In his biblical epic Evangeliorum libri IV, the fourth-century Juvencus describes the open graves from which the saints rise at Christ's resurrection with the words veterum monumenta virum (Evang. 4.707). Juvencus takes the language from Virgil, Aen. 8.356, where Evander shows Aeneas the memorials of men of old in Pallanteum (veterumque vides monumenta virorum). (Veterum … monumenta virorum also appears at Aen. 3.102; but there monumenta refers to the traditions of men of old.) While the debt is clear enough, there is no connection to be drawn between the content of the imitating text and its source. How, then, are we to understand Juvencus’ turn to Virgil?

P.'s stimulating study provides an answer. While P. does not deal with Juvencus, he shows how ‘nonreferential allusions’ of the kind found at Evang. 4.707 operate in late-antique Latin poetry (pp. 131–43). As he argues, such allusions lead readers back to their source, but only point up the alluding author's ability to rewrite the earlier text and to combine the old and the new. They are nonreferential, in that they do not activate the content of the model text, but are still meaningful, in that they create room for readers to understand lines on a secondary level and to draw conclusions about the poet's technique.

This is one of the many compelling ideas P. has about late Latin poetry and about the ways that late poets ‘conceived of the reader's role in making sense of the words on the page’ (p. 1). The reader is fundamental to P.'s project: his main interest lies in how ‘reading was constructed in late antiquity on the level of text, paratext, intertext, and commentary’ (p. 8). To P., there is a newfound emphasis in Late Antiquity – specifically in the long fourth century, which is his focus – on the reader as an active player in the creation of a text. Like many first books, P.'s is too narrow in the range of authors it covers and too general in some of its conclusions. But its virtues outweigh its shortcomings, and its energy, intelligence and originality make it a significant and valuable piece of scholarship.

P. divides his book into four chapters to illustrate how the reader ‘gained a new prominence’ (p. 9) in the fourth-century Latin West. The first, ‘Text, Interpretation, and Authority’, is the least successful. In it, P. scrutinises late-antique approaches to reading Christian scripture and Virgil, which he compares as texts of overwhelming authority in the period. Attention lies upon Jerome and Augustine as Christian readers and upon Macrobius and the commentators Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus as readers of Virgil. P. strains to make the chapter cohere and to relate it to his main theme. While he shows that Jerome, Augustine and the Virgilian commentators were, in very different ways, active readers, the point has no real bearing on the thoughts and actions of late poets; identifying (loose) parallels is not the same as establishing context.

The remainder of P.'s study is excellent. Chapter 2, ‘Prefaces and the Reader's Approach to the Text’, examines the function of prefaces in late Latin poetry. As P. observes, late poets wrote prefaces more frequently than did their predecessors, and they used them to open up space for interpretation as well as to mediate readers’ responses to their texts. While more consideration might have been given to the addressees and historical circumstances of different prefaces, since these are crucial to shaping the substance of the texts, P.'s study is an astute overview of the paratextual turn in Late Antiquity and of the ways it ‘emphasizes the processes of [poems’] mediation and eventual reception’ (p. 72).

Chapter 3, ‘Open Texts and Layers of Meaning’, turns to poems that, in extreme ways, provide readers with interpretative challenges and opportunities: Optatian's figural poetry, Virgilian centos and Prudentius’ Psychomachia. P. groups these together as open texts, a term taken from Umberto Eco and designating texts that call for multiple perspectives and interpretations (p. 73). P. demonstrates well how the poems challenge readers to understand them on different levels, and how they by nature permit a range of responses. He is especially strong on the intertextuality of the centos, i.e. works composed of lines and half-lines taken from the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid. As he rightly notes (pp. 98–9), centos require that audiences both identify their Virgilian basis generally (macrotextual allusion) and explore the relations between each constituent centonic unit and its Virgilian context (microtextual allusion). Readers therefore play an uncommonly active role in constructing these thoroughly intertextual poems, because they are always faced with the task of double reading and of determining how, and how much, to put a cento's content into dialogue with Virgil's.

The final chapter, ‘The Presence of the Reader: Allusion in Late Antiquity’, looks at more conventional imitation and allusion. P. concentrates on the nonreferential allusions described earlier, arguing that they are ‘most distinctively late antique’ (p. 130) among the allusions in late Latin poetry. As he shows, nonreferential allusions appear both in isolation and in juxtaposed pairs or larger numbers; he nicely labels the latter mode of reuse ‘the jeweled style of allusion’ (p. 138). While P. is very good on how nonreferential allusions embody late aesthetics and are an important aspect of late literary technique, he runs into trouble when he uses the allusions to distinguish Late Antiquity from earlier periods (‘late antique poets employed allusions differently than their classical predecessors’ [p. 137]). Such allusions certainly appear in earlier poetry: Virgil, Aen. 6.460 (invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi), from Cat. 66.39 (invita, o regina, tuo de vertice cessi), would seem to be a notable example. What is more, P. downplays the prominence of referential allusions in late poetry, which makes his position appear a bit procrustean. Still, none of this diminishes P.'s achievement in the chapter. His is a serious and thought-provoking meditation on late allusion, in which he demonstrates complete command of imitation theory, offers up convincing readings of several lines and passages, and is judicious about how both the author and the reader work to actualise an allusion.

Until recently, students at most American universities were exposed to Late Antiquity only if they took a wrong turn at Apuleius. P. is the product of a change in attitudes that has more and more integrated the late-antique world into curricula and mainstream scholarship. His book should be read widely. It casts considerable light on late Latin poetry and on subjects of broader interest in literary studies.