The seventh book of the Roman Argonautica was an early beneficiary of the now decades-long revival of scholarly interest in Valerius Flaccus, culminating in the publication of Alessandro Perutelli's commentary, in Italian, in 1997. Perutelli was an impeccable philologist and an astute textual critic; his was one of the first high-quality commentaries of the modern era, and it remains an important landmark of Valerian scholarship. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Davis has again tackled Valerius’ penultimate book, producing its first commentary in English. This is a welcome development, even if readers are likely to find the volume something of a mixed blessing. It consists of an introduction (1–44), D.'s own text with facing translation (45–79), a selective critical apparatus, printed as a separate item, with related material (81–9), a commentary (91–266), bibliography (267–81) and indices (283–99). The chief components will be assessed in order.

The introduction is arguably the most successful part of the volume, putting on display some of D.'s strengths as an established expert on the Roman Argonautica. Rather than reinventing the wheel, D. limits discussion of topics already covered by earlier commentators, devoting correspondingly more space to an analysis of the figure of Medea, examined both as found in earlier literature and in her Valerian guise: this is an excellent preparation for any reader of Book 7. The introduction concludes with a section on reception that builds usefully on earlier scholarship.

As the bungled critical apparatus (well discussed by A. Andrée, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2021.3.50) might lead one to suspect, textual criticism is not foremost among D.'s talents, and his text of Book 7 is inferior to those that have appeared in recent decades — whether in full editions (Courtney, Ehlers, Liberman) or accompanying commentaries (Perutelli, Spaltenstein). In the preface, D. notes the large number of departures from the two most recent editors (later tabulated at 86–9); one might wish there had not been quite so many. Many of these departures arise from a dogmatic textual conservatism, ill-suited to a work so poorly transmitted. Nearly every time D. insists on the manuscript reading against the strong consensus of recent editors, it is an unhappy choice. This pattern starts with 20 hunc, resulting in the odd-looking talemque secuti / hunc qui deinde virum, which Valerius cannot have written. Medea is speaking here of the recently arrived Argonauts, and the easy emendation huc should have imposed itself.

The English translation is well executed and is never less than readable. Although one inevitably finds oneself in occasional disagreement, D.'s choices are almost invariably reasonable, and there are very few instances in which a doubtful decision impacts interpretation. Chief among these is the rendering of fatis at 446 as ‘doom’ and then ‘death’ in the commentary, where D. notes that ‘all recent translators offer “destiny” or equivalent’. They were almost certainly right to do so, since what is at play here is Medea's dawning realisation that greater forces are at work in shaping her conduct, that she lacks moral agency. D has missed the connection with (munera) non mea in the following verse: Courtney in his apparatus explains succinctly ‘non mea sed fatorum’.

The commentary is more wide-ranging and more inclined to address issues of interpretation than Perutelli's. D. had available a vast body of intervening scholarship that has opened up fresh critical vistas on the poem, and he generally exploits that scholarship to good effect. Like most contemporary critics, he has a higher opinion of Valerius' artistic achievement than earlier scholarly generations. In addition to textual matters, a considerable portion of the commentary is devoted to explanatory paraphrase and issues of translation, with the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Woodcock's A New Latin Syntax as the principal reference works. D. is also tireless in identifying and discussing poetic, rhetorical and metrical features, as well as internal echoes and parallels. All this has the welcome effect of making the commentary accessible to less advanced readers.

The volume is well produced, but there is abundant evidence of inadequate proof-reading and, more seriously, fact-checking. Misstatements of fact are so ubiquitous as to make a full enumeration impossible, but the following pair of examples will give a sense of the problem. At 117 the sons of Chalciope are described as ‘four members of Argo's crew’, citing Ap. Rhod. 2.1155–6 and Val. Fl. 5.460–2; in the earlier poet, they are in fact castaways picked up by the Argonauts en route to Colchis; in Valerius’ version, they have not at this point even left Colchis. At 121, D. speaks of Hylas as dead; in fact he was kidnapped by an amorous nymph and made immortal (4.25–9).

For all its admirable features, then, D.'s commentary is not everything one might have hoped for. Readers will undoubtedly find much of value, but the volume is sufficiently prone to poor textual choices and factual errors as constantly to oblige the reader to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is asking a lot: most readers turn to a commentary in the expectation of sure-footed guidance, precisely because they lack the expertise required to make such evaluations. Those with Italian in their linguistic repertoire would do well to keep a copy of Perutelli close to hand and to measure D.'s assertions and analysis against the more careful work of his predecessor.