Ovid's influence on the Thebaid has been recognised and documented for years in Statian scholarship, but its treatment is generally reserved for short-format publications such as articles and chapters or notes in commentaries. It has also traditionally played second fiddle to Virgil's influence. This volume aims to remedy that situation by offering a comprehensive, book-length exploration of Statius’ Ovidian intertextuality in the Thebaid while also addressing how the epic reflects the Flavian context in which it was composed.

In the introduction S. sets forth the broad aims of the book, delineates how he plans to cover its Ovidian and Flavian material, and situates his methods among contemporary scholarly trends in the study of intertextuality and the relationship between Flavian epic and its socio-political context. Especially helpful is the analysis of the Thebaid's proem (pp. 9–15), which prepares us for the readings of Statius’ ‘contrastive’ allusions to Virgil and Ovid in subsequent chapters. At times, the introduction strikes ‘dissertationy’ notes, as the book originates from S.'s 2019 Ph.D. dissertation. For example, the biography of Statius (pp. 5–8) and the discussion of the composition of his audience, literacy rates, recitation culture and the like (pp. 20–4) may be topics interesting in themselves, but their pertinence to S.'s reading of the Thebaid never fully revealed itself to me over the course of the book.

The study is divided into three chapters, which explore ‘three constitutive spheres’ (p. 3) of the Thebaid: the ‘natural’ sphere of landscapes (Chapter 1: ‘The Post-Ovidian World of the Thebaid’); the ‘human’ of heroes and kings (Chapter 2: ‘Rewriting the Foundational Myths of Rome’); and the ‘divine’ of the gods (Chapter 3: ‘Forging Divinity, Conceptualising Power’). The world of the Thebaid that S. describes in these chapters is quite grim and foreboding: its landscapes are often chaotic and deceptive, many of its heroes impious, monstrous or otherwise debased, and its divine machinery malevolent and hollow. The engine driving these readings is intertextuality, and the intertext that most shapes them is Ovid's Metamorphoses, particularly its Theban narrative in Books 3–4. The results of this approach are mixed. S. is on strong footing when he identifies allusions via specific verbal, thematic or structural parallels (or a combination thereof) and especially when he does so while focusing on a passage or an episode; this tends to be the case in Chapters 1 and 3. Not infrequently, however, an allusion is based merely on the mention of a name or a story that appears in the Metamorphoses, without further evidence given to ground or anchor the connection. Another key component of S.'s intertextual approach is his treatment of ‘contrastive’ allusions to Virgil and Ovid. In these instances, allusions to the Metamorphoses play off ones to the Aeneid to invite a darker, more pessimistic reading of the text; the effect is obtained because the Ovidian material either problematises what is perceived to be a more positive or optimistic vision set forth in the Virgilian intertext or brings out unsettling ambiguities already present in it. S.'s examination of Statius’ use of this technique is often illuminating, although occasionally Virgil slips too easily into the role of ‘strawman’. Helpful throughout is S.'s integration of literary background material into the discussions; ‘Reading Landscapes in Latin Poetry’ in Chapter 1 and the review of epic divine councils (‘The Intertextual Politics of Statius’ Divine Council’) in Chapter 3 are good examples. One criticism I have is that S.'s coverage of the Thebaid is limited, being heavily weighted toward the poem's first half, its first book, in particular; one rarely encounters a close analysis of a passage or episode in the epic's second half other than on a few occasions in Chapter 2 (e.g. pp. 132–5 on Hippomedon in Thebaid 9; pp. 173–8 on Theseus in Thebaid 12). Some may also quibble with the length of the chapters (Chapter 1: 75 pages; Chapter 2: 81 pages; Chapter 3: 63 pages), although their division into subsections makes the reading experience manageable. The study ends with a conclusion in which S. builds on his analysis of Statius’ programme of ‘contrastive’ allusion to show how it shapes the ‘Virgilian-Ovidian intertextuality’ of the Thebaid's epilogue.

In Chapters 1–3 S. often steps away from the Thebaid's Ovidian and Virgilian material to discuss the Flavian context in which the epic was composed. When he does so, he casts a wider intertextual net, touching on a range of literary and material sources on the politics, art and culture of the Flavian age; here is where the application of ‘semantic intertextuality’, ‘intermediality’ and ‘macro-intertextuality’ (see pp. 15–20 in the introduction) comes most clearly into view. I must confess that these sections of the book were my least favourite. First, many of the key observations S. makes about the Thebaid's relation to its Flavian context do not strike me as new or substantially different from those of others, such as D. McGuire and W. Dominik, in the 1990s, or S. Rebeggiani, more recently. Second, these sections often feel like large ‘information dumps’ whose bearing on our appreciation of Statius’ engagement with Ovid, the ostensible focus of S.'s work, is unclear. Granted, they are informative – I learned a lot about Flavian history, society, religion, politics, architecture and more –, and S.'s presentation of the evidence is usually thorough and judicious. But I was frequently left with the sense that it was all too disconnected from, or too loosely connected to, Statius’ poem to profitably inform my reading of its Ovidian intertextual programme. Also, S.'s treatment of this material sometimes disrupts his exposition of that programme and thus makes it hard to follow. In Chapter 2, for example, where there are five such Flavian excursions, the shortest about one and a half pages, the longest eight, I found myself skipping over them – and returning to them later – so as not to lose the thread of S.'s arguments. In Chapter 3 S.'s fine comparative analysis of the divine councils in Thebaid 1 and Metamorphoses 1 is broken up by two long Flavian sections (pp. 209–15, 223–35), among other interpretative detours along the way; the entire analysis ends up being covered in fits and starts over a stretch of 43 pages (pp. 194–6, 205–8, 217–23, 235–7). In the end, this is not really one book, but two: one on Ovid and Statius, the other on the Thebaid and its Flavian context. It is as if, while writing the first, S. was working on the second and, not wanting to leave any of it out, tried to integrate its contents into the first. Unfortunately, the two parts do not fit together comfortably or complement each other.

The book's back matter includes an appendix, consisting of a list of words and word-forms unique to Ovid and Statius, which S. produced using a database he developed (Latin Diachronic Database), a bibliography and two indexes, one an index locorum, the other a general index. Of these indexes, I found the index locorum unhelpful; most of its entries are incomplete; for example, there are hundreds of citations of the Aeneid in the book, but, curiously, only eight are indexed.

In the end, whatever criticisms I have should not overshadow the contribution S. has made to our appreciation and understanding of the Thebaid's Ovidian intertextual programme; in shining a light on that programme, he has done us all a great service and, no doubt, will inspire others to explore further Ovid's impact on Statius’ poem.