In this substantial and important contribution to the history of translation, McE. aims to disentangle Roman thinking about translation from modern understanding of the activity. She successfully opens up this gap, articulating clearly the way in which the Roman concept is more nuanced than our own, not least through the useful appendix on ‘Roman Terminology for Translation’ that gives some sense of the enormity and difficulty of the task. Mapping thinking about translation onto broader socio-cultural shifts across a range of genres of Roman literature from 240 b.c.e. to the second century c.e., she illuminates the crucial role translation plays in the construction of elite identity.

It is a work that is erudite and in places masterful, but occasionally belies its own complexity. For example, the assertion that all Roman translators adhere to the strategies set forth by Livius Andronicus in the Odussia (p. 43) somewhat obfuscates the sophisticated demonstration of the way in which the role of translation develops over several centuries laid out in subsequent chapters. McE. seeks in the introduction to set her work apart from more explicitly philological studies that compare translation and source, but there are tantalising glimpses of comparative analysis here and there, and occasionally this could be used more effectively to enhance McE.'s argument. For example, the lack of extensive comparison of Catullus 51 with other Roman versions of Sappho 31 by Valerius Aedituus, Lutatius Catulus and Lucretius seems something of a missed opportunity, especially given her overall insistence on situating thinking about translation within broader cultural environments.

The book begins with some incisive questions on the relationship between Roman reading and writing practices and the activity of the translator, considering aspects such as the unwieldiness of the book scroll and the importance of memorisation. This helpful reminder of the distinct conditions under which translations were produced paves the way for the nuanced reading that follows, beginning with an overview of non-literary translation. Here, McE. interestingly draws attention to the near invisibility of interpreters in ancient sources and emphasises that the literary translations, to which she turns for the remainder of the book, in fact represent a small proportion of the broad range of translation activity being conducted in Rome and across the empire.

McE. begins the second chapter by asking how the Romans approached the task of translation with no tradition or theory to draw upon, while simultaneously navigating away from the familiar fixation on the Romans’ self-perception as cultural latecomers. Here McE. shows how, in choosing to transform his source rather than translate literally, we might identify in Livius Andronicus a kind of model for Roman translation practice, albeit judiciously noting that he may be representative of broader thinking about translation at the time, rather than the starting point (p. 43). Turning to Ennius' Annales, what is perhaps more interesting is that McE. suggests here that, in presenting himself as the reincarnation of Homer, Ennius invites us to read the Annales as a translation, too. Even if not wholly convincing, this certainly sheds light on the complexity of what translation means to the Romans, the way it intersects with other cultural movements and the way in which a modern understanding of the process might be too reductive.

Turning to Roman drama in the third chapter, McE. situates the process of translation in its broader socio-cultural context of the ludi scaenici and considers the specific demands of adapting a dramatic performance. Again avoiding extended comparison of source text and translation, she sticks to the prologues and parts of the plays that comment explicitly upon translation and linguistic issues. She convincingly argues that the stylistic unity of plays adapted from Greek sources has more to do with ‘what had previously worked onstage’ (p. 66) than the relationship to the source text. McE. relates Plautus' vortit barbare to both the Roman absorption of Greek art – part of an increasing control over Greek cultural resources – and the triumphal associations of the ludi, presided over by magistrates in the garb of a triumphing general (p. 69). Against this backdrop, she uses the explicit reference to the Greek playwrights Diphilus and Philemon by the slave Tranio in Plautus' Mostellaria to argue temptingly that Plautus presents a more circular – rather than one-way – model of translation in which he sees the potential for material adapted from Greek sources further to inspire Greek plays, not just triumph over them. Ultimately, as with the preceding chapter, a picture of Roman translation emerges that sees Romans utilising and controlling the cultural resources of Greece at the same time as formulating a new distinctly Roman poetics.

Unsurprisingly, given that he is one of the few Roman authors to provide explicit translation theory, Cicero dominates McE.'s discussion of literary translations, and her examination of Cicero in Chapter 4 is some of the strongest material in the book. Here she astutely notes that the language used to describe the transformative power of the orator in De inventione is the same as that which Cicero will later use to describe his work as a translator, highlighting his conception of the translator's activity as a kind of civic duty (pp. 97–8). McE.'s subsequent analysis of On the Best Type of Orator 14 is particularly effective, as she offers a close reading of Cicero's use of the language of economic exchange to convey his adept handling of the economy of linguistic exchange and so assert the value of his translation as a model for Atticist style.

A seemingly disparate array of material is deftly brought together in the fifth chapter as McE. moves on to lyric poetry (Catullus and Horace) and didactic epic (Lucretius and Germanicus), demonstrating their shared lack of concern for the integrity of the source text. This chapter illustrates particularly well the way in which thinking about translation evolves as, while Catullus wrestles with anxieties about speaking as himself, especially in translations of Greek lyric written in the first person, Horace is able confidently to ‘overwrite Greek voices with his own’ (p. 156).

The final chapter is similarly broad in scope as McE. takes us through post-Ciceronian thinking about translation from Seneca to Aulus Gellius. Here she demonstrates that while there is still no unified theory of translation, we can identify a shared sense that translation, as a manifestation of the mastery of Greek language and literature, is integral to the construction of elite identity in Rome. Pliny, for example, is shown in his response to a letter from Fuscus Salinator to advocate translation as a means for the addressee to re-enter the literary community in Rome. Of particular interest here is McE.'s discussion of Aulus Gellius, who functions as something of a yardstick as to how far thinking about translation has shifted in the imperial period. In Gellius' criticism of Caecilius Statius' translation of Menander (Attic Nights 2.23) we start to see something akin to concern for the integrity of the source text, but McE. adroitly steers us towards a more nuanced reading, in which Gellius' real concern is the inferiority of the translation: ‘Caecilius has committed the cardinal sin of translation: he has not surpassed his source’ (p. 182).

This is a rich and informative survey of Roman thinking about translation that is particularly useful for the non-specialist, but also raises pertinent questions that give the translation specialist food for thought. Ultimately, it makes an important contribution to the understanding of the Western history of translation that, as McE. notes (p. 7), too often fails to differentiate the distinctive theory of translation in this period and the remarkable socio-cultural circumstances under which the activity took place.