The volume offers a study of the presence, function and significance of lyric poetry within imperial culture, with a specific focus on Aelius Aristides. The question of how lyric poetry survived, circulated and functioned in this period has attracted growing scholarly attention over recent decades, yet it remains a field in which methodological assumptions are still being tested and refined. The present volume makes a significant contribution to that conversation. M.’s work is situated within a scholarly landscape shaped above all by E. Bowie, whose extensive research has traced the presence of lyric across a broad range of imperial authors. While unreservedly acknowledging that Bowie’s contributions – among others – provide an invaluable map of lyric reuses, M. seeks to advance beyond this foundation, moving past the ‘quotation-oriented approach’ (p. 6) that has hitherto defined the field. Where earlier scholarship often prioritised establishing what type of lyric is present and in what quantity, M. asks with what functions and purposes lyric manifests itself. It is this reorientation that represents the primary strength of the volume, lending it originality and, above all, allowing it to reach interpretative conclusions of greater critical depth. This approach is further enriched by the decision to engage with lyric ‘beyond just poetry and texts’ (p. 2). M. proposes to trace the presence of lyric in Aelius Aristides through references to elements that fall under a broader, more dynamic label of ‘tradition’ (ibid.): the lyric poets themselves, the biographical anecdotes associated with them and the specific cultural imaginary they evoked.

The book is structured into two main sections. The first one addresses the reception of lyric in imperial culture, focusing on the way in which various writers of lyric were associated in the collective imagination with specific aesthetics, themes and values, and how these cultural mappings shaped their subsequent reception. The second section turns to Aelius Aristides and to his personal and strategic engagement with the lyric (tradition). Here M. explores and contextualises Aristides’ use of lyric to cast light on Aristides’ self-presentation, particularly as it relates to the dominant political landscape of his time. A strength of the volume is the interdependence of these two sections, sustained by frequent cross-references, while each is also designed to stand on its own. The result is a remarkably well-presented and clear argumentation throughout, despite the complexity of the subject matter.

An important theoretical and conceptual premise underpinning M.’s investigation concerns the very definition of ‘lyric’. M. understands the term as denoting something close to the Greek word μέλος (‘song’, ‘melody’, ‘tune’), that is, a form associated with vocal performance and musical accompaniment; elegy and iambus are therefore excluded, as they do not qualify as ‘song’ in the same way. However, regarding the distinction and possible overlap between λυρικός and μέλος/μελικός, the issue would arguably have deserved a fuller treatment than that offered by M., who instead refers readers to broader studies treating the matter in detail.

On a more substantial level, the volume’s key contribution lies in M.’s demonstration that the use of lyric confers on those authors who draw upon it a distinctly sophisticated literary stance. The argument is carefully staged: introduced and grounded in the first part of the book as a working premise, it is tested and borne out in the second one through the case study of Aristides, so that what begins as an interpretative hypothesis ends as a proven result. M. reconstructs this picture largely by inference, drawing on a range of evidence, including papyrological material, patterns of book circulation and library organisation, information from school education and texts relating to rhetorical theory. This material points to a relatively limited presence of lyric. What is particularly notable is that M. brilliantly turns this result into a cornerstone of her argument: the very selectivity of lyric use underscores its role in marking a sophisticated literary and cultural stance. The data she skilfully mobilises effectively support this interpretation, demonstrating the persuasiveness of her method.

As far as the choice of texts is concerned, M. focuses on orations where Aristides’ self-presentation is most strategically mediated through lyric, setting aside Orr. 5–16, whose primary engagement is with what she calls the Homerocentric and Athenocentric strands of imperial paideia (p. 13). The analysis focuses in particular on the Platonic Orations (2, 3), the Hymn to Serapis (45), the attacks on critics (28, 33), the Monody for Smyrna (18), and the speeches for Corinth (46), Rhodes (24), Rome (26) and Athens (1). M. shows how Aristides constructs the political identity of the cities he refers to by creating metaphors grounded in lyric and its associated musical and cultural practices: a key example is the chorus and the meanings it can assume in a political context.

From this material emerges clearly that Pindar and his cultural authority play a dominant role, and M. accounts for this with a wide-ranging discussion attending to the historical and social contexts of both source and target. Yet the study does not confine itself to this single thread, significant as it is. One of the most interesting aspects of the second part of the book is the considerable space devoted to those writers of lyric who are conspicuously absent from Aristides. M. therefore explains not only why certain writers of lyric are present in Aristides, but also why others are not. Anacreon is one such case. Alcaeus and Sappho, likewise granted little space by Aristides, receive their due attention in M.’s volume. She does not merely register their low frequency, but above all accounts for it, tracing a process of avoidance or re-adaptation already applied to these two poets before Aristides. Far from presenting this as simple inheritance, she fruitfully connects this pattern with the specific contextual demands to which Aristides needed to respond.

M.’s analysis further reveals lyric, in Aristides’ hands, to be not only literally significant but also politically charged – a flexible, socially powerful and politically resonant genre, whose deployment underscores its capacity to mark elite identity, strengthen community and negotiate power. This is especially important because, as M. rightly points out, Aristides’ corpus has rarely been examined closely through a political lens (p. 15), save for arguments that rely on his omissions to claim either his complicity with Roman domination or, conversely, coded resistance to it. All the more so, given that, as T. Whitmarsh – whom M. cites – has aptly noted, pinning down an author’s views on Rome from the text alone risks imposing a single, reductive interpretation. In this respect, M.’s reading of Aristides offers a way out of this impasse: attending to Aristides’ reuse of lyric offers a productive interpretative key, precisely because both the lyric tradition and its later reuses are understood as being in active dialogue with their respective socio-political environments.

In sum, this volume makes a genuine and timely contribution to the field. By treating lyric as a complex system of reference rather than a repository of quotable passages, M. opens up a richer and more analytically precise understanding of how imperial authors engaged with the past. Her work thus contributes fruitfully to a broader understanding of intertextuality, offering a model well suited to unpacking the densely layered paideia of imperial texts, where engagement with the past is rarely a matter of simple imitation, but rather of deliberate appropriation and strategic reframing. Moreover, choosing a lyric lens to read Aristides proves particularly illuminating: it brings into focus a literary personality that more conventional approaches have left only partially visible. This book deserves to be widely read.