Francesca Romana Berno's book offers the first English-language monograph on the concept of luxuria in Roman antiquity. Her chapters on Seneca the Younger will be of interest to those working on the interplay between theory and praxis in the philosopher's life and brand of Stoicism, but the book's underdeveloped analyses and argumentation elsewhere are confounding, and its privileging of the ‘literary’, and philosophical, dimensions of luxuria at the expense of the ‘cultural’ — especially of the material variety — is disappointing. Partly filling that latter gap are the twenty-one essays in Lluís Pons Pujol and Jordi Pérez González's edited volume, which sketch the story, left untold in B., of luxuria as market force of production. Individual pieces range widely in focus and quality, but the volume's recognition that economics, social status and gender are essential considerations in understanding the ways Romans variously conceived of luxuria point, along with B.'s book, toward future lines of inquiry.

I begin with B.'s book and its treatment of Seneca in chs 3 and 4. Like Miriam Griffin (Seneca, A Philosopher in Politics, 1976) and others, B. takes on the question of Seneca's (in)famous wealth and the charges of rank hypocrisy in posturing as the fierce critic of luxuria. In answer, B. unpacks Seneca's own response in De vita beata: shifting the argumentative terms from luxuria to wealth facilitates distancing himself from the former's moral and psychological quandaries, while embracing the (middle) Stoic position that the latter is merely an ‘indifferent’. Dodge by doctrine is how B. wants us to see the philosopher answering his critics — a position that Griffin also largely came to (1976: 306–10). Ch. 4 surveys Seneca's conception of luxuria through recurring themes in his epistles. Insofar as it captures the scope and volume of his discussions of luxuria, this chapter succeeds, though greater attention to potential contradictions, perhaps with consideration of the epistolary form's didactic function, would have enriched the analysis. At various points (e.g. 172), B. sees discussions of contemporary luxuria as veiled criticisms of Nero; as is the case with all such ‘doublespeak’, some instances are more compelling than others.

The other chapters are generally less successful. The first provides the book's foundation with an account of the ‘etymological, semantic and philosophical issues’ (2) of luxuria. In practice, the discussion ranges widely, proceeding in an associative, and sometimes bewildering, fashion. Consider the treatment of etymology (2–4). Luxuria's origins from luxus — glossed as any kind of ‘excess’ or, intriguingly, a joint dislocation, per the TLL — give way to a (semantic) excursus on the ‘negative moral judgment … implied in both uses of luxuria’ and the ‘association of ideas’ underlying this judgement. A paragraph on derivatives and Greek translations leads to the assertion that luxuria, unlike any of its supposed Greek equivalents, has a ‘biological meaning … connected to fertility of the earth’. This last is an interesting etymological claim — presumably picking up on an earlier mention of luxurior. But B.'s support for the claim entails appealing simply to ‘the well-known agricultural origin of the Latin language’ before recounting Hesiod's account of Ploutos’ birth in a field, only to conclude that both Ploutos and luxuria are therefore ‘related to the fertility of the fields’. Some of this discussion is etymological, but it is not substantiated in any rigorous fashion. The following section on philosophy rehearses Stoic taxonomies of the passions and Plato's appetites, but how either relates specifically to the Roman conception of luxuria is not explained and only (possibly?) comes into focus when one recognises the roles that Seneca and Apuleius play in later chapters. Such claims as Polybius instantiating ‘the birth date of Roman luxuria’ (9) suggest that B. views Romans as beholden to Greek precursors without any literary-critical nuance that the language of ‘appropriation’ or the theoretical dynamism of a ‘translation project’ (D. Feeney, Beyond Greek, 2016) might bring. Throughout, Greek concepts like truphē or philēdonia are treated as equivalents of luxuria. Those hoping for reflections on lexicography's limitations in understanding a complex passion in antiquity (cf. R. Kaster, Emotion, Community, and Restraint, 2005) or translation's semiotic exigencies (C. Williams, Reading Roman Friendship, 2012) will find themselves disappointed. The result is a chapter that captures, but does not clarify, the ‘polysemic’ nature of luxuria in all its excess.

Bookending the Seneca chapters, chs. 2 and 5 offer a literary-historical narrative of luxuria from Plautine comedy to Prudentius’ Psychomachia. Chronology, genre and canonicity determine the discussion. Extensive quotation with varying degrees of critical analysis comprises the modus operandi. For what B. repeatedly notes is a ‘short history’, the overall approach makes some sense — if only because, like any scholar, B. must pick and choose which evidence merits discussion. But curious choices and notable omissions, along with a penchant for mostly descriptive readings and unsubstantiated claims, hamper the narrative and arguments.

For example, likely no one would deny that Cato the Elder was a ‘prototype’ for the ‘Romans’ restless fight against luxuria’ (24). Yet B. is simply wrong to state that the ‘only actual occurrence’ of a luxuria-related word in Cato's extant corpus occurs in Against the Rhodians with nimis luxuriose (ORF ⁴ 8.163), for De agricultura includes the injunction that the enslaved vilica not be ‘too luxuriosa’ (nimium luxuriosa, 143.1). Notwithstanding that oversight — let alone its near-parallel phrasing—what, if anything, might nimis tell us about the sense of luxuriose in Against the Rhodians? That something might permissibly be characterised by luxuria, just not overly so? Or is nimis merely intensifying? Pleonastic? B. does not say — nor, more crucially, are we given the reasoning behind the assertion that Cato's luxuriose evinces a ‘vegetal’ meaning. Unhelpful is B.'s reliance on others’ translations here and throughout — which largely precludes translations from scaffolding the argumentation and, in this case, leaves the reader to puzzle out if and how the Latin (or Rolfe's 1960 translation) might corroborate the posited ‘vegetal’ meaning.

Ch. 5 sees B. advance the claim that the second century c.e. saw a ‘process of legitimization of luxury’ (200), which resulted in luxuria shedding its previous moralistic associations (e.g. gustatory, economic, material, etc.) and outright transforming into ‘lust’. Pliny the Younger, through his oft-noted lack of attention to material luxuria (e.g. E. W. Leach, Arethusa (2003), 149) in the Epistulae, and Apuleius, in Metamorphoses’ Cupid and Psyche story, play key pagan roles in this process prior to Christian writers — exemplified by Tertullian and Augustine — who solidify this change. While the chapter makes for an interesting read, its strained attempts to integrate Suetonius and Tacitus within the argument and its conclusion with Prudentius — whose allegorised Luxuria both retains many traditional moralising connotations and moreover stands alongside a distinct counterpart of Libido (‘Lust’) — certainly attenuates the strength of the chapter's central thesis.

In contrast to B., Pons Pujol and Pérez González, in their introductory essay on ‘luxonomics’, explicitly disavow ‘defining the philosophical, sociological, and historical concept of luxury’ (6), instead aspiring in their edited volume to present ‘the full range of perspectives on the production and consumption of luxury items’. As a unifying concept, luxonomics — understood as ‘the economy of luxury in Roman times’ (2) — never really comes to fruition in the ensuing twenty contributions, but it does usefully foreground that any conception of luxuria remains inextricably tied in part to its marketplaces, where complex nexuses of changing material, social, cultural and historical conditions determine both tastes in consumption and production on Mediterranean, regional and local scales and among various ‘Roman’ groups of disparate statuses and identities.

In keeping with this approach, and reflecting the material-cultural foci of its contributors, pieces often focus on specific types of luxury items. Gian Luca Gregori and Letizia Rustico, for example, survey the remains of Corinthian bronze at Rome, Nova Barrera Martín provides an overview of earrings from the Iberian peninsula, and so on. For those interrogating the ‘Roman’ concept of luxuria, this volume offers its most substantial contributions when focused on subaltern groups. Thus, Sanaa Hassab offers an interesting article on the adoption of Roman-style mosaics by urban and tribal elites in Mauretania Tingitana as a means for preserving socio-political status in their local communities, while several contributors consider what ‘Roman’ luxuria might have meant to the women that variously created, deployed and enjoyed said objects. Particularly worth mentioning in the latter case are Simona Perna's essay on women's use of marble in funerary contexts and Albert Sabaté Morales’ contribution on the use of pearls and gems by priestesses and aristocratic women in promoting religious and social cohesion — each reminding us that the views espoused by orators, littérateurs, historians and philosophers are not the only ‘Roman’ perspectives on luxuria we possess from antiquity.