This commentary has been needed for a long time. In the last half-century, scholarship on Horace's Satires burgeoned: first as a corner of Roman satire studies, but soon meshing with explorations of triumviral and Augustan literature and culture. Diverse methodologies, from the ‘New Latin’ to anthropology, pollinated readings of the Satires. But the colourful, puzzling text that is Satires 1 has been a challenge in the Latin class, where exciting scholarship must be juxtaposed with selections from old school texts. Now G. has given us a commentary that packages the entire history of scholarship on this poetry in an efficient, lucid and stimulating way. Readers will be able to see what scholars have really done with the Satires lately, and the next era of work can begin.

G. was the ideal choice for this task. She has written about Satires 1 on many levels, analysing single poems, groups of poems, the book as a whole, its relationship to Book 2 and its part in the larger generic discourse. Thus she has already taught us much about the style and satiric strategies of the young Horace, and this commentary provides many occasions to rehearse important observations and interpretations. But G. also seems to have meticulously chased down every last publication of relevance to the elucidation of Satires 1; the astounding 22-page bibliography reflects many generations and areas of work (Greek Insects, anyone?). As other reviewers have noted, G.'s summaries of scholarly debates are comprehensive and gracious; she shows how Horace's own complex text has drawn scholars to their conclusions (see, e.g., p. 61 on the confusing programme of poem 1). The notes on each of the ten poems in Satires 1 are preceded by a short introductory essay and bibliography. The introduction is also rich, covering Horace's life, the political landscape of the early thirties b.c. when Satires 1 was written, varieties of literary and non-literary satire in republican Rome, the overall design of the book, and its style, metre and Nachleben (including delightful titbits on appropriations of the Satires).

While the historical and stylistic sections of the introduction are admirably informative and crisp, but also appropriately tantalising, the section on ‘The Plot of Satires I’ is particularly satisfying and relevant to the notes to come. It advances the idea that Horace carefully designed this ‘polished, proto-Augustan poetry book’ (p. 15) to develop his themes and suggest ‘plots’ on multiple levels. This approach reflects the fruitful trend that began with J. Zetzel's ‘Horace's Liber Sermonum: the Structure of Ambiguity,’ Arethusa 13 (1980), 59–77. What starts out looking like a haphazard series of moral ‘chats’ in abstract terms comes to appear as an unsettling and very personal and political work, once we start appreciating the subtle ways Horace feeds us pieces of his personal story, the story of his genre's formation and gestures to Rome's political transformation. The impression of a sustained plot is created by various devices: little passages of narrative proper, like Horace's memories of his upbringing and social ascent, along with other poetic strategies such as arrangement of poems, imagery and even sound effects. Here, as in G.'s previous work, meticulous scholarship and active reading (using ears as well as eyes) make a sparkling combination.

Horace's personal, generic and political plots are also intertwined; all suggest a trajectory away from primitive crudeness or violence, while revealing that the past can still resurface in the present. The stories of Horace, satire and Rome are not just linear, but cyclical and repetitive, with change and closure often illusory. Some of G.'s most exciting past work uncovers Horace's encoded representations of civil war, proscriptions and the beginnings of Rome's ‘golden’ (or whitewashed) reconstruction. Thus the commentary shows that, for example, poem 5 is full of stunted or blurred imitations of the political chess of the 30s (yet G. also gives due attention to other subtexts, such as the ancient travel-writing tradition). In the series 7–9, Horace plants reminders of the troubling road to the new world order. The same series messily ‘lances the boil of [the poet's] republican past’ (p. 250) with stories of risk and self-reinvention that are mostly set in the newly manicured Roman cityscape.

As G. shows, the stories about satire and Horace similarly juxtapose beginnings and endings, the primitive and the polished. In poem 1, ‘Horace has already arrived’ (p. 59) – he is already trapping ‘Maecenas’ in the listener's seat, after all. In 10, where the satirist appears to be inserting himself confidently in the literary establishment and attending to finer points of poetics, he also subtly holds on to satire's more aggressive associations (e.g. with evocative forensic terms in the last line). And Horace as a person appears always to be under construction, as he shows in his combination auctor/actor role. Incidentally, when G. writes about Horace's ‘personality’ and ‘self-portrait’ (p. 5) she is clearly referring to constructions of the poetry and of convention, but there is no longer a need to preface such a discussion with a primer in persona theory.

One excellent feature of the introduction's history of Roman satire is that it looks not just at literary tradition but at attested contemporary social practices of abuse, mockery and libel. It is important that readers of the Satires do not imagine that Horace was shattering a placid and civil social environment with unheard-of nastiness – no matter what he sometimes seems to imply. (G. also neatly characterises ‘the Roman satirist's paranoia, the notion that all eyes are upon him with the hostile glare that his own hostile poetry excites’; p. 60). This gem is a reminder that there are misdirecting fictions even in the satirist's programmatic commentary.

On a related point, the introductory section on style emphasises that the language of the Satires is not simply colloquial as Horace suggests, but ‘more compressed and elliptical than either everyday speech or epic’ (p. 23). The inexperienced are better off armed with this knowledge than with the idea that Horatian satire is sermo merus in verse (4.47–8). Glosses are numerous, as in all the old school texts, and G. has sensibly not reinvented many wheels here. Notes on grammar, syntax and vocabulary are concise in the usual style of Green & Yellows. More space is given to explanations of Horace's own comments on style; the notes abound with helpful background on republican stylistic theory and generic intersections. In this area G. uses her imagination, too – for instance, visualising how the image of Discord opening gates (4.56–62) mimics the imagery in the discussion of word-arrangement. (Cf. the playful idea that Horace metaphorically dramatises his image of disiecti membra poetae [4.150] in his criticism of other poets. There is no question that the satirist enjoys pushing metaphors to their limits himself.)

In such a learned and long-awaited work there is little to criticise. The very density of thought in discussions of poems and passages – dispelling any remaining illusions about satire's casual composition – will certainly require careful reading. But the presentation is as easy as possible to digest; G.'s style is enviably lucid. On engagement with scholarship, it is worth highlighting Schlegel's readings (Satire and the Threat of Speech [2005]) of almost every poem in the collection, and highlighting her ideas on the oppressive and manipulative powers of one-directional sermo (this book is also mistitled in G.'s bibliography). Getting microscopic, I was hoping for a more probing note about Horace's pet names for his lover, ‘Ilia’ and ‘Egeria’ (2.126); I suspect they reflect more than a ‘fantasy of status’ (p. 116). Minor quibbles are outweighed by the huge benefit this commentary will bring to readers unfamiliar with recent work on the Satires, and by the inspiration it will give specialists. G.'s commentary should soon have a worthy companion in Freudenburg's Book 2.