The OCD is without doubt ‘the most authoritative and accessible dictionary of its kind’, as the dust jacket of the latest edition proclaims. This fourth edition comes nine years after the publication of the third revised edition and sixteen years after the release of the monumental third edition. The dust jacket also tells us that the fourth edition has been ‘thoroughly updated to reflect modern scholarship’ in over 6,700 entries, more than half of which have been revised. There are a total of 90 new and replacement entries: it is hard to believe that only now does the OCD have entries on ‘emotion’, ‘epideictic’, ‘ethics’, ‘gender’, ‘Jocasta’ (‘Laius’ gets an entry too – though Jocasta in the same entry is missing an asterisk), ‘nature’, ‘Presocratic philosophy’ and ‘Socratic dialogues’. There is place now too for entries such as ‘circumcision’, ‘dance’, ‘film’, ‘immortality’, ‘madness’, ‘opera’, ‘sabbath’ and ‘supplication, Greek’. Three new academic areas, with advisors, have been added: anthropology (C. Stewart), reception studies (L. Hardwick) and gender studies (the co-editor E.). J. Harries (Late Antiquity and Christianity), S. Harrison (Latin literature), J. North (Roman religion), C. Osborne (philosophy) and C. Pelling (Greek literature) are also new advisors.

The OCD sits on the most accessible bookshelf of most academic offices and even in the era of multiple companions and online databases, is still a primary resource for undergraduate students. With this market in mind, an updating of the third edition is most welcome. And this is what the fourth edition essentially is – an updating, without wholesale changes. Readers should therefore consult the now classic review of OCD ³ by R. Rees in CR 48 (1998) in conjunction with this one. Users will not notice much difference to their well-thumbed third editions: bibliographies have been updated for most entries (with some notable exceptions), but on the whole the entries themselves remain the same. Take the entry on ‘Apollonius Rhodius’, for example. Readers can still find R. Hunter's cogent summary from the previous edition, with nothing added except some key recent works to the bibliography. The dictionary thus fulfils one of its key functions, that of providing a succinct entry with up-to-date bibliography. Only the most out-of-date entries have been completely re-written: for example, ‘Catullus’, ‘Homer’, ‘mathematics’, ‘Parmenides’ and ‘Troy’. In a wide-ranging entry (including a section on reception), S. Saïd has almost doubled M. Willcock's third edition entry on ‘Homer’, and crams in a number of key scholarly debates from epic resonance to dating (the bibliography adjoining the entry is immense). The surprisingly short entry on ‘epic’ from the third edition, however, has remained untouched (along with bibliography), and would benefit from some ‘see’ headwords (with the non-specialist in mind).

Of the other new entries, ‘literary theory and the classics’ by M. Silk has replaced the influential and bold entry in the third edition by D. and P. Fowler, which was written at a time when literary theory and Classical studies sat uneasily together in much scholarship. Silk's contribution is therefore far less of an apology (though see his final section on scholarship and theory) and reflects how theory has penetrated (his word) all aspects of classical scholarship. ‘Film’ is disappointingly short, and would have benefited from a clearly defined structure made out of, perhaps, developments in the twentieth century, genres and theory. ‘Popular culture’ discusses film too; though it is a shame that the entry restricts itself to modern as opposed to ancient popular culture. Taking my lead from the review of OCD ³, some quirky entries still survive: ‘mountains’ (described as ‘like islands’) still has its tiny entry (but no entry for ‘rivers’), as does the bizarre ‘Horatii, oath of the’. The eloquent protestations of the reviewer of the third edition about the omission of ‘vegetarianism’ have not been heeded (though the pointer to ‘animals, attitudes to’ remains); frogs and mice (‘Batrochomyomachia’) would be a welcome addition too. And on the subject of consumption, an entry on ‘fascism’ would be welcome, in addition to the entries on ‘capitalism’ and ‘marxism’.

Not all of the updates to bibliographies are consistent. For the most part, studies which post-date the third edition have been tacked on to the end of bibliographical entries, but in some cases they have been inserted alphabetically (see, for example, the entries on Apollonius Rhodius and Dionysius Periegetes – not chosen at random). Among the entries to miss out on bibliographic revision, ‘dress’ is particularly noteworthy given the surge in writing on the subject since 1996; the short entry on ‘gladiators’ survives from the second edition and would have benefited from both general and bibliographical revision. The new index to the initials of contributors is an excellent aide to navigating the usual list and its misleading ps.-alphabetical layout.

OCD ³ was a milestone in Classics: it reflected the fundamental change in approaches to the classical world in scholarship, and showed the world what Classics actually meant at the end of the twentieth century. It was a much-needed resource and marketing tool, and as a work of scholarship it will be a long time before it is largely rewritten or supplanted. There is no doubt that most of the new entries in the fourth edition merit their long-overdue place in the dictionary, but the timing of production is somewhat questionable. It is understood that moves are afoot to digitise the OCD within the next few years, in line with most other modern works of reference: in time, and without the physical restrictions of a single volume, the OCD can evolve and expand, responding to the ever-changing demands of a mainly academic market. What, then, was the need to hurry out this edition, especially if one compares the 26 year wait for a third edition? The question owners of the third edition will ask themselves is of course ‘should I buy the fourth edition?’ If one compares the differences between each of the previous editions, and especially that between the second and third, then the fourth edition is essentially a revision of the third edition, with some supplementary material. Readers should perhaps hold on to their thirds until the press fulfil their digital promise.