It has become a cliché for reviewers of new work on Imperial Greek or Roman literature to begin with the proud proclamation that the subject is undergoing a flourishing or renaissance in scholarship, but it cannot be stressed enough just how remarkable this renaissance is for Imperial Greek poetry and above all for the poetry of Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus and Nonnus (as evidenced most recently by the publication of Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis, 872 pages in length). These poems are no longer dismissed as second-rate or derivative (as F. notes, p. xvi). As of 2016, the revival in work on Quintus seems to be gathering apace: this book is a recent addition to a number of commentaries published or soon to be published on the Posthomerica. Following M. Campbell's 1981 commentary on Book 12, there arrived a commentary on Book 5 (A. James and K. Lee, 2000), a commentary on the first quarter of Book 1 (S. Bär, 2009) and two running commentaries on the whole poem (A. James, 2004 and E. Lelli, 2013). Forthcoming are recently completed commentaries on Books 9 and 14.

This is a very welcome addition to this collection of commentaries, and a much needed study of Book 2, which, apart from A. Gotia's essay (‘Light and Darkness in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica 2’, in M. Baumbach and S. Bär [edd.], Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic [2007], pp. 85–106), has been too often overlooked in work on the poem. Book 2 forms a close parallel with Book 1, in that Memnon's arrival, aristeia and subsequent death at the hands of Achilles mirrors the arrival, conduct and death of Penthesileia in Book 1. F.’s work consists of a detailed and thorough introduction, the Greek text and the commentary itself, of considerable size (pp. 21–328), and is completed by a very full bibliography and index locorum. Within the introduction are useful lists of common words and Homeric (and non-Homeric) hapax legomena and dis legomena. The book is very elegantly produced, and typos are rare.

The most welcome aspect of this commentary is its focus on the Posthomerica as a poem within a poetic tradition. Recent trends in scholarship since 2007 have tended to locate Quintus within the near-contemporary milieu of rhetorical prose flourishing (the ‘Second Sophistic’) to the detriment of study of Quintus’ indebtedness to the developments and trends of Hellenistic poetry as a prior refraction of Homeric poetry and poetics. F.’s aim (p. xvii) is to show the dynamics of emulative poetics in the Posthomerica through linguistic and stylistic analysis of Book 2. The commentary itself achieves this through a careful balance between poetic exegesis and linguistic analysis of Homeric intertexts, as evidenced especially in formulae. As such, the commentary is similar to the methodology of Bär's (2009) partial commentary on Book 1, but sensibly focuses on key lines and words rather than every line. Sensibly, given the size of Book 2, F. throughout the commentary splits up the text into smaller sections of around ten to fifteen lines, and prefaces comment with translation of the text and a brief introduction to the section. F.’s text is not a new edition, but follows Vian except in three instances, lines 6, 56 and 163 (the specific variants are listed on p. xxxi). F.’s decision to read in line 6 the MSS's σκοπίασκον, unattested in all of Greek literature, instead of Rhodomann's σκοπίαζον (attested in Nonnus) is misguided and unnecessary. F.’s text, unfortunately, contains no critical apparatus, making recourse to Vian's edition essential.

The book's introduction is invaluable and in particular makes a sizeable contribution to the understanding of Quintus’ system of formulae. F. focuses on four particular aspects of Quintus’ style (something replicated throughout the commentary): (i) type-scene imitations, (ii) characterisation, (iii) use of Homeric iuncturae and (iv) Quintus’ system of epithets. F. shows, for example (p. xix), that the careful paralleling of epithets at 2.12 and 2.555 (and 2.586) for Memnon and Hector leads the reader to read Memnon as a second Hector; similarly, the balancing epithets for Antilochus in Quintus and Patroclus in the Iliad draw the pair together in the reader's mind, but further substantiate too the work of Homeric neoanalysists on the Patroclus–Antilochus nexus in Homer (p. 20). In Quintus’ use of iuncturae, F. expertly demonstrates (pp. xxii–xxiv) that Quintus avoids common Homeric adjectives, but instead fills his poem with ones used rarely in Homer. For example, where πολύτλητος occurs only once in Homer, it occurs 23 times in Quintus, whereas the common Homeric adjective πολύτλας (42 occurrences in Homer) is avoided altogether by Quintus. Similarly the poet refrains from common combinations of Homeric epithets and names either by inventing entirely new ones or by transferring epithets to characters described with different ones in Homer. Through study of Quintus’ use of epithets in Book 2, F. has illustrated just how unlike Homer Quintus is, within such an overwhelmingly Homeric linguistic template. As F. so expertly puts it (p. xxx), this is a poet who pursues originality in the belly of tradition. The introduction sheds no new light on the date of composition of the poem, a point not yet fully or satisfactorily treated (see the summary in C.A. Maciver, Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity [2012], pp. 2–6).

This is an excellent, careful study of Book 2, invaluable not only as the first full individual commentary on such an important book, but also for its minute study of Quintus’ original recasting of Homeric language and structures. For F. (p. xxxi) this is a poeta doctus and connoisseur of the Homeric poems, the author of a bravura poem that, below its overwhelmingly Homeric surface, conceals an intriguingly complicated intertextual game to be unravelled by a reader of similar shrewd learning. F. undoubtedly fits this category.