Why should a modern Classics audience be bothered with the scanty fragments of a forgotten tragic author of the early Roman empire? What can evidence from fragmentary Latin poetry add to that of complete texts? And what kind of benefit can both scholars and students take from a fragmentary corpus? Questions such as these are inescapable, and they invite, and even provoke, the modern reader to find an answer, though it is not a straightforward task. D.I.P.’s book suggests a series of answers to these questions and has the potential to advance our understanding of Publius Calvisius Sabinus Secundus, who is nowadays a very obscure author, neglected for years in scholarship. However, he was apparently greatly appreciated by ancient writers, such as Quintilian, Seneca and Pliny the Elder, and, as D.I.P. points out, seems to have had literary relationships with Virgil, Horace and other authors of the Augustan period. D.I.P. sheds fresh light on Pomponius Secundus in an original way. She analyses the remaining fragments of the author not only from a philological point of view, highlighting problems connected with the text itself, the reading of which is problematic, but also suggests very convincing interpretations of Pomponius’ meagre fragments, inviting the reader to (re-)consider the author's hidden fragmentary corpus.

The volume belongs to a prestigious Italian publishing house, Pàtron Editore, which for 60 years has been publishing important books for the academic teaching of Latin language and literature. This book follows other interesting publications by the same author with the same publishing house, such as Tra Ovidio e Seneca (1990), Tra filosofia e poesia. Studi su Seneca e dintorni (1999) and Il parto dell'orsa. Studi su Virgilio, Ovidio e Seneca (2008).

The book consists of two parts, divided into six and three chapters respectively. The first part, ‘Studi su Pomponio Secondo’, reconstructs Pomponius’ profile from ancient sources (Chapter 1, ‘Pomponio Secondo: alla ricerca di un “grande” tragico sconosciuto’). Building on this reconstruction, D.I.P. comes to her first conclusion, that Pomponius was a bon vivant, intellectual poet, who may remind us of the character of Petronius described by Tacitus as elegantiae arbiter (p. 21), and still a wide-ranging man of culture (p. 18). From the second chapter onwards (‘Un frammento di prosa Pomponiana: a proposito della citazione in Seneca Epist. 3,6’), D.I.P. delves into Pomponius’ literary work bringing his fragments to life; she discusses the complex attribution of a fragment reported by Seneca in Ep. 3.6, building on previous scholarship (e.g. O. Ribbeck, G. Mazzoli, G. Scarpat and C. Richardson Hay) as well as proposing a new interpretation based on the text itself and its linguistic analysis rather than mere philological conjectures (pp. 26–31). In Chapter 3, ‘L’Atreus di Pomponio Secondo’, she investigates the language of pathos attested in Pomponius’ Atreus, though some scholars have suggested that this play's title should be attributed to the playwright Accius, and analyses two verbs attested in the transmitted fragment (evolvo and notifico), highlighting their meaning (pp. 35–43). Furthermore, she makes some comparisons with Ennius and Virgil, who could have had an impact on Pomponius for the composition of a play called Aeneas, as D.I.P. further investigates in Chapter 4, ‘Alla ricerca di una praetexta perduta: l’Aeneas di Pomponio’. If a play such as this really existed, the poem of Virgil was a presumable model (p. 55). D.I.P. suggests that a fragment of this play could well fit with the myth of Atreus and Thyestes (p. 48); moreover, it would be possible to find some literary synergies between the play and Juvenal, Horace and Ovid (pp. 49–54). Chapter 5, ‘Tra musica e paesaggio: Apollo in un frammento corale (Pomp. 8–11 R.²⁻³)’, analyses evidence related to the style of Pomponius, examining the previous, though minimal, secondary literature as well as describing an image of locus amoenus (p. 61), in a perfect hybrid between music and landscape (p. 65). This scenario may be described as an invitation to Apollo to leave his deadly instruments of death and embrace the lyre, in correlation with Trojan subjects (p. 70). By dwelling on the presence of Trojan subjects, in the final chapter of this section (‘I frammenti brevi di argomento troiano [Pomp. 5–7 R.²⁻³ = 5–7 Schauer]’) D.I.P. puts forward, in a very revolutionary way, an interpretation of fr. 5–7 R.²⁻³ (p. 83), which would evoke Trojan motives: these lines could be spoken by a chorus of Trojan women, a reading advanced by comparing Seneca, who had Hecuba pronounce the same wish Pomponius expresses in this fragment (p. 90).

Part 2, ‘Studi su poesia tragica latina in frammenti’, consists of three chapters: the first one deals with the tyrannical theme in Cicero's Tusculanae 4.35, in which D.I.P. reflects on Cicero's behaviour towards the poetic tradition of myths (p. 99) and on the theatrical context of the uitia (p. 100). In Chapter 8, ‘Il Tereo di Accio: alle origini della libido tirannica’, D.I.P. analyses the motif of eros, with a focus on Accius’ Tereus and an examination of a kind of pathology of love; the final chapter singles out the theme of female figures attested in an anonymous fragment quoted by Cic. Tusc. 2.36, in which Cicero celebrates the Lacaenae uirgines, because of their ‘eccezionalità dell'allenamento psicofisico’ (p. 119).

Overall, the book is very well placed within its relevant scholarly conversations (see the rich footnotes throughout the volume, critically discussed by D.I.P., and the extensive bibliography). The two parts of the book are in symbiosis and fertilise each other. Though the first part is (specifically) related to the fragments of Pomponius Secundus, and the second part aims instead to highlight other fragmentary texts of Latin poetry, I see homogeneity in the two parts of the volume and in the choice of the subject as a whole. The most exciting part of the book, however, is Chapters 1–6, in which D.I.P. convincingly shows her knowledge of Pomponius Secundus’ extant fragments, demonstrating their vibrant power as well as their history in conjunction with their identity. Following the latter, I found the aforementioned Chapter 8 stimulating because of the bond between what is Roman and not Roman (p. 116). In other words, Roman identity builds on keeping a distance from the tyranny of the barbarous Tereus. Though not further elaborated, these remarks have the potential to place the volume within the broader horizon of Roman identity studies and thus address a larger audience. Both scholars and students of Latin and Greek literature will find much of interest in the book, especially in terms of thinking about fragmentary literature, either in the Republican or the Imperial eras.

This book can be recommended to the academic community, especially those studying fragments and the Imperial period: it adds vital depth to discussions on fragmentary literature and textual criticism, and it incorporates a good combination of primary sources and methodologies, providing interesting clues about how to (better) deal with a fragmentary corpus. However, the volume would have benefited from a more articulated final section: at pp. 90–1 D.I.P. refers to her conclusions as ‘molto esigue e provvisorie’. Rather, because of her excellent work, I would suggest that D.I.P.’s conclusions are not slight and provisional, and they could have been better highlighted in a more integrated way. However, this lack of more sophisticated conclusions does not compromise the high standard of the volume, which stands as a model for further studies on the subject and other analyses of fragmentary corpora of every kind.