E.'s book is testimony to a rising interest in early Latin literature and adds noticeably to the study of Ennius' fragmentary epic.Footnote ¹ The title suggests a focus on the design and structure of the Annales and the book deals with both via a comprehensive and detailed study of the sources and the genesis of modern reconstructions of the poem. The book is composed of five chapters and five substantial appendices. At the start of her introduction E. is keen to point out that her ‘study has nothing to add in terms of textual criticism’ (p. 1); however, the way in which she proceeds to discuss editorial choices and scholarly assumptions throughout has much to teach about classical philology as a self-critical exercise. At every step the reader is asked to pay attention to the difficulties attached to working with fragments and the crucial importance of considering their original contexts and receptions, ancient and modern, at the same time. Methodologically, I find this to be the book's greatest merit.

E. defines the scope of her work by engaging with O. Skutsch's approach to the Annales and the historical/historiographical matrix that guides his conceptualisation of the fragments and their arrangement in his 1985 edition. If this choice should appear reductive to non-Anglophone scholars, I should point out that she acknowledges the admirable work of S. Timpanaro and that of E. Flores and his team (p. 4) as well as the older edition by Vahlen (p. 7). In order to refresh the fragments from preconceived ideas, E. reorganises them according to the date of the source, which she presents in Appendix 5. This appendix and the discussion that makes up the body of the book include only those sources that cite the poem directly; excluded (with concessions to Cicero who both cites and talks about the Annales and Lucretius who offers no direct evidence) are those who develop a conception of the poem but do not transmit any fragments. By relying on the application of a well-tuned receptionist approach, E. emphasises the necessity to go back to the sources and to reconsider the poem's relationship with Roman historiography and the Homeric tradition.

In Chapter 1 E. sets out her exacting attempt to peel off the interpretative layers accumulated by Ennius' poem by starting from its title's relationship with the historiographical tradition emerging alongside it (mainly Fabius Pictor, Cato the Elder and Sempronius Asellio). E. rightly points out that the title refers to the pontifical chronicle and their civic function, and deals with the early historiography in order to emphasise the elements that make Ennius' Annales distinctive, mainly, the presence of the gods throughout and the pace of the narrative. Rather than accepting the idea of a heavy divine presence at the beginning of the poem followed by a crescendo of factual history (as Skutsch would have it), E. argues that Ennius' Homerising strategies make ‘the presence and participation of the gods part and parcel of his narrative, the natural concomitant to his formal choices’ (p. 50). The comparandum of Livy (pp. 69–71) and the argument regarding the Annales' allocation of narrative space is a bit hasty here and not fully expounded even if supported by ample footnotes and the tables collected in Appendix 1. This is because Livy comes back to the fore in Chapter 4. Ultimately, E. convincingly suggests that the title ‘Annales’ advertises ‘the work's affiliation to the local tradition of record-keeping at Rome in terms of its subject-matter and its exclusive focus on the City’ (p. 73).

Chapter 2 focuses on what E. calls ‘Virgiliocentric sources’ (mainly Macrobius and Servius), namely, on authors who quote Ennius because of their interest in Virgil and the history behind Virgil's stylistic and lexical choices. These sources provide 21% of Skutsch's securely attributed lines and have had an enormous influence on Ennius' reconstructed position in the epic tradition. The attention is on how these sources have reinterpreted Ennius' formulaic language, similes, memorable phrases and peculiarities of language with a view to revealing the limitations and the persuasiveness of their readings.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to pre-Virgilian, first-century b.c.e. sources. The chapter opens with an exploration of the etymological interest of Varro and his imprint on grammarians' use of the poem along with their reliance on independent sources (with Gellius working as intermediary). The lack of contextual information in these sources makes editorial interventions and reconstructions liable to external factors. E. is at her best when she unfolds how the implication of a cosmogony in the Annales' proem suggested by Lucretius informs the history of the allocation of three Varronian fragments (pp. 146–51). Her discussion of Cicero's construction of Ennius as provider of historical information is very detailed, and brings to light how Cicero in the De sen. 16 went as far as preferring Ennius' rendition of events to original documents by attributing a morally motivating impact to the poem.Footnote ² From there E. expands the view by paying attention to Cicero's deployment of the Annales' cultural prestige and its representation as containing arcane truths about the workings of the universe. The chapter closes with a few remarks on the Bellum Hispaniense as a source.

Chapter 4 brings together the analyses of the previous chapters in order to come to terms with the variously handled distinction between the Annales' Homerising material and its status as historical work. E. starts from the introduction of Cicero's De legibus and the flexible generic boundaries between historiae and poemata that are there proposed as a path towards dissociating historiae from veritas and recovering the ancient understanding of epic as ‘true historical material decked out by the poets in the fantastic elements proper to their tradition’ (p. 208). Here Livy becomes the measuring rod for assessing the relationship between historiography and epic, and Ennius' influence on Roman historians. In the last part of the chapter, E. excavates some ‘historical’ fragments to pinpoint their Homeric features especially in the way speeches and interactions are constructed (Ann. 199–200; 183–90; 361; 391–8; 268–86) to suggest, finally, that Ennius' creation of heroes matching the Homeric tradition gave Rome its own identity.

Chapter 5 is the most compelling part of E.'s book. Here she argues in favour of seeing the Annales as a universal history with a temporal and geographical focus on Rome (via the evocation of the pontifical chronical) and the placement of Rome at the centre of the cosmos (via the oneiric, formal and thematic appearance of Homer and his reincarnation in Ennius in the proem) as suggested by the Lucretian material. Put under this light, many fragments assimilating Roman characteristics or actions to natural phenomena acquire a whole new meaning (pp. 254–63). In turn, the relationship between the gods and Rome implied in the annalistic tradition would have been amalgamated with the Homeric divinities and their universe made coterminous with the world from Rome's perspective and with Rome functioning as centripetal force. The treatment of Naevius' epic as a means to emphasise further Ennius' achievement is not fundamental to the argument, while the discussion of the poem's temporal and geographical dimensions remains convincing despite the scanty evidence.

While bearing the signs of its origins as a dissertation (in the way the argument is progressively built, anticipated and at times repeated), E.'s book offers ample and solid ground for exploring Ennius' poem in new ways and invites important reflections on the wide-ranging intersection between ancient and modern receptions.