Pliny the Younger has long inhabited a liminal place in classical scholarship. Respected for his prose, admired for his humanitas, and mined for historical and legal details, he and his writings have not been marginalized as such, nor have they been granted the study and scrutiny devoted to Cicero, Livy or his overshadowing contemporary Tacitus. Balanced between the margin and the centre, Pliny has historically suffered from a lack of attention, which has become circular in its continuity — little has been written on his literary achievement, and so there seems little reason to explore what he might have achieved as a writer. Christopher Whitton's list of editions, commentaries and translations (x–xi) demonstrates the paucity of resources available to the student or scholar looking to read critically Pliny's Epistles. It still remains largely true that if one wants to do a close reading of the Epistles, one has to turn for insight to individual scholarly articles or monographs such as Stanley Hoffer, The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger (1999) (for Book 1) or Ilaria Marchesi, The Art of Pliny's Letters (2008) (for the collection generally) rather than a scholarly commentary.

Into this scholarly milieu, W. has offered a novel publication — a commentary on Pliny's Epistles — for as W. points out (1), his commentary is the first in English on a single book of Pliny since Mayor's on Book 3 well over a century ago (1880). W.'s commentary is most welcome for a number of reasons. First, this is a commentary that can be used in the classroom, a long-standing desideratum. Any student who is ready to read an author critically will find W.'s commentary an invaluable aid for exploring the rich prose of Pliny's letters. The introduction is robust (forty-two pages) and touches upon the matters salient for understanding the letters and the man. There are two sections that will be most useful to students: §4 Prose d'Art and §8 Transmission, Text, Indexes. Both of these address important technical matters in a highly accessible manner; the former is essential for understanding Pliny's literary style. Scholars will also benefit from W.'s edition which offers, in commentary form, a close reading of Pliny's prose informed by recent scholarship. W. convincingly describes Pliny's prose as ‘often understated, always highly worked, his Latinity lays claim to a place among the great achievements of Roman prose’ (28). Here W. hits the mark, and his contribution will help solidify Pliny's rightful place among Latin prose luminaries.

The commentary itself admirably fulfills the expectations set by the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. The notes are a combination of textual analysis, grammatical elucidation and contextual information. Each letter comes with an introduction on the addressee, the topic of the letter, and the political, social or literary background. W. nicely situates each letter within both the book and the collection as a whole. Any critiques on the commentary will likely come from the readers’ perspective: students may find the innumerable references to isocola and chiasmus an obstacle to grammatical understanding, while scholars may find the frequent translation a disruption to the flow of reading. This is more a concern of the series as a whole rather than of W., as these commentaries try to strike the perfect balance between the needs of the student and the scholar. Most readers will find that W. in particular, as with the series in general, more often than not strikes that balance. As a last nod to W.'s close attention to detail, this reviewer was unable to find a single erratum in the entire book.

A parting question on the direction of scholarship on Pliny: Whither now? Commentaries on the remaining nine books of the Epistles to be sure. Yet at long last, we are coming to an awareness of Pliny's literary accomplishment, striking for its rhetorical precision and poetic allusivity. While current scholarship has matured significantly from the days when Pliny was judged on his ability to provide prosopographical detail, what kind of world Pliny was seeking to create through his writings is a question that remains unanswered. This gets close to the quagmire of authorial intent, but lacking a fuller explanation one comes away with the impression that Pliny wrote just to make himself look smart. He was undoubtedly trying to do that, but also certainly more. Scholars would never be satisfied with such an impression for an author like Tacitus. Such matters can never be fully answered for any author, but there at least need to be some plausible answers in the offing, lest we merely demonstrate that Pliny was capable of wielding a sharp stylus.

As evidenced by his excellent commentary, there is no doubt that W. himself will provide some possible answers. W. has created an important tool for the student and scholar of Pliny, which one hopes will encourage emulation.