has much in common with the ancient commentary tradition, as P.'s chapters on the Ciris and ‘Helen Episode’ argue. The former, an epyllion on Scylla, reads as imitation-Virgil in light of the tradition preserved by Servius Auctus ad Ecl. 6.3 that, prior to Apollo's veto of reges et proelia, Virgil had been engaged in a poem on Scylla and the war between Nisus and Minos. The Ciris thus answers implicitly the rhetorical question of Ecl. 6.77 (quid loquar aut Scyllam Nisi) and, further, ‘vindicates’ Servius' argument ad loc. that, although he appears to conflate them, Virgil knew the difference between Nisus' daughter and the Homeric monster of the same name. Similarly, P. argues that the ‘Helen Episode’ highlights quasi-parodically the ancient critical impulse to defend the actions of Virgil's hero: Servius' endorsement of the expurgation of these lines by Varius and Tucca (ad Aen. 2.592 turpe est uiro forti contra feminam irasci) is informed by a rhetorical analysis of the ‘discreditable kind’ of speech (P. compares Rhet. Her. 1.3.5 turpe genus intellegitur cum aut honesta res oppugnatur aut defenditur turpis) which itself is re-enacted by Aeneas as he attempts to justify the discreditable act of killing a woman.

Just as P.'s analysis of the ‘Helen Episode’ is a fittingly summative epilogue to the book, so the preceding chapters on the rhetoric of the fake make the case for its spuriousness hard to resist. Those who remain sympathetic to the authenticity of, for example, the ‘Helen Episode’ may wish to argue that Virgil, no less than his commentators or imitators, could have drawn on rhetorical models and treatises, including the Rhetorica ad Herennium from which P. quotes; that Augustan poetry is informed by, if not composed according to, rhetorical prescriptions is (as noted above) firmly established. For those, on the other hand, who now relinquish any devotion to these texts' authenticity, this is the beginning, not the end, of the journey. This book shows that the interest and value of the fake rest precisely in its status as such, in that it evidences ancient modes of reading and strategies of reception in its playful appropriation of the literary tradition. As P. also suggests, pseudepigraphic intertextuality is such that, for the reader who entertains the fiction of, for example, the Ciris, the canonical Virgil will now ‘quote’ his iuuenilia (as, it can be added, will Ovid at Metamorphoses 8.1–151). If the quality of these pseudo-iuuenilia is not high (as Hollis opined), P. leaves us to contemplate the intriguing possibility (e.g. p. 172) that this, too, is part of the fiction, as the poet stages the ineptness of the pseudo-historical tyro for the amusement of a contemporary readership.