Critical editions and commentaries of Greek epigrammatists of the Hellenistic and imperial periods have proliferated in recent years (e.g. D. Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus [1997]; A. Sens, Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams and Fragments [2010]; L. Floridi, Lucillio: Epigrammi [2014]). Y.’s excellent volume on the epigrams of Crinagoras of Mytilene now joins their ranks. Crinagoras, like many of the poets collected in the Garland of Philip, deserves a critical reappraisal. Y. has now produced the standard edition of the text of the Crinagorean corpus of 51 poems, some erotic and sepulchral, but mostly epideictic, and has brought this able stylist, Mytilenean diplomat and Augustan court poet out of the shadows. Students and scholars of Greek literature, the epigrammatic tradition and literary culture of late Republican and Augustan Rome will benefit from the erudition to be found on each of this volume's pages.

Y.’s introduction surveys Crinagoras’ life and works (pp. 1–14), describes aspects of his language, style and metrical technique (pp. 14–30) and examines the manuscript tradition (pp. 31–48). In the first part of the introduction, on the poet's life and works, Y. focuses her attention on placing Crinagoras’ poetry in the literary and cultural context of Greek poets writing at and about Rome. In contrast to Parthenius, Philodemus, Antipater of Thessalonica, Philip of Gadara (in comparison to whom ‘Crinagoras is much more interesting’, p. 12) and others, Crinagoras privileges ‘subjects deriving from everyday experience and observation’ (p. 6) over the conventional themes of Greek literary epigram. It is in this novelty of subject matter that Y. locates Crinagoras’ central importance to the development of the genre, particularly as a precursor to the court poetry of Martial. Given the partial and provisional nature of our knowledge of Crinagoras’ corpus and the broader tradition of Greek literary epigram in the late Hellenistic and Augustan periods, I hesitate somewhat to follow Y. in drawing such a bright-line distinction between Crinagoras and his contemporaries. The Milan papyrus of Posidippus with its sections of epigrams on gemstones, equestrian victories and omens and now the Vienna papyrus of epigram incipits, whose contents point to a more robust vein of satirical epigrams in the Hellenistic period, underscore how quickly our understanding of the poetic output of a single author or sub-genre can change with a single discovery. Y. also considers the possible performance context of Crinagoras’ epigrams, speculating that many of his poems originated in sympotic or other settings for improvisational literary display and exchange, and examines the development of praise of Rome in Greek verse, wherein she offers the debatably reductive judgement that in Greek poetry ‘up to the second century bc admiration for Rome was genuine and sincere’ (p. 7).

In conjunction with a new critical edition of Crinagoras’ poems, Y. offers a detailed and authoritative discussion of the manuscript tradition. Y. lavishes much of her attention on the apographa of the Anthologia Palatina. In a lengthy treatment of the sources of Parisin. Coislin. 352, for example, Y. convincingly demonstrates that Philaras must have consulted the Codex Gaulmini, which shares with Parisin. Coislin. 352 the sequence of Strato's Muse, Lucian AP 6.17, and then a second series of amatory epigrams. This discussion and others in the section will almost exclusively be of interest to scholars of the tradition of the Anthologia Palatina, but for these select few Y.’s insights into the transmission history will be required reading.

Y. has produced an exemplary text and full apparatus that surpasses all previous editions. She meticulously examined the manuscripts and modern editions, and exhaustively reports textual cruxes, conjectures and variants in the commentary. Y. displays a judicious conservatism in her approach to the text, which is grounded in her extensive knowledge of Greek parallels and keen sensitivity to the stylistic quirks of Crinagoras (e.g. his high rate of admittance of hiatus, which supports printing the manuscript witness σοὶ ὄνομα at 14.5). At significant points of textual uncertainty, Y. comprehensively reviews the previous approaches to the crux and lucidly draws a conclusion. At 37, for instance, Y. makes a well-considered case for reading J. Geffcken's καἰγύπτου (γᾶς ἦ C), where the poet compares the destruction of Corinth to that visited on other regions like Libya and, on this reading, Egypt, though R. Apostol's (CJ 112 [2016]) recent argument in support of καὶ Γάζης (in Ap. G in margine and Ap. R in textu) is not without significant merit. Her text features four new emendations and one new supplement, which improve the sense in each instance. Very rarely, Y. sets aside an emendation that may enrich the literary resonance of a particular poem. In 11, the dedication of a gift copy of Callimachus’ Hecale to Marcellus, Y. prints κάλους (PPl) at line 2 (ὡνὴρ τοὺς Μουσέων πάντας ἔσεισε κάλους) instead of J. Lascaris’ Attic κάλως, whose dialectal form might pun, as J. Clauss observed (ZPE 96 [1993]), on an aphorism associated with the Hecale (ἔσται πάντα καλῶς). Targeted dialectal allusion is attested in Hellenistic and imperial Greek epigram, and its presence seems to warrant serious consideration in this instance, even though the manuscript witnesses are unanimous in transmitting κάλους. The text of each epigram is supplied with an accurate and accessible English translation.

The commentary accompanying each epigram consists of an introductory essay, where Y. highlights the central literary, historical, textual and interpretative issues at play, followed by a lemmatised commentary rich in detailed analysis of language, style, literary allusion, and cultural and historical realia. In the introductory essays Y. is especially sensitive to Crinagoras’ use of balance and antithesis in the imagery, language and formal structure of his epigrams, and these observations invariably improve the understanding of the poem (e.g. the interwoven contrasts of light/dark, life/death and human/celestial in poem 18).

As to be expected, the commentary is dense with parallels, both Greek and Latin, and Y. should be particularly applauded for the space she dedicates to the history of diction and phraseology in later Greek (and even Byzantine) literature. These parallels often serve as the grist for Y.’s mill of literary interpretations, many of which significantly enrich our understanding of individual passages. In 1, on the poet's insomnia occasioned by the absence of his beloved Gemella, Y. convincingly posits an erotic appropriation of Aratus 156–61 on the positions of the constellations of the Charioteer and the Twins. Y. underscores the inversion of the propemptikon of Theoc. Id. 7.52ff. (which is itself an inversion of the topos) in the opening line of 32, where Crinagoras addresses his poem to a geographer in order to solicit help planning a trip from Mytilene; however I believe the play between generic boundaries (e.g. erotic/sympotic vs technical/epistolographic) could have been explored in more detail. In 23, on a goat selected by Caesar as a travel companion, Y. observes the etymological pun on αἴξ that bookends the epigrams (αἴξ and the epithet Αἰγιόχου), noting that ‘the humorous tone of the epigram is also enhanced, in that the etymological connection … is cleverly put in the mouth of … the goat’ (p. 250), whose linguistic play enhances the honour of both the speaker and Caesar. On the sepulchral pair of 40 and 41, Y. brilliantly explicates the epigrams’ engagement with epitaphic commonplaces, for example sit tibi terra levis, in the context of contrasting oppositions, both physical and mortal. Finally, since Crinagoras often draws on personal experience and addresses epigrams to historical figures, Y. carefully investigates the identity of named individuals and attempts to date the composition of individual epigrams based on the known (from inscriptional evidence) periods of Crinagoras’ travels to Rome and Spain as a representative of Mytilene.

There are, naturally, points of interpretation which I either found unconvincing (e.g. οὔ νέμεσίς τοι in 17 as ‘no wonder’) or wished had been given a deeper analysis (see on 32 above). At the same time, brevity is the soul of wit, and this aphorism would have been wisely considered in certain places in the introduction and commentary, for example the note on ἀγκυλοχείλου at 4.1. But these are minor quibbles. The volume concludes with a capacious bibliography and indexes of Greek words, ancient authors and general content. As to be expected from OUP, the production quality of the volume is excellent, and while minor errata can be found (if one looks quite hard), none detract from the meaning of the text.

Y. has produced an exceptionally learned and endlessly informative study, and we should hope and expect that her excellent work will spur renewed interest in Crinagoras.