This book is a very welcome and valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on the Fasti, and it improves substantially our grasp of the poet's handling of the calendar, ritual, astronomy and narrative.

An introduction of twenty pages covers the poem's relation to earlier literature and real fasti; generic play; political aspects of the Roman calendar; readers' attitudes to references to Augustus; Ovid's astronomy and star myths; and (briefly) the textual tradition. The text is based on the 1997 Teubner and comes with a selective apparatus criticus ‘restricted to readings and conjectures that seem of particular significance or interest’. The bulk of the book (nearly 500 pages) consists of a detailed commentary. There are also two appendices (one is on revision of the Fasti and the fate of the final six books; in the other there is a table comparing events covered by Ovid in his Fasti with those found on surviving fasti).

The bibliography is admirably full, and Robinson generously cites other scholars even when he is not in complete agreement with them. His introduction and appendices are brisk but informative. The discussion of the text is judicious, and I found myself almost always in agreement. As for the commentary, his interest is primarily literary, but because of the interweaving of different strands in the poem he also covers in some depth historical, astronomical and religious matters. Consequently, and thankfully, he avoids notes on philological minutiae like bucolic diaeresis and the relative frequency of gladius and ensis, and instead puts his emphasis on appreciation and interpretation.

Unlike many earlier critics, R. is very much in step with Ovid, attuned to essential aspects of the Fasti and aware of it as a stylish, entertaining and erudite poem. He has a lively mind and comes out with lots of clever ideas and acute observations. He generally does justice to the important technical skills of this poet. But I would like to see still more on sound and style (for example, the elegance at 319–24, which fits with the elegant finery described, and is also deliberately incongruous in connection with the grotesque cross-dressing) and especially more on rhythm (for instance, the fluttering dactyls for the ghosts in 565 and the grave spondees in 675). R. is very alert to wit and humour, and points out many amusing aspects. But again he could have added more. So on p. 134 he misses the joke of Arion paying the dolphin a fare by putting on a musical performance for it; and on p. 204 he fails to note how daft the raven's excuse is (it could have gone to a different spring, and by bringing back the snake it shows how easily it could have dealt with that hindrance). R. is alive to intertextuality too, and perceptively probes the effects of such echoes. But in his enthusiasm he is sometimes ready to claim allusion where there are just not enough similarities in language and detail (especially on p. 191, of supposed reminiscence of Virgil). And he has not seen that ‘vis tibi grata fuit’ in 141 is very probably a subversive nod to A.A. 1.673, ‘grata est vis ista puellis’. I would also like more on the implications of the similes. This is an already bulky commentary, but to accommodate this extra material quite a few of R.'s notes could be streamlined (e.g. on the celestial dolphin on p. 111; on references to the Arion story on pp. 115f.; on Cynthia = Diana on p. 170; and on Hercules' connection with Antony on p. 227).

With regard to interpretation there are lots of excellent notes (especially those on the comparison between Augustus and Romulus at 138f. and 149ff.; and on lilies in 706). Particularly useful is his employment of the ‘suspicious’ and ‘supportive’ reader in connection with reaction to references to Augustus. He shows good judgement in sometimes leaving the question of subversion open, and sometimes indicating that it is likely. His discussions generally are sensible, reasonable and full, and they are particularly enlightening vis-à-vis ritual, astronomy and the calendar. His assertions are almost always sound and backed up by strong arguments. However, on p. 84 he does make the unsupported claim that Alcmaeon's murder of his mother (in revenge for his father) was more impious than Medea's murder of her two innocent children (and Glauke and Creon). Elsewhere occasionally his arguments are not convincing. Most notably, in connection with Ovid's account of the rape of Lucretia, he states that Ovid's Lucretia is not Livy's archetypal Roman matron but rather has the voice of an elegiac female and is a combination of the beauty and passion of the elegiac puella with the pudicitia and castitas of the matrona. He nowhere defines what exactly he means by the ‘elegiac female’ or ‘elegiac puella’, but the distinction made between her and the matrona suggests that he has in mind the elegist's domina. But apart from being beautiful and inspiring lust, the Ovidian Lucretia does not possess the standard traits of a Cynthia, Delia, Nemesis or Corinna. R. maintains that at 746–54 there are echoes of Propertius' Arethusa, and of Laodamia and Penelope in the Heroides; but these are married women mentioned in elegy, not elegists' mistresses. The designation of Lucretia as puella in 810 is supposed to bolster his case, but that word is certainly not confined to young women in elegy. Lucretia's copious weeping in 820 is said to be expected from an elegiac figure; but it is expected also from a rape-victim who is upset and ashamed. He adds her blush at 828 as a confirmation of her elegiac qualities, but lots of females outside of elegy blush (like the epic Lavinia). What R. does manage to show is that Lucretia in the Fasti is like married women represented elsewhere in elegy (including Ovid's own Heroides), which is hardly earth-shattering.

But the above are only a few quibbles in connection with a vast mass of very sound scholarship. This commentary will be indispensable reading for anybody working on the Fasti in general and Book 2 in particular.