The title of B.'s monograph, which originated in his dissertation, programmatically alludes to J. Strauss Clay's seminal work on the Homeric Hymns (The Politics of Olympus. Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns [1989]). In this way B. announces his double agenda, on the one hand an intertextual study of Callimachus’ Hymns before the background of (among others) the Homeric Hymns and encomiastic discourses in archaic and classical poetry and prose, and on the other hand their contextualisation before the political and ideological background of the early Ptolemaic regime. As a third strand, B. reviews the collection of Callimachus’ Hymns as a poetry book and as regards the dense intratextual connections it suggests to the audience. B.'s study is to be highly commended for integrating these various approaches into a coherent argument. His methodology incorporates a broad range of sources, not only literary texts but also inscriptions, coins and other material evidence of Hellenistic kingship ideology. His main conclusion is that Callimachus’ Hymns played a vital role in shaping a poetic discourse on kingship in the emerging Hellenistic world by projecting the dynastic politics of the Ptolemies onto the Olympic family.

In view of its preoccupation with the structure of Callimachus’ book, perhaps not by coincidence, B.'s monograph itself exhibits a sophisticated compositional scheme: two parts of nearly equal length, each divided into three chapters (although the six chapters do not overall correspond with the six Hymns), flanked by the introduction and the conclusion. The Hymn to Zeus gets the lion's share, as the whole first part (‘On Zeus’ Kingship’) is devoted to this programmatic (though shortest) opening piece. Zeus might seem to be the obvious choice as a symbol for the Ptolemaic king, in view not only of the poetic tradition but also of Macedonian genealogical claims, but B. argues persuasively that the archaic narratives of Zeus's problematic relationship with his father and his usurpation of power pose serious challenges for an encomium of Ptolemaic dynastic policies. Callimachus skilfully as well as playfully navigates around such difficulties by replacing the myths with ‘politically correct’ versions. Alongside the political reading of the Hymn to Zeus B. proposes a metapoetic reading by interpreting Rhea's postpartum search for water as an extended poetological metaphor for the desired kind of praise poetry (this is taken up in Chapter 5, where Leto's search for a birthplace for Apollo in the Hymn to Delos is seen as a self-reflexive competition with Rhea). Often B. reads between the lines and pays attention to what is not being said, which makes an interesting although inevitably speculative argument.

The second part, ‘The Divine Family and the Ptolemaic Dynasty’, primarily focuses on Apollo as a new paradigm of kingship. Despite the prominent role of Zeus at the beginning of the book, it is his son who takes centre stage in the collection as evidenced by the Hymn to Apollo and the Hymn to Delos. Moreover, Callimachus does not associate the poet directly with Zeus but reserves the announcement of such a patron–client relationship for Apollo. B. rightly refrains from directly identifying the gods and kings praised in the various Hymns with Ptolemy I Soter and his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus respectively, but rather reads them as dynastic paradigms that rewrite the violent myths of succession known from the Hesiodic and Homeric poems and depict the god-kings as saviours who protect their subjects. Apart from some harmless intratextual sibling rivalry between Artemis and Apollo, the Hymns paint a carefully manipulated picture of harmony within the Olympic family in deliberate contrast to the historical examples of Hellenistic dynasties riddled by intra-familial strife. Indeed, besides the main focus on kingship, the evolving image of the Ptolemaic queens is the subject of the last chapter (‘On the Good Queen’). B. builds on recent historical studies of prominent figures such as Arsinoe II and Berenice II as well as on literary studies that read Callimachus’ Hymns on Artemis, Athena and Demeter in the light of these influential women. He interprets the brief episode in the Hymn to Artemis of the wicked king Lygdamis who attacks the Artemision in Ephesus as a reflection of Arsinoe's involvement with the city and its contested status between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. The embedded myths of the punishments of Tiresias and Erysichthon in the fifth and sixth Hymn respectively are treated rather perfunctorily, but the argument that the goddesses Athena and Demeter are made to appear as just and beneficent queens in contrast to the ‘petty despot’ (p. 191) Hera in the Hymn to Delos, who ‘draws on real-life stereotypes of the Hellenistic queen as a manipulative figure consumed by jealousy’ (p. 237; cf. Chapter 5), is convincing.

The conclusion, ‘On the Good King According to Kallimachos’, compares Callimachus’ Hymns in view of their prominent ethical and didactic stance to the genre of ‘Fürstenspiegel’ or mirror of princes (cf. Philodemus’ treatise On the Good King According to Homer; see now also J. Klooster and B. van den Berg [edd.], Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond [2018]); for the mirror metaphor B. refers to Seneca's De clementia and to Demetrius of Phaleron (pp. 245–6), but he might also have referred back to Pindar's Nemean 7.14: ‘We know how to hold up a mirror for noble deeds in a single way’ (quoted on p. 93). The actual power is that of the rulers, but Callimachus is the one to teach them how to use their power in the right way.

A characteristic feature of B.'s approach throughout is that he reflects on his method of interpretation by cautioning that a historicising reading constitutes only one among multiple possible audience responses (e.g. pp. 23–4, 42 with n. 80, 219 with n. 103, 239–40). Likewise, eventually he leaves it open whether the collection of hymns was arranged by Callimachus himself or by a later editor, while making a strong case for the former hypothesis (pp. 12–14). Although they cannot be proven conclusively, his arguments based on the materiality of the bookroll are especially intriguing. He emphatically advocates a sequential reading that takes into account the juxtaposition of the single Hymns in the bookroll (pp. 128, 147–51, 160, 208–10), and even tries to reconstruct the visual experience of a reader who scans adjacent columns (p. 150 with n. 67). He also interprets a papyrus (P. Oxy. 2226) containing an alternative, shorter ending of the Hymn to Demeter (the last Hymn in the book) as evidence for a revision of the Hymn at the time of the compilation of the collection in order to present the goddess as a benefactor in the image of a Hellenistic monarch (pp. 230–4), in analogy to the dedication of the second edition of the Aitia to queen Berenice II.

B.'s book has been carefully edited (apart from the odd error and some inconsistent spellings of Greek names) and is equipped with helpful indexes. The substantial bibliography is international and up to date, with very few titles to be added (e.g. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker [edd.], Gods and Religion in Hellenistic Poetry [2012]; A. Hardie, ‘Callimachus at the Mouseion (the Hymn to Delos)’, PLLS 16 [2016], 39–153). Some minor quibbles are that information given in the footnotes tends to be somewhat repetitive and that discussions of individual points are sometimes spread over separate subchapters (e.g. the argument that the omission of Zeus's thunderbolt in the Hymn to Zeus is meant to avoid an awkward reference to Ptolemy Keraunos is started on p. 41, but not taken up again before p. 47). The self-proclaimed novelty of B.'s approach to Callimachus’ Hymns as a (probably) authorially designed poetry book reflecting the new concepts of Ptolemaic rule might seem a bit overstated, but by using such a rhetoric of innovation he is ultimately in good company with Callimachus himself.