This new Companion makes a welcome addition to the rich panorama of Tacitean studies. Although it follows at a short distance Woodman's Cambridge Companion (2009), there is not much overlap between the two works. Those interested in Tacitus should consult both volumes.

P.'s collection is decisively less traditional than its predecessor, and although her introduction opens in the most traditional way, with Syme, it is more interested in theoretical approaches, and openly seeks to cover areas that are comparatively less represented in the Cambridge alternative. With its sensible blend of traditional philology and theoretical innovation, this companion makes, overall, a significant contribution to Tacitean scholarship.

In Part 1, ‘Texts’, after C.E. Murgia's succinct treatment of Tacitus' ‘Textual Transmission’, D. Sailor offers a balanced account of the significance that the Agricola had for Tacitus' career. Sailor convincingly points out the many themes and ideologies that Tacitus' readers may have shared. The Germania is treated by J.B. Rives with authority and precision: from the historical context that may have motivated Tacitus to write, to the importance of the ethnographical Greco-Roman tradition that shaped most German characteristics with a familiar stock of stereotypes, Rives does not shrink from making decisive points about this ‘odd’ work of Tacitus – and he is often right. This chapter provides a good introduction to what seems at first to be a straightforward text. Likewise, S.H. Rutledge's analysis of the Dialogus as social history, and his succinct treatment of Tacitus' style, especially in comparison with his historical writings, will be very useful to novice readers. J. Master discusses the Histories, while H.W. Benario surveys the Annals.

In Part 2, ‘Historiography’, D.S. Potter treats Tacitus' source(s), an issue that remains very controversial. Potter, for example, believes that the acta senatus were one of Tacitus' ‘most important sources’ (p. 139), in addition to multiple other sources, which he freely rearranged and adapted, by way of – in Potter's terminology – summarisation, aggregation and suppression. A. Pomeroy discusses Tacitus' historiographical method within the Roman historiographical tradition, especially in comparison – and in competition – with Sallust and Livy. Pomeroy presents the material with clarity, and his explanation of Tacitus' annalistic and allusive techniques is particularly enjoyable. O. Devillers writes on ‘Forms of Historical Persuasion in the Histories’.

Part 3, ‘Interpretations’, is the longest section. C.S. van den Berg offers a stimulating chapter on the role and influence of deliberative oratory in Tacitus' Dialogus and Annals. After an introductory section, van den Berg turns to the two works of Tacitus that seem the most distant from one another. In fact, van den Berg argues, the Dialogus must be read as an integral part of Tacitus' conception of oratory. The art of deliberative oratory was complex: Tacitus' works, including his historical ones, which are strongly influenced by deliberative oratory, reflect this complexity. K. Williams' chapter on senatorial embassies in the Histories gives an original and convincing reading of the three embassies that took place in the year 69 (at the request of Galba, Otho and Vitellius, respectively). Tacitus, Williams argues, masterfully manipulates his material (especially in comparison with the parallel tradition of Suetonius, Dio and Plutarch) in order to underline both Galba's weakness and Otho's excessive reliance on the Praetorians. Most interestingly, Tacitus' account of the response of the Flavian generals Primus and Cerialis to Vitellius' embassies, while portraying Primus positively and Cerialis negatively (and readers knew Cerialis would be the one to thrive under the new regime), contributes to exposing the volatile dynamics of imperial power. R. Edwards reads the deaths of Galba and Otho as examples of devotiones (with allusions to Livy), an old republican practice with which a magistrate sacrificed himself for the good of the Roman state. The sacrifice of each Roman emperor stains his successor, who must in turn expiate the sacrilege. With Vitellius' death, however, which Edwards sees as an ‘anti-devotio’, the contagion no longer spreads and the Flavians can operate as remedia for the state's situation. H. Haynes' approach to Tacitus is both personal and unorthodox, with references to yoga and method acting (her metaphors, from the female praying mantis Domitian to Tacitus the eye-doctor who shifts lenses so as to give a different perspective, are extremely catchy). J. Ker analyses Tacitus' portrait of Seneca in Annals 12–15, a complex character that may reflect the complexities of the historical Seneca in the unstable world of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. B. Levick writes on ‘The Struggle for Truth in Annals 1–6’.

Part 4, ‘Intertextuality’, is devoted to a very fashionable topic. Sallust and Virgil are the authors to whom Tacitus most frequently alludes, but they are not the only ones. C.B. Krebs analyses Tacitus' allusiveness to Sallust, while T.A. Joseph emphasises the number and especially the significance of the allusions to Virgil, which are in fact seldom mere ‘decorations’. Among Tacitus' contemporaries, it is the Younger Pliny who provides the most intriguing case study of intertextual exchange, as C. Whitton shows in his sophisticated reading of this famously ‘unequal relationship’. Both senators, Whitton argues, were pursuing political projects, in their effort to justify their own survival under the tyranny of Domitian. Although they chose different methods, epistolography and historiography, there was an ongoing – intertextual – exchange between their works. E. Manolaraki and A. Augoustakis examine Tacitus' older contemporary Silius Italicus, whose Hannibal provides another literary model for Germanicus. Two episodes are exemplary: the famous shipwreck in the North Sea and the visit to Egypt, both from Annals 2. Both heroes, it is argued, share ‘trajectories from fortune to failure’ (p. 399), while showing unawareness of change (political, historical, cosmic) from which they cannot escape. Juvenal, who was Tacitus' younger contemporary, certainly drew on his illustrious predecessor, as C. Keane shows. In fact, she argues, Tacitus' influence on Juvenal was so marked that it helped reshape the genre of satire, which Juvenal ‘dynamically’ reinvented through ‘an exploitation of Tacitus’ vaguely satiric qualities' (p. 425). Particularly intriguing is the influence of the Agricola that Keane detects in the fourth satire's portrait of Domitian.

In Part 5, ‘Theoretical Approaches’, the first two chapters are equally concerned with Tacitus' famous concept of muliebris inpotentia. T. Späth discusses issues of gender and masculinity. Masculinity, Späth argues, is always connected to ‘active dominance’, its exemplary model being the aristocratic pater familias. The deaths of Otho and Vitellius, for example, represent, respectively, a positive and negative exemplary masculinity. A less straightforward positive model is Agricola (or Thrasea), who knows how to ‘perform’ his role in accordance with the circumstances. This is, Späth claims, but one aspect of performance of masculinity that Tacitus' characters show. Femininity, on the contrary, is ‘innate’, and constantly associated with weakness and lack of self-control, a very stereotypical idea of femininity in line with Roman discourse (notable exceptions are Agrippina the Elder and Epicharis, who adopt a mainly masculine behaviour). In the next chapter K. Milnor discusses the ways in which Tacitus explores female domesticity, which the historian saw not only in relation to traditional values, ‘but as a social structure and powerful ideological concept’ (p. 461). This is most evident in the Annals, where Tacitus exploited to the fullest the close interrelationship between the imperial household's civic and domestic spheres, which progressively blurred, from Augustus/Livia to Nero/Agrippina. D. Kapust examines Tacitus' political thought. Since the sixteenth century, political theorists have read Tacitus either as a defender of liberty (the so-called ‘red’ Tacitus) or as a monarchist (the ‘black’ Tacitus); Kapust, however, believes in a ‘pink’ Tacitus, who was neither revolutionary nor monarchic, but who practised the prudence that was necessary in ‘the murky and dangerous waters’ of a complex world (p. 525). N. Schumate gives a post-colonial reading of Tacitus.

The editorial quality of this companion is excellent, and it is virtually free of significant typos. The book is well organised and user-friendly (with individual bibliographies at the end of each chapter). A general index (but, regrettably, no index locorum) concludes the volume. Over 30 pages of bibliography can do little justice to centuries of Tacitean studies, but there is more than enough to guide the kind of readership for which this companion is intended, especially in English.