M. investigates the landed estates owned by the emperor/imperial fiscus in Italy in the early and middle empire. Central to the book are the questions of whether emperors had a coherent policy in relation to their properties and whether there was a defined strategy in acquiring and managing them. In order to address these questions, M. explores what the mechanisms behind the acquisition of estates were (e.g. inheritance, intentional purchase, confiscation); collects the evidence for attestations of imperial properties in order to map their geographical distribution; investigates the eventual links between imperial properties and imperial euergetism in neighbouring communities; and discusses evidence for imperial involvement in production activities connected to these estates. While landed properties and rural residences of the Roman elite in Italy have been studied from various angles – socio-economic, architectural, cultural – an investigation focusing specifically on imperial properties has been lacking. This is an important study, which rests on solid scholarship and an excellent command of the sources, particularly the juridical, epigraphic and archaeological material, and fills a gap in the scholarship.

The book is organised in three main sections and six appendices. The first section, ‘La terra e i Cesari’, examines land ownership as the element defining the relationships between the emperor and other social actors on the one hand, and imperial social and economic policies on the other. Here M. discusses how already in the Augustan and Tiberian period senatorial wealth had become a crucial element in the dialogue of power between the senate and the emperor. In the case of very large fortunes, the emperor almost always incorporated them into the fiscus (p. 36); such systematic incorporation is to be seen in the light of the relationship between private and public wealth, as the patrimony of the wealthiest senators could equate to the annual income from the provincial tributum (p. 37). M.'s analysis also brings to the fore a significant point: the importance given in literary discourse to the fact that the emperor had to make good use of such wealth. This theme is recurrent in literature and it contributed to what made a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ emperor. In the last part of Section 1 M. undertakes a challenging task: to estimate the order of magnitude of senatorial landed wealth and, consequently, to define roughly the proportion of land owned by the fiscus in the period from Augustus to a.d. 165, the start of the Antonine Plague. M.'s conclusions are that in this period, even if the total amount of senatorial landed wealth and the fiscus' patrimony grew greatly, the total percentage of land owned by senators cannot have been higher than 8–10% of the landed capital available in the whole empire, and consequently the proportion of imperially-owned land could not have been more than c. 5% of the total amount of land. M.'s important conclusion is that, at least in Italy, imperial and senatorial landed wealth was always a small fraction of the aggregate landed wealth of all other social strata (equestrians, decurions, veterans, etc.) and that the economic importance of imperial and senatorial landholdings in Italy has been overestimated.

Section 2, ‘Il patrimonio imperiale in Italia’, is based on the repertoire of attestations referring to imperial properties collected in Section 3 (‘Repertorio dei contesti topografici’). M. discusses the special status of Italy because of the exemption from the tributum and the role it had as the place for senatorial investment in land, elements that had an important effect on land prices. Another distinctive feature was the morphology of Italian landed estates due, inter alia, to the concentration of capital, the high level of urbanism and the high demand generated by Rome's market. M. identifies three main characteristics distinguishing Italy from the provinces: a higher number of landowners in absolute terms; higher land value; and higher geographic fragmentation of landholdings. M. also addresses the question of an eventual distinction between imperial villas and imperial estates, picking up on that between ‘Villen’ and ‘Domänen’ delineated by O. Hirschfeld in his influential 1902 article (‘Der Grundbesitz der römischen Kaiser in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten’, Klio 2, 516–75). Rightly M. concludes that the only difference is in the degree of investment in the built part of the property: attestations of imperial residences also indicate fundi, and attestations of imperial estates suggest at the very least the presence of villas/farms for the managers of the properties and/or the coloni.

The investigation into the characteristics of a ‘geography’ of imperial properties in Italy leads M. to conclude that there was a certain level of rationality in terms of the geography of the properties and of the control exercised on the part of the imperial administration on where and when to own properties. A clear programme of public works linked to imperial maritime villas is attributed to Trajan. M. argues that Trajan intentionally focused on holdings along the coast of southern Etruria in order to develop secondary ports, in support of the larger port infrastructure of Centumcellae, Portus, Antium and Puteoli. To these he could have added the Trajanic harbour at Tarracina, clearly all part of a programme that considered all Italian Tyrrhenian ports organically.

An interesting part of Section 2 deals with imperial involvement in wine, wool and wood production. M. makes several stimulating observations here, but the reader is left wishing that he had developed these further. For instance, M. discusses a hitherto unnoticed connection between imperial properties, production of quality wines and the reputation that these wines acquired (pp. 219–20). Although this is an important finding, which could lead to new reconstructions of the functioning of the wine market, M. chooses not venture further than his initial observations.

The book is not always very accessible in terms of writing style and organisation of the material, and this is regrettable, considering the importance of the research. In order to follow M.'s reasoning fully, the reader needs to have a sound knowledge of Roman law, familiarity with juridical Latin terminology and some initial knowledge of the material he examines. At times evidence that occupies an important place in M.'s argumentation is not fully explained or referenced in such a way as to allow the reader to follow it up (e.g. at pp. 224ff. the instance of the tabula Clesiana). The attempt to avoid unnecessary repetitions has led to an internal organisation that is not very user-friendly. For references to primary material discussed in Section 2 the reader needs to consult the Gazetteer, but no help is offered by the numbering of entries or page cross-referencing. The lack of a well-developed concluding chapter that pulls together the many strings of this rich study is another shortcoming that will make it difficult for a wider academic readership (including advanced postgraduates) to get the most out of this book.

The book is well-produced with only occasional typos/editorial inconsistencies. The decision to forgo any graphic apparatus in order to keep book size and cost down is understandable, but a few geographical maps would have been highly desirable.

These criticisms aside, there is no doubt that this is a solid piece of scholarship, which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the acquisition, geography and management of imperial properties in Italy in the first two centuries of the empire. It is a book that will become important reading for all those interested in the formation and management of landed wealth and the economy of Roman Italy as a whole, and it will certainly stimulate further research in the field.