B.’s book is a most welcome contribution to scholarship on Roman elegy that will become a standard point of reference for those interested in the fascinating relationship between the worlds of elegy and the inscriptional. Her wide-ranging study sets about exploring all types of inscriptions found in the elegists (including graffiti and dipinti) and resists the not uncommon idea that their use of epigrams or the inscriptional functions merely as a motif; she asks, ‘[w]elche Funktion haben [die Inschriften] im Kontext der Elegie und welche Vorzüge bieten sie den Dichtern?’ (p. 1).

In her introductory chapter, B. lucidly explores the tensions that result from the embedding of inscriptions in literary texts and carefully explicates the various types of epigraphs found in literature, moving beyond categories such as ‘sepulchral’ or ‘dedicatory’ to consider the status of an inscription as historicising, fictive or imaginary. She eloquently and incisively teases apart the various narrative levels of authorship and readership at play in the use of the epigrammatic in Roman elegy; this is instructive, and will be of use to those wishing to explore the place of the epigraphic in (Latin) literature more generally – for example in epic, lyric, even prose texts. A thorough overview and meaningful assessment of the scholarly approaches to the interaction of Roman elegy with inscriptions is provided; B.’s comments on T. Ramsby's problematic study (Textual Permanence: Roman Elegists and the Epigraphic Tradition [2007]) are particularly apposite.

The influence both of Hellenistic literary epigram and of actual Roman inscriptions on embedded epigrams is briefly considered in B.’s second chapter. The typical features and circumstances of actual inscriptions are discussed by type, and the ways in which the embedded inscriptions of elegy resemble these, and differ from them, is insightfully considered; most space is given over to sepulchral inscriptions, given the preponderance of these in the elegists.

In B.’s third chapter it is rightly noted that inscriptions have the potential to activate existing memories in their readers and that these memories are able to affect an individual's reading of the text. Theoretical approaches to memory and monument through the twentieth – and into the twenty-first – century are usefully outlined, and occasional mention is made of how felicitous such approaches may be to understanding how the elegists engage in (wider) discourses of memorialisation and monumentalisation. The discussion focuses predominantly on the public discourse of the Fasti, and, where other texts are considered, explores the question of an intended readership, whether internal or external to the text. This is the most disappointing part of an otherwise very good book. Not enough is done to link the theoretical approaches to the poems in question nor to explore the ways in which the embedding of inscriptions can be used to influence a reader's understanding of a text by privileging certain ideas through their conspicuous placement in a medium foreign to that in which they are usually found. B. occasionally misleads her reader too: there are not, as she suggests, only two mentions of reactions to sepulchral inscriptions in the works of the poets that she considers (Met. 2.338–43 and Fast. 3.561–4); Propertius, by way of example, offers a handful of responses to his tombstone (1.7.23–4, 2.1.77–8 and perhaps 3.1.35–8).

The fourth – and most sizeable – chapter of B.’s tome considers each of the epigraphic passages in the elegists in turn. In discussing Tibullus’ epitaph (1.3.55–6), B. offers a careful exploration of the context of the inscription within the elegy as a whole that elucidates the close relationship between the poem and the Odyssey in considerable detail. The distinctiveness of this epitaph and its framing verses from those of the other elegists is noted: there is no concern with the location of the grave nor with its durability, and the opposition between actual monument and literary edifice goes unmentioned.

Her reading of the inscription at Prop. 2.13.35–6 is an attractive one that explores some of the ways in which Propertius uses his epigraph and the surrounding verses to reflect on the ideals of amatory elegy by comparing aspects of his relationship with Cynthia to archetypal figures and themes of epic. Elegant and useful distinctions are drawn between the interpretations available to readers of the inscription internal to the poem and the elegy's wider readership. It is unfortunate that, though L. Houghton's 2013 piece is cited in the bibliography, no reference is made to its incisive treatment of this passage.

B.’s fine discussion of the epitaph provided for Phaethon by the Naides (Ov. Met. 2.327–8) carefully demonstrates how Ovid uses the language and themes familiar from historical inscriptions to create ‘eine konzise Zusammenfassung’ (p. 202) of the extensive Phaethon-episode. She demonstrates how the youth's concern with his ancestry and identity finds resolution in the post-mortem renown with which Ovid provides him in his epitaph, as the private and public spheres are bridged by the inscription. B. trenchantly notes, in discussing the reaction of Clymene and of Phaethon's sisters to his epigraph, that there is a marked difference in the presentation of sepulchral inscriptions in elegy and epic. In the former, ‘[die] Inschrift [wird] nur zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt gezeigt’, but, owing to epic's mostly linear narrative, in its case, ‘sowohl die Errichtung als auch die Lektüre des fiktiven Epitaphs’ provide occasions for the (re)interpretation of the text (p. 203).

In her consideration of the dedicatory epigram in the Epistula Sapphus (Ov. Ep. 15.183–4), in which the poet promises to dedicate her lyre to Phoebus, B. becomes rather exercised by the fact that Sappho hopes that an aura or Amor will save her, but then promises to dedicate her instrument to Apollo (aura, subito | et mea non magnum corpora pondus habe! | tu quoque, mollis Amor, pennas suppone cadenti, | ne sim Leucadiae mortua crimen aquae! | inde chelyn Phoebo, communia munera, ponam,| et sub ea uersus unus et alter erunt: | grata lyram posvi tibi, phoebe, poetria sappho: | convenit illa mihi, convenit illa tibi. [15.177–84]). After some tortuous elaboration, B. implausibly suggests that Apollo should be considered the prima facie recipient of the embedded epigram, but that Amor is the real addressee, as it is he, Sappho hopes, who will aid her. Since, moreover, the epigram is found in an epistle addressed to Phaon, it ought also (according to B.) to have some impact on him: it is his return that is hoped for, and through it that Sappho wishes to be saved. B. thus concludes, somewhat implausibly, that ‘[der wirkliche] Adressat [der Inschrift] ist nicht Phoebus, sondern Amor, der jedoch seinerseits nur eine Metapher für den Geliebten darstellt’ (p. 281). Not only is this rather tenuous in and of itself, but illogical to some degree: even if one accepts that Amor is the actual addressee of the epigram, where is the aura from which Sappho also seeks help (15.177–8); why does it not receive some sort of offering as well? A more plausible explanation of the apparently out-of-the-blue dedication of the lyre to Phoebus may be that the imagined action that follows from line 177 takes place under the watchful eye of Leucadian Apollo (15.165–6): if Sappho, then, is saved from her putative leap, it is to him – a deity of poetry with whom she has an affinity – that she will make her offering.

Despite the handful of reservations touched on above, this fine tome has provided a serious and necessary contribution to scholarship on the elegists that will be rightly referred to by scholars writing on the presence of inscriptions and the epigraphic in Latin literature for years to come.