In English, the term ‘pride’ can be used both positively and negatively to express either a justified sense of accomplishment or arrogant self-importance. The situation in Latin is different, however, as Yelena Baraz argues in her excellent new book. For the Romans, pride is almost always an overestimation, a gap between how one values oneself and how one is valued by others. It comes up frequently and with people of all classes, yet because of the stigma attached to it, it is never a first-person emotion. But B. argues that it does not remain entirely negative: we see a shift in the Augustan poets and the beginning there of a positive, if limited, use of superbia, which continues into later poetry as well. B. views this development in poetry as an experiment tied to a change in the political landscape under Augustus and the Flavians. Pride's ‘political embeddedness’ is one of the leitmotifs of her book.

This is an impressive book. It offers an important contribution to the study of ancient emotion and the Roman psyche and shows genuine mastery of its sources over a wide range of texts. The different parts of the study are extremely well integrated with each other, and it is written in a precise and elegant way that makes it a pleasure to read. After an Introduction laying out the central issues and methodology (analysing both lexical evidence and ‘scripts,’ i.e. causes of and reactions to the emotion, an approach championed by Robert Kaster), there follow three sections and a Coda. Part I examines the evidence for adrogantia, fastus, insolentia and superbia and their scripts, which are remarkably consistent given the range of authors examined (Cicero, Caesar, Horace, Livy, Phaedrus, Cato the Elder and others). Part II expands the discussion of pride scripts from people to an institution (monarchy) and a place (Capua, which sided with Carthage during the Second Punic War). Here we see how charges of pride can be used as a political tool, whether to keep the elite from aspiring towards excessive power, or a city like Capua from inspiring other allies to defect. Part III then presents the positive turn in the evidence, beginning with the Aeneid where a strictly negative view of superbia is problematised by a reader's shifting sympathies between victims and victor, a well-recognised feature of the epic. More overtly positive examples of pride emerge in Horace, Propertius and Ovid, often in connection with the imagery of triumph and in prominent locations in the corpus (e.g. Hor., Carm. 3.30 or Prop. 3.1 and 4.1). Later poets, especially the Flavians, begin to apply superbus to individuals, though the movement initiated by the Augustans never really blossoms. Finally, the Coda explores the relationship of pride with Stoicism and self-mastery in a passage from Seneca the Younger that is later echoed by Quintilian, Lucan and Paulinus of Nola. B. reasonably chooses not to engage more fully with late antique authors, given the semantic change that humility and pride undergo in the Christian context.

Parts I and II are especially strong. The lexical analyses offer illuminating definitions of the key terms explored in the book: adrogantia tends to describe overvaluing yourself, fastus undervaluing others, and insolentia doing something unusual or unexpected. Superbia is marked out as unique because it is the only one to develop a positive valence; accordingly B. proposes that the prefix super- is linked to actual, not just self-assessed, superiority. We also learn about the physical symptoms accompanying pride: elevation (e.g. elatus, superbus), swelling (i.e. tumor) and emptiness (e.g. vanus). Verbs like iacto and tumeo might have been included in this study as well, since they add to the evidence for embodiment and the readability of another's pride. The discussion of Tarquinius Superbus, the very symbol of arrogant pride from the Roman Republic, comes at the meeting point of Parts I and II and ties together persuasively the study of terminology and scripts with political overreach.

In Part III, the texts B. examines are very familiar, though she argues convincingly that they require a fresh reading in light of her earlier argument, and we find again sensitive and astute interpretations throughout. Still, the scope does narrow in several ways, first by focusing on just one term (superbia), and second by looking only at poets, and poets who are responding to each other's work. As B. herself admits, the case for a positive story about pride is still fairly limited. Yet if we consider the evidence more widely and do not restrict ourselves to lexical evidence of just a few words, we might come to a different assessment of the emotion's history and development. When Cicero uses the pluralis modestiae, for example, he can claim positive credit for something while distancing himself from it at the same time. Horace does something similar in Satires I, where he tells two stories about his life, one a modest tale about his humble upbringing and simple tastes, and another more self-important story about his entry into Maecenas’ circle. Even earlier, the clever slave in comedies like Plautus’ Pseudolus or Bacchides will boast, in the first person, about his crafty plot to help his young master, and while he may be criticised as arrogant by other characters, the comic depiction of him is sympathetic. In all these cases, the attitude towards pride is still primarily negative, which supports part of B.'s argument. But not wholly so: far from being an exceptional case or something that only develops later, superbia belongs to a pattern continuous from the Republic onwards.