This volume by E., professor at the Universitat de Barcelona, focuses on gastronomic poetry. The book begins with an introduction and is divided into two parts devoted to: (1) the precedents in Greek gastronomic poetry, a part that, in addition to three introductory sections, examines the gastronomic pieces of Greek comic playwrights (Epicharmus of Kos, Aristophanes, Middle Comedy), didactic gastronomic poetry (Archestratus of Gela) and the work of Matron of Pitane; (2) Roman gastronomic poetry, which deals with Ennius, Lucilius and Varro, to finally focus on Horace's Satires 2.4, 2.8 and, tangentially, 2.2. The book is concluded by a bibliography, an index locurum auctorum antiquorum, an index auctorum recentiorum, an index ciborum and an index taxonomicus.

In the introduction, which acknowledges previous work by important figures in Classics, such as N. Holzberg, R. Meyer and J.L. Vidal, E. explains the structural and methodological aspects of the book. Although his clarifications regarding the need to keep the Greek part are convincing (p. 11), readers may feel that the central topic, the two satires of Horace and their relationship with the tradition of ancient gastronomic poetry, is delayed and is a rather limited part of a larger book. It would, however, be just a feeling, since when E. approaches the main topic, he does so thoroughly and appropriately. Likewise, and despite the fact that the point has also been justified in the introduction, it would probably have been convenient for E. to include translations of all the texts. Non-specialist readers of Classics would have appreciated it. This remark, as well as a piece of criticism, is also meant as a compliment: it is expressed only because E. has managed to turn a topic hard for non-specialists into an enjoyable book, with a great deal of well-processed information (which constitutes a contribution for non-specialists), with very accurate conclusions, and with a sober and clear style, which invites reading.

The main contribution of the book, with regard to Horace's satires, is E.'s concern, at the risk of not being original, of investigating the primary, moral value of Satires 2.4 (De sapientia Catii), a didactic gastronomic poem, and 2.8 (Cena Nasidieni), a comic description of a dinner combined with a didactic-prescriptive tendency, rejecting, in the case of 2.4, the metapoetic interpretation per allegoriam suggested by E. Gowers (The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature [1993]). His arguments are convincing: why is only food, and not other human areas, allegorical? Why are only that text and its gastronomic terms metapoetic, and not other texts? Likewise, although (since the elements the poem contains justify considering the subject of poetics) E. adheres to B. Feichtinger's conclusions on Satire 2.8 (‘Von Tafelluxus und Literaturgourmets. Überlegungen zum horazischen Abschied von den Satiren’, Philologus 58 [2014], 130–54) that Horace, through Nomentanus, represents the failure of satire as a genre in the new political-social context, he maintains, delving into the moral value, that its relationship with poetry is rather a certain association between a frugal way of life and a consistent type of expression.

Another significant contribution of the volume is the relationship E. finds between the vindication of the tenuis uictus, which is highlighted in Ofellus’ Satire 2.2 and functions as a substratum for the gastronomic satires analysed, and Ode 2.16's uiuere paruo, of which the tenuis uictus is, so to speak, the gastronomic consequence and complement. Horace would have adapted the satire to the context of his time, in a very different society from his Republican predecessors Lucilius and Varro, where the cursus honorum has been relegated in favour of relations with power. Yet he has also invested satire with a thematic purpose that exceeds this work and will be recognised in contemporary and future works: the theme of frugality and poverty. E.'s book may be read as a chapter on this complex moral theme, which Horace has developed in epistles and epodes such as Epode 2 and which, through Odes 2.16 and 18, reaches the third Book of Odes, introduced by the Roman Odes. The tenuis uictus will adapt to the genus tenue, even when, in S.J. Harrison's terms (Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace [2007]), it appears in the form of generic enrichment.

Regarding the Greek influence on Horace, the book clearly shows that the influence of Archestratus and his Latin adapter Ennius in Satire 2.4, as well as that of Matron of Pitane in 2.8, are slight. Horace draws on the Roman tradition of preliterary praecepta, on the tradition of treatises on dietetics and health, and on Cato's De agri cultura, which, however, leads him to a better adaptation in 2.4 (a more perfect literary achievement than Varro's) of the spoudaiogéloion or ridentem dicere uerum. This Roman influence, specified in texts that are seen as reactions to the increase in luxury, is especially relevant to Horace's work and is, at the same time, a distinctive characteristic. The accurate analysis of previous Roman gastronomic poetry makes it possible to distinguish clearly the Horatian achievement in the Roman tradition.

Although the book does not intend to be a history of ‘fuentes para la alimentación romana en la poesía latina’ (p. 13), it offers an interesting approach to this complex subject from poetry and, though the part devoted to Greek precedents is not original, it offers a complete and adequate background for the treatment of Roman poetry. In this sense, it adds to the few works in Spanish on food and gastronomic poetry that E. cites (especially by M.J. García Soler and himself) and contributes to the subject with a breadth and, at the same time, exhaustiveness that make his book a reference work of consultation, added to other already prominent volumes of the universal philological tradition. Undoubtedly, it is the most important in Spanish. With regard to Satires 2.4 and 2.8, scarcely studied, it provides original conclusions that go beyond the metapoetic sphere, which has been the most important perspective in recent decades.

This is clearly a good book, and its reading is highly recommended for specialists in gastronomic poetry and for specialists in Horace and Augustan poetry.