In the tradition of classical scholarship, it was for a long time held as incontrovertible that authors of the imperial period writing in the Latin language were influenced by Greek literature of the past, but that authors writing in Greek during the same period were not influenced by earlier Latin literature. In relation to the ancient Greek novels, J. exposed the weakness of this dogma in his 2015 Ph.D. thesis entitled Latin Poetry and the Idea of Rome in the Greek Novel. At the time when I read his thesis, I was in the process of writing my own on intercultural intertextuality in the Egyptian books of Leucippe and Clitophon, arguing that the intertexts of this novel reflect the polyglot and multicultural nature of Roman Egypt. I was a sympathetic audience for J.'s ideas. In his 2021 book he builds and considerably expands upon the claims of his 2015 thesis. He masterfully articulates how the novels of Chariton, Achilles Tatius and Longus engage with Latin poetry of the first and second centuries ce in sophisticated, playful and sometimes subversive ways. This groundbreaking and engagingly written book is a welcome addition to the corpus of scholarly literature on allusion and intertextuality in the ancient Greek novels.

The introduction explores Greek biculturality and bilingualism in the first and second centuries ce, and the reasons as to why the orthodoxy of an airtight barrier between Greek culture and outside influence has been perpetuated. J. also explains his methodology, informing readers that, in general, his approach veers closer to the identification of allusions than to an exploration of intertextuality, in that he is examining connections between the novels and Latin poetry included intentionally by their authors for their readers to recognise. There are interesting exceptions to this approach, places where the world outside of the text is key to J.'s argument and his approach becomes more intertextual. For example, in Chapter 7, which explores the relationship between Longus and Virgil, J. looks at Mytilene in its political context to elucidate Longus’ possible Pompeian sympathies and how they are perhaps reflected in his subversive treatment of Virgil's Aeneid, the epic poem celebrating the Julian clan. This fascinating chapter discusses Longus’ unusual relationship with Virgil's work: how, on the one hand, his pastoral world is heavily influenced by that of the Eclogues, but, on the other, his interactions with Virgil attempt to relegate the most famous of Latin pastoral poets from the literary history of the genre.

The first three chapters of the book focus on Chariton. Chapter 1 investigates his use of the language of Latin elegy: the totalising and obsessive nature of elegiac love, analogies between love and death, and the erotic paranoia and intense jealousy of the elegiac lover. J. argues that Chariton draws heavily on Propertius and to a lesser degree Ovid and Tibullus. I found the arguments of this chapter particularly compelling. The lexical and thematic characteristics highlighted by J. make a strong case for more than a passing acquaintance with Latin elegy on Chariton's part, and the suggested links between Propertius’ Cornelia and Chariton's Callirhoe emphasise that Chariton was not slavishly imitating elegiac material but adapting it with ironic humour.

Chapter 2 explores Chariton's use of embedded letters and their connections to Latin poetry. Although the elegiac epistles of Propertius are mentioned, the main focus here is Ovid's epistolary and exilic poetry. J. explains that Chariton feminises his male protagonists, Chaereas and Dionysius, by linking them to the abandoned heroines of Ovid's Heroides. This is achieved by means of motifs, such as a lover's tears acting as a barrier to composition of a letter and the recognition of a lover's handwriting, which are borrowed from the letters of the Ovidian heroines and included within letters written and received by the male heroes of the novel. Conversely, Chariton creates a connection between Callirhoe and Ovid in exile through allusions to the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the celebrity status of both Ovid and Callirhoe, and their mutual resentment of the very qualities (poetic artistry and pulchritude) that have brought about their fame and concomitant attention from unwanted sources (the anger of Augustus and amorous admirers).

Chapter 3 looks at Callirhoe's connections to Virgil's Aeneid. J. is not the first scholar to suggest that Chariton engages with Virgil's epic poem; however, his search for correspondences is original in that it looks beyond Aeneid 4. J. demonstrates that Chariton's engagement with Virgil is more than just a reimagining of the love affair of Dido and Aeneas, and he makes the case for Chariton's knowledge of the Aeneid in the Latin original rather than a Greek translation.

The next three chapters turn to Achilles Tatius. Chapter 4 is slightly less original in its subject matter than previous chapters, but no less stimulating. J. strides boldly down the pre-trodden, but not well-worn, path of examining Achilles Tatius’ subversion of the novel genre through engagement with Latin erotic elegy, especially Ovid's Ars amatoria. He notes that the relationship of Leucippe and Clitophon lacks the symmetry of that of the other couples of the Greek romance genre; winning over Leucippe requires persuasion, and the art of erotic persuasion requires instruction. J. explores the erotodidactic function of the characters Clinias and Satyrus, the casting of Leucippe as an elegiac puella, and the respective failures and successes of Clitophon and Melite as elegiac lovers. In addition, he revisits a key topic from his Ph.D. thesis, the metaphor of servitium amoris, love as a type of slavery. J. further investigates Achilles Tatius’ use of this metaphor in a context for which there is no extant example prior to Latin elegy.

Fresh territory is explored in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, in which J. moves away from Latin elegy to discuss Achilles Tatius’ engagement with Virgil, Lucan and Seneca. He cogently argues for Aeneid 4 as a significant frame of reference for the relationship between Melite and Clitophon. Like Chariton, Achilles Tatius playfully engages with the epic love story; Dido's tragic ending in abandonment and suicide is reconfigured as a happy one for Melite, who succeeds in persuading Clitophon to engage in sexual intercourse with her as a parting gift. I especially enjoyed J.'s discussion of the destruction of bodies and bodily wholeness. The key example used by J. is the decapitation of the prostitute thought to be Leucippe. J.'s identification of the relationship of this scene to Pompey's murder on the Egyptian coast is complementary to my own theory regarding Achilles Tatius’ exploitation throughout his novel of the intertextual significance of place, i.e. that the locations chosen by Achilles Tatius for key denouements in his novel have intertextual significance, and that these denouements would lose something intrinsic to their artistic worth if they were set elsewhere.

In the conclusion J. poses the question of whether the novels’ engagement with Latin poetry makes them a ‘special case’. He has certainly demonstrated, and convincingly so, that the novelists engage with Latin poetry to a significant degree, and I agree that this level of engagement is probably due to belonging to a new and experimental genre, free of the restrictions of the older genres and their generic codes. However, I do not think J.'s question can yet be answered fully, not until explorations of other genres of imperial Greek literature are subjected to the same scrutiny for evidence of engagement with earlier Latin literature. J.'s book deserves to inspire others to undertake such studies, and I very much hope it does.