This is a passionate book. From the opening pages it is clear that Victoria Rimell hopes this work will provide a defence of critical theory (especially, and foundationally, the tenets of deconstruction) in the Classics, stress the importance of Classics for understanding and questioning many aspects of the modern West, and elucidate the enduring influence of Roman ideas of enclosure, the self and space more broadly in contemporary art and literature. It is a bold, daring book, full of innovative and important ideas, expressed in challenging and critical prose, and will be dog-eared by many a student and professor of Latin literature. She moves effortlessly and assuredly between the ancient and modern world, so the discovery of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011 may evoke Suetonius’ description of Nero's death, as Roman literature and historiography ‘exploit the equivocacy of the closed space as both paradise and trap’ (18). The book consists of six chapters, each with an epilogue that places the findings of the chapter in dialogue with works of modern artists from Rachel Whiteread's casts to the experimental novel La salle de bain by Jean-Philippe Toussaint to David Blaine's illusions.

The opening chapter investigates the notion of foundation in the Aeneid and the contradictions that Virgil problematizes in his epic project. Close readings of the use of condere in the epic as well as the aetiology of Latium in Aeneid 8 exploit wordplay à la F. Ahl, soundplay that connects important scenes of Aeneid 1 and Aeneid 5, and intertexts with Lucretius. The way condere resonates in the epic and the various connections that R. draws out link its various definitions to the heart of the epic. It will ‘condense and massage the ambitions of Augustan empire’ (57), and acts as a fulcrum for the decisions that readers must make in constructing their own meaning of this epic. The second chapter responds to the critical reception of Horace's angulus, especially in the Carmina. While strongly argued and alive with valuable observations, I questioned the true importance of this term for Horace as it is used sparingly in the Carmina (twice) and only two additional times in all of his poetry. These opening chapters expose how the nooks and crannies of Augustan poetry act as privileged space for conceptions of poetry, refuge and empire.

This tendency is continued and further complicated in the letters of Seneca. If angulus is under-represented in Horace, it peppers Seneca's epistles and he imbues it with a variety of meanings, predicated on the context of the letter, its subject-matter and his own mood (crotchety Stoic or humorously modest). By insisting on the poetics of Seneca philosophus, this chapter offers strong readings of a number of letters, sketching questions such as: What is progress for this proficiens? What does it mean to be good? How can letters be private and public? As R. states, ‘it is only by engaging closely with the poetics of the letters that we can fully understand the extent to which Seneca is grappling with the ontological implications of his particular brand of Stoic philosophy, and involving us in that challenge’ (121). Additionally, Seneca makes up a large portion of the subsequent chapter, on the representation of bathrooms and bathhouses in imperial prose and poetry. The bath becomes a favourite site for imperial authors to consider issues of retreat, death, society at large and poetics. R.’s readings of Seneca's self-aware artistry highlight how much he is able to do with quotations, intertexts and metaphor in his prose descriptions of a raucous public bath (Ep. 56) and the private bath of Scipio Africanus (Ep. 86). Both Martial and Statius write of the baths of Claudius Etruscus (Martial 6.42; Statius, Sil. 1.5) and R. considers the dialogue between these poems and the tradition of such ‘light’ poetry. Bathhouses resound with the echoes of bathers, orators and previous poetry; ultimately the imperial vision distorts the classicism of Vitruvius’ ideal (and bodiless) bath.

The fifth chapter moves from interiors to the sweeping landscapes of epic, specifically Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius’ Achilleid. To begin, R. traces the interplay between what is confined and what is revealed in Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid, focusing especially on the marvellous bugonia of Georgics 4, which resonates with the Trojan horse of Aeneid 2. Boundaries in Lucan are meant to be broken, and the plague of civil war spreads like a parody of Roman imperialism. The world is too small for Caesar (BC 10.456), and R. argues that the final scene models ‘Caesar's psychotic need for and fear of entrapment’ (249). Is Achilles cut from the same cloth? The Achilleid’s focus on the world's greatest warrior being placed in non-epic settings and costumes involves both genre- and gender-bending and R. explores how Statius ‘puts on display various stages in the spatial genesis of epic manhood’ (255). The final chapter investigates connections between exile and enclosure, especially in the exile poetry of Ovid. The trauma of exile affects the poetic voice and R. finds what is uncanny in the paradox of writing about exile for the Romans ‘it is always both loss and transformation, both death and rebirth’ (282). For Ovid, this allows him to become, even more so, the poet of paradox and redefinition, a point illustrated nicely in R.’s reading of Tristia 2, Tristia 3.1 and Ibis.

It is difficult to offer a pithy summation of this important and impressive work. The connections that R. spins between works, periods, genres and methodologies are compelling, often surprising, and always thought-provoking. It is a truly rewarding read.