While Horace's indebtedness to his other archaic Greek lyric predecessors is well researched in modern scholarship, up until now his reception of Anacreon and the Carmina Anacreontea was not sufficiently explored, although the Teian poet is mentioned by name or by unmistakable allusions. In this book, a revised version of her 2021 PhD thesis, Veronika Lütkenhaus skilfully and thoroughly highlights this largely neglected aspect of Horatian imitation. Thus, she effectively fulfils what is explicitly stated in the Introduction (20) as one of the objectives of her book: ‘it sets out to prove the hitherto unexploited depth of Anacreon's presence in Horace's Odes and Epodes’. This task is significantly facilitated by the fruitful exploitation of the recent Anacreon edition (2020) by Prof. Dr Hans Bernsdorff, her supervisor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

L.'s long Introduction section (11–57) starts with a detailed description of the status quaestionis and the objectives of her study, and continues with a chapter that provides the definitions of key theoretical concepts such as imitatio, aemulatio, influence, allusion, reference, intertextuality and reception. It concludes with a chapter entitled ‘Horace's choice of lifestyle’, where she discusses the evolution of the idea of poetry as a serious professional occupation, investigates the Greek background to Horace's poetry and his self-presentation and connects the public and societal aspect of Horace's life choices both to the conditions of contemporary Rome and to the examples of Callimachus and the Anacreontic poets (57). This is a nice chapter on its own, but sometimes too loosely connected to the main topic of the study.

In the second section (59–155), Horace's dependence on Anacreon is persuasively demonstrated through examination of the Roman poet's intertextual references to well-known topics that point to his Greek lyric predecessor: i) ‘the description of a symposium on the verge of violence’, with a focus on images of wine and inebriation in Odes 1.27, 1.36, 2.7 and Epodes 13; ii) ‘the passive and the active erotic reining and taming’, in a chapter that includes Anacreontic influence on Horace's treatment of — or reaction to — various cases of love (both heterosexual and homosexual) and domination as well as on the Roman poet's use of the erotic δηὖτε motif; iii) ‘the satiric kinship of the two poets and their mockery of old age’, a topic that illuminates another aspect of the intertextual relationship between the two poets, that of invective, and thus demonstrates that Horace adopted all the facets of Anacreon's persona and not only the stereotypical ones of the symposiast and the lover. L. includes in her discussion not only obvious cases of Anacreontic influence (e.g. Odes 1.27 and PMG 356b or Odes 2.5 and PMG 417), but also more hidden ones (e.g. Epodes 15 and PMG 372; Epodes 12 and PMG 424, 432 and 437; Odes 4.13 and PMG 427). Even more impressive is the analysis of cases in which Horace merges different Anacreontic fragments in one ode or epode (cf. the entwining of PMG 360 with PMG 417 in Odes 2.5) or accompanies his allusions to Anacreon with more obvious allusions to other archaic Greek lyric poets such as Alcaeus, Sappho or Stesichorus (e.g. 67–70; 101–12; 116–27).

The third section (157–86) is dedicated to the Carmina Anacreontea and Horace's intertextual relationship with some of the oldest poems of the collection. After some introductory remarks on the dating and character of the anthology, its significance for Horace's lyric and iambic poetry and the division of CA 60 into two different poems, L. meticulously examines various similarities that indicate Horace's imitation of topoi established in the Carmina Anacreontea and cases in which the latter facilitate ‘window references’ to Anacreon. Accordingly, she persuasively deduces that Horace is ‘a Latin Anacreontic’ who not only imitates ‘both Anacreon and the Anacreontea, and Anacreon through the Anacreontea, but […] even imitates the exhortation of the Anacreontea to imitate Anacreon’ (185–6) and thus she argues that his poetry is a ‘literature at the third degree’ (182–6). After an eloquent recapitulation of the main results of L.'s whole research in the Conclusion (187–98), the book closes with a list of Works Cited (199–209) and an Index of Passages Discussed (211–13).

By analysing Horace's subtle allusions to Anacreontic and Anacreontean poems or models in his own Odes and Epodes and elucidating the various ways he artistically appropriates the source text, gives it his own colour and transforms it into Augustan Latin poetry, L.'s book makes a significant contribution to the aesthetics of reception in antiquity and more generally to ancient imitation and intertextuality. However, the merits of this study do not stop here. The reader can also find in it a lot of interesting observations on many other topics, as, for instance, on matters of textual criticism, on the addressees of specific poems, on the unity of CA 60 or on the ring composition between CA 2 and CA 60b. Although some of L.'s ideas are daring and may not convince all her readers (e.g. her discussion regarding the identification of Lalage and Lyce, or the speculation on when and where the Eubuleus poem was composed), her arguments, as a rule, are attractive, sound and compelling. As well as well argued, this book is also well structured, with smooth transitions from one point to another and numerous cross-references. It is written in a clear style and language that is easy to read and is carefully edited.