It is a good time to be working on Lucian of Samosata: a number of new monographs have appeared recently (most notably the books by Camerotto and Ní Mheallaigh, both published in 2014), in addition to a number of edited essay collections. B.'s contribution to this academic activity takes as its primary focus the literary interactions between Lucian and his contemporary, specifically Roman, world. Her book has a broad chronological compass, in that it includes not only discussion of Lucian alongside Juvenal and Aulus Gellius as well as Greek prose authors of the early Imperial period, but increases its usefulness (and potential readership) by covering receptions of Lucian in both literary and artistic forms in the Renaissance and beyond. B. also has a section on Lucian's theology, his representations of early Christianity and literary mirroring in the Christian apologists.

There are, however, significant underlying issues behind the methodologies and framework of this study. First, the subtitle: what is the late Roman Empire? B. states in the first paragraph (p. 1) that her book ‘examines cultural exchanges, political propaganda, foreign identity politics, and religious conflicts in the late Roman Empire from the perspective of Lucian, Juvenal, Aulus Gellius, and the first Christian Apologists'. The late Roman Empire (approximately 250–450 c.e.) occurs after, at least, the three authors she lists as the focus of her book. More problematic is the lack of definitions and more sustained discussion of categories and terms in B.'s work. I give some examples: on p. 1 B. writes that her ‘primary goal is to bring Lucianic content to the foreground and establish that he worked within the scope and boundaries of the Second Sophistic’. What are the boundaries of a construct that is almost entirely modern? Was Lucian aware that he was writing within a phenomenon that had scope and boundaries? B.'s attempt to define the Second Sophistic (p. 3) (in the end, it is not a definition) does not take into consideration any of the recent work done on the topic, especially the recent re-evaluation by Whitmarsh (Beyond the Second Sophistic [2013]). Also at stake is the fundamentally slippery nature of Lucianic narration, as illustrated in lengthy discussions by Whitmarsh (esp. in his 2001 monograph) among several other studies: B., however, often makes no distinction between the voice of the fictional ego-narrator and that of the author, as is clear from her discussion of Lucian's biography (pp. 10–11) in the Somnium, Piscator and Bis Accusatus (B. does acknowledge the lack of ‘authorial consistency’ behind the personae of Lucian elsewhere – p. 19 – in discussion of Lucian's eastern identity). Another problematic facet of the book's structure is B.'s practice of listing the range of scholarly views on the issue under discussion in a chapter or chapter-section, with very little critical engagement of that very secondary literature. The most obvious example of this can be found on pp. 18–21.

Another key area for perplexity is intertextuality. What does B. mean by ‘literary correspondence’ (p. 21 and passim.)? In her second chapter on Lucian and Juvenal, for example, B. argues that Lucian “responds to” (the scare quotes are hers) Juvenal's representations of the Greeks, and she then goes so far as to argue that ‘the similarities in the presentations [by Juvenal and Lucian] cannot be coincidental and that the notable literary equivalences between the two authors are meant to be read as Lucian's direct answer to Roman misapprehension of the Greeks' (p. 22). And further, in her conclusion: ‘[the relationship between the authors] is not a matter of borrowing or imitating, but … a matter of conscious and intentional “dialogue”’. So is Lucian responding to Juvenal or not? What is a conscious and intentional dialogue, if not one which is bound up inextricably with borrowing or imitation? B. does not make this clear, especially when she appears to contradict herself on p. 53 by alleging that Lucian ‘is also consciously and intentionally commenting on Juvenal's portrayal of the Romans'. From this statement, is the reader to conclude that Lucian read Juvenal? Throughout the chapter B. adduces parallels between Juvenal and Lucian, without ever elucidating how this (intertextual) relationship functions. It is an extremely useful exercise to put Juvenal and Lucian into dialogue, and B. discusses (well) a number of interesting similarities between the authors, but leaves the reader at a loss as to the theoretical under-workings of her approach.

There are, however, aspects of this study to commend. B. is to be commended for putting into dialogue the cultural representations of Lucian and his Roman near-contemporaries, even if her discussion is undermined by a lack of theoretical methodology. The passages she has raised bring up some interesting questions about the extent to which Lucian may be responding to Roman representations of Greeks. Useful too is her discussion of the literary context, and especially the practice of Aulus Gellius (even if her conclusions on their similarities are hardly startling, on both authors' sensitivity to their cultural, literary and rhetorical contexts, pp. 67 and 90). B. brings in a broad spectrum of both pre-Christian and Christian primary literature in her fourth chapter, ‘Lucian's Olympus’, and convincingly argues that the convergences on Christianity in both Lucian's work and that of the Christian apologists must mean that Lucian was not as ignorant of early Christianity as has been alleged (though she does undercut her sensible discussion with ‘he is perspicacious and, therefore, most probably noticed the new religious trends’, p. 141). Finally, the last two chapters provide stimulating discussion on Lucian's reception, literary and artistic, which provide an update and addendum to similar studies such as that by Robinson (Lucian and His Influence in Europe [1979]).

B.'s English style makes for heavy reading: the discussion is at times difficult to follow and reflects, in many ways, the Greek of the authors under discussion. On p. 4, she describes Aristides' style as characterised by ‘archaic verbosity, literary mannerisms, and rhetorical machinations’: quite so.