With the words from Ausonius' introductory letter to his cento, the volume Sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata ‘gathers up scattered tags and fits these mangled scraps together into a whole’. The tags and scraps intended by Ausonius were the quotations used in his cento, while those intended by G. and M. are the voices of contemporary scholars working with textual reuse in ancient Greek and Latin patchwork texts. The anthology collects papers presented at the international seminar with the same title held at the Università degli Studi di Trento, 21–22 March 2013.

The ambition to present divergent voices from the growing choir of scholars working with ancient patchwork texts is praiseworthy. However, although the international maestro in the field, S. McGill, contributes an illuminating article (cf. below), the collection cannot be called international. Apart from McGill, all contributors are Italian and all papers, except McGill's, are written in Italian. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, when F. Ermini wrote about Proba's cento (1909), Italian scholars have been outstanding in this field. Still in the late 1990s, Italian researchers were fairly alone in paying serious attention to these texts. Nowadays, there is an increasing global interest, for example from German scholars (A. Rondholz, R. Glei et al.), and the anthology would have benefited from including more international voices. That said, the Italian community remains today outstanding enough to fill the volume with innovative contributions almost exclusively from native scholars.

McGill's chapter, ‘From Maro Iunior to Marsayas: Ancient perspectives on a Virgilian cento’, deals with what the codex Salmasianus presents as the audience's response to the cento De ecclesia and the centonist's reply. The audience approvingly calls the centonist Maro Iunior, a title which he vehemently disavows. McGill claims that the refusal is connected with reluctance to participate in a literary pugna with Virgil. Two opposite approaches towards the act of rewriting Virgil are identified: one based on competition (which the centonist refuses) and one based on respect (of which the centonist approves). Although not mentioned by McGill, these competing views are reminiscent of twentieth-century scholars' distinctions between centos based on Auflösung versus Deutung (Herzog 1975), or Normverletzung versus Normbildung (Verweyen-Witting 1993). Discussions about similarities between ancient and modern reception would have enriched the argument. None the less, McGill's observation that the cento's imagery of how the centonist, if he challenged Virgil, would be flayed and hung recalls Ausonius' violent imagery about Cento Nuptialis' dismemberment of the Virgilian text is in itself substantial. Moreover, the concluding discussions about how paratexts promote modes of reading, and about how late-antique paratexts show that Virgil's identity was an open identity, adaptable to different uses and messages, place the article in the front line of the vivid present-day scholarly discussions of centos and late-antique reception.

I shall come back to the next contribution, G.'s ‘Insidie palesi e nascoste dell'arte centonaria: Le astuzie del compositore e le scelte metodologiche dell'editore’, towards the end of this review, in connection with G.'s edition of the Vergiliocentones minores.

P. Paoluccci, ‘Per la costituzione del testo dell’Alcesta centonaria. L'epilogo’, focuses on the special text-critical problems of centos. With parallels primarily from texts with similar themes, Paolucci corroborates an emendation of v. 145 in Alcesta, from the transmitted Oblitus natorum// manet alta mente repostum to hoc solum nomen (Aen. 4.324)// manet alta mente repostum. She first proposed this emendation on other grounds in 2010 (verses describing Alcesta in the cento often describe Dido in the Aeneid; the word restat occurs in both half-lines building up verse 145 in the cento). Now she adds supporting evidence from Euripides' Alcestis and from Alcestis Barcinonensis, as well as from epigraphs on deceased wives. The support from texts about Alcesta and deceased wives is persuasive. Moreover, the use of literary parallels for text emendations in centos agrees well with the idea that the genre is crucial for the literary interpretation of such texts (cf., e.g., Ehrling [2011]). In vv. 155–61 in the cento, Paolucci proposes a text that differs from present editions. This emendation too is based on similarities with Euripides. She less convincingly argues that Donatus' commentary may have inspired the centonist. If we believe that centonists primarily browsed their memory rather than the scrolls of the Virgilian texts, such influence seems less likely.

In the fourth chapter, ‘Intrecci teologici e tecnica centonaria: per l'esegesi della sequenza del descensus Christi ad inferos (vv. 51–67) nel centone De ecclesia (AL 16^R)’, S. Audano shows how verses 51–67 are modelled on Aen. 6.477–91. But it seems that the centonist also tries to avoid accusations of being heretical. Unlike, for example, Proba, he places the account of Christ in the mouth of a priest in the cento, thereby linking its message more closely to the Church. Moreover, De ecclesia emphasises Christ's double nature (human and divine), and the circumstance that Christ (as opposed to Aeneas) brought back souls from the underworld. Audano finally points out that Christ's descent to the underworld is not clearly described by the Evangelists, and that the question of which and how many souls he brought back from the dead was vividly debated at the time. However, as far as I understand the text of the cento, the centonist's position in this debate cannot be clearly determined. Audano argues differently. He first (rightly, I believe) claims that verse 60's maxima turba refers to all creatures in the underworld, but that the context in Matt. 28.10, where Christ after his resurrection tells the Apostles not to fear (nolite timere), must guide the interpretation in the following verses. Therefore, argues Audano, Christ's ne trepidate (v. 62 in the cento) must be directed only to the Saints of the Old Testament, and Christ intends to save them only. Audano's interpretation is not impossible, but we must be careful not to over-interpret similarities between centos and other texts. Moreover, being deliberately vague in a toxic theological issue seems a good choice for a centonist who tries to avoid the accusation of heresy. Despite these objections, Audano's general demonstration of how De ecclesia comes into intertextual dialogue with both Aen. 6 and the Holy Scriptures is illuminating.

The next chapter, ‘Il riuso di Virgilio nel centone cristiano Versus ad gratiam Domini’ by C. Arcidiacono, comes back to the old idea that evidence in centos may help to establish the correct Virgilian text. This was for a long time one of the few potentials classical philologists saw in these texts (e.g. Cataldo 1979). None the less, few editors of Virgil used centos, possibly because the literary nature of such texts poses different questions from other textual evidence. Arcidiacono discerningly discusses cases both where patchwork texts may be used as textual evidence, and when such use is less appropriate. Neither discussion could have been held without the last years' literary and editorial achievements in the field. Together with modern critical editions, Arcidiacono's chapter may serve as a useful guide for editors of Virgil who wish to include textual evidence from centos in their apparatus critici.

General surveys of the development of late-antique cento poetry often mention the reuse of Homer by philosophers, comedians and satirists. In ‘Tessere omeriche nella tradizione diatribica e minippea in Grecia e a Roma’, A. Bonandini treats evidence of such textual recycling in diatribe, cynical and Menippean satire. Bonandini shows how textual reuse in such texts serves comical and degrading aims towards competing philosophical schools, and towards high characters in satire. However, the original contexts are not degraded through the reuse. Moreover, Bonandini's contribution connects the textual recycling in Lucian's dialogues and Seneca's Apocolocyntosis with their literary and philosophical roots. A. Camerotto's ‘Pastiches sovversivi. Strategie della parodia e della satira in Luciano di Samosata’ also treats satire, but from another perspective. Camerotto explores how Lucian's texts relate to the reuse of the tradition of Greek paideia. With examples from different texts, he shows how Lucian's satire always comprises both mimesis and incongruity. Although illuminating regarding the satirical reuse of earlier texts, Camerotto's contribution differs from the other chapters in its focus on rhetorical schemes rather than on quotations/quasi-quotations. In a broader collection this approach could have been elaborated. As things are, the chapter – despite its solid argument and affinity with Bonandini's contribution – sprawls too much in relation to the volume as a whole.

The last chapter, C. Mordeglia's ‘«Non simplo stamine texam»: reminiscenze e citazioni virgiliane nell’Ecbasis captivi’, gathers up many scattered tags from the previous chapters. In the analysis of Virgilian reminiscences in the hitherto much overlooked Ecbasis captivi from the tenth century, Mordeglia shows how text-critical issues, borders between different kinds of patchwork texts and the rhetorical aims of textual reuse are relevant also in a Medieval context. The mixture of genres, the moral-philosophical interest and the comical traits in Ecbasis captivi recall the discussions held by Bonandini; the discussions about debasement of the original context (which is not present in the Ecbasis captivi) recalls McGill's chapter, just to mention a few similarities with earlier contributions. The volume as a whole, and not least this last chapter, shows not only that patchwork poets wove complex patterns, but also that divergent scholarly approaches are fruitful for the examination of their poetry. Thus, the editors have succeeded in their ambition to ‘gather up scattered tags and fit these mangled scraps together into a whole’, and the book is indispensable for scholars who want to catch up with the latest news from the field's vital Italian research front.

The other volume under review is G.'s edition and translation of the six minor (= shorter) centos of codex Salmasianus: I Vergiliocentones minores del codice Salmasiano. Like G. Salanitro's edition (2009), this edition includes <De opera pistoria> (7 R²), Narcissus (9 R²), Iudicium Paridis (10 R²), Hercules et Antaeus (12 R²), Progne et Philomela (13 R²) and Europa (14 R²), but G.'s introduction and commentaries to the poems are more thorough than Salanitro's.

After a plain introductory discussion about the spatio-temporal frameworks of the poems, there follow sections about their contents and the compositional techniques used by the centonists. The latter in particular, ‘La tecnica compositiva: nel “laboratorio” del centonare’, includes significant observations for the field as a whole. This chapter's content is reminiscent of G.'s contribution to Sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata. Illustrated with examples from different centos, G. explains her theories about the centonists' modus operandi. On a macro-level, she notices that the centonist often resorts to the same guiding persons (‘personaggi guida’) and/or guiding contexts (‘contesti guida’) when he collects quotations from the text of origin to the cento. Quotations from the same passage in the text of origin are generally located at some distance from each other in the cento (‘dislocazione’). G. moreover suggests that quotations are often selected because of situational analogy (‘analogia situazionale’) between themes in the text of origin and the cento. The game becomes especially interesting when there is a tension, a lurch (‘scarto’), between seemingly analogous situations. In the centones minores, such moments are identified in <De opera pistoria>, Hercules et Antaeus and Progne et Philomela. I would add that they are characteristic of the humour of Cento Nuptialis, and that they are also frequent in Proba's cento and Medea, albeit with different effects. Thus, G. seems to be right in defining this trait as exquisitely centonical. G. identifies common technical traits on the centos' micro-level, and describes centonists' shortcomings as perceived in the centos. Earlier scholars have noticed many of these cento-characteristics (e.g. Lamacchia 1958, McGill 2005), but G.'s numerous examples from different centos give unusual authority to her conclusions. Another strength at this point is the focus on the centonist and the attempt to reconstruct on textual grounds his working process, however tentative such a project must be. Unfortunately, G. does not persevere with the potentially fruitful focus on the author in the line-by-line commentaries, cf. below.

Another aim of the work is the establishment of a stable text-critical approach for centos. G.'s general idea is to keep the text transmitted in the Salmasianus whenever it makes sense in the cento; thus, she accepts minor divergences from Virgil's text, as long as the quotation can be recognised as Virgilian. The ambition to establish a consistent text-critical method for centos is praiseworthy, although it must be fully recognised that the process of composing and copying the texts cannot have been so strictly consistent as a homogenous method of reconstruction may lead us mistakenly to believe.

After a section about the manuscript tradition and earlier editions, there follow the editions, translations and line-by-line commentaries. Like most modern editors of centos, G. gives two apparatus critici to each poem: one with the Virgilian location and relevant variations in the Virgilian textual tradition; one with variations in the cento's own textual tradition. This procedure is neat, as are G.'s Italian translations. The quality of the line-by-line commentaries varies. G. is at her best when she includes many different aspects in her commentaries, as she does in the commentaries on <De opera pistoria>, Hercules et Antaeus, Progne et Philomela and Europa. Here, text-critical, literary, iconographical and historical lines of reasoning build up tidy argumentations around the interpretation of the poems. Particularly commendable is the overview of relevant literary and iconographical sources in the introduction to the commentary on Europa. Such introductory overviews would have been useful for all centos. Less fortunate is the commentary to Narcissus, where G. focuses too much on the reader's interpretation. This consideration could have been fruitful together with an in-depth discussion about reader-oriented approaches in the introduction. As things are, all G.'s line-by-line commentaries would have gained from a stricter focus on the author.

In the commentary on Iudicium Paridis G. discusses many text-critical issues, more or less convincingly. The transposition of line 29 (as first suggested by Burman) seems reasonable, but it is unclear how G. can argue both for keeping the ‘minor incongruence’ caelicolae magni in line 5 and for changing similar incongruences in line 9. The excessive defence of the transmitted reading of line 17 in Progne et Philomela is problematic.

Despite flaws and incongruities of the kinds exemplified above, G.'s edition is on the whole convincing. With it, G. establishes herself as one of the more promising cento editors. It remains to be seen if her forthcoming edition of Medea (2016) will consolidate this position, just like Sparsa colligere et integrare lacerata consolidated the general Italian supremacy in the scholarly field of ancient patchwork texts.