As the volume's informative introduction shows, Greek and Latin epic with its extensive interest in space, its culturally inspired differences in articulating this discourse, and the unifying themes that reveal common conceptions, is a key player in the ‘spatial turn’ characterising recent sociological and literary studies. The seventeen essays of the volume all subscribe to and jointly fulfil its aim to examine how ancient epic conceptualises and represents space, and to establish the extent to which such spatial configurations influence the creation of epic narrative.

In the first contribution, J. Haubold persuasively argues that Homer's awareness of ancient ethnographic discourse is not, as one might expect, manifest in lengthy digressions describing faraway peoples and lands, but in an ethnographic-type contrast between mortals and gods, with the latter displaying typical ‘exotic’ traits such as different food, language, customs and dress. Next, A. Purves unpicks the Homeric process of narrative layering by means of nesting natural and wild space, with its associations of depth, mystery and hiding, in digressions, flashbacks and similes, a process often unambiguously signposted in the text with the word πυκνός (‘thick’). D. Lateiner's thorough analysis rounds off this section by examining the various ways (objective vs subjective, distance vs close proximity) in which space is configured, and emphasising the role of the audience's shared experiences and the presence of everyday life similes in aiding its conceptualisation. Moving on to Hesiod, A.T. Edwards looks at the Works and Days’ structure around two polar opposites, the field where toil is now a prerequisite for justice and prosperity (unlike the time of the generation of gold), and the market where idleness promotes unfair judgements and ill-gotten wealth. K. Ormand's perceptive reading of the story of Atalanta in the Catalogue of Women then reveals how the poet evokes within the same narrative the contexts of race, hunt and battle, bringing into relief the heroine's desire that motivates both her movement and her pause.

Turning to Apollonius’ Argonautica, E. Sistakou investigates counterfactual spaces (such as fantasy lands, other worlds, illusions, visions and spaces of desire), pointing out the permeability and fluidity of their boundaries. Memories and monuments of earlier travelling heroes are also inscribed in the landscape to be picked up by the Argonauts as they move through it. Memorialisation is also at the heart of K. Carvounis's analysis of the Posthomerica, where imperial antiquarianism is evident in the reworking of landmarks and monuments which combines the Hellenistic tradition of aetiology with Homeric characters’ desire to be talked about by generations to come. Finally, R. Shorrock's essay on Nonnus’ Dionysiaca examines the various ways in which the river Hydaspes acts as boundary, both geographical as the entry point to India, and narrative, as it marks the mid-way point in the epic; the beginning of the poet's engagement with the Iliad; a challenge of Callimachean proportions; and, through parallelism to the Nile, a boundary-cancelling device affecting both the plot and the poem's relationship to the epic tradition.

In the Roman half of the volume, J. Elliott's tentative presentation of the geographic distribution of events in Ennius’ fragments highlights the prominence of the East and the ideological charge of certain locations such as ancestral Troy and decadent Eastern kingdoms, whereas the three lengthier fragments offer a better idea of the use of space to communicate the characters’ personal perspectives and power relationships to one another. Next, S. Kyriakidis traces the journey of Aeneas between two places where etymologies (‘clear’ Delos and ‘hidden’ Latium) seem to be reversed; the wanderings of the Trojans in the Aeneid are comparable to those of Delos itself, with Virgil engaging selectively with the Homeric Hymns and Callimachus in the description of the invisible/visible, errant/immobile island, and pinpointing its geographic position within the text of his poem. For his part, S. unpicks the various layers in the landmarks of Caieta's harbour and Circe's land which are ultimately linked not only by means of shared symbolic functions of the women who gave their names to them, but also through their resemanticisation which activates and integrates within the new Western landscape the memory of their original Eastern cultures. Z.'s analysis of epic space in the Metamorphoses focuses on place names evoking specific etymologies that make them particularly apt for their respective episodes, as well as on the playful displacement of centres such as Delphi and Rome in order for the intervening stories of love and transformation to visualise the transition of Greek myth to a Roman milieu that the poet undertakes. A. Keith's detailed examination of the Argonautica and the Thebaid confirms the Flavian poets’ creative engagement with the Metamorphoses, which in the former case translates in elaborating on Ovidian descriptions of the Argonauts’ journey and the events at Colchis, and in finding inspiration in intertexts that present places of desire and seduction. As for Statius, overviews, itineraries and settings of the Metamorphoses are closely followed in the creation of a Theban landscape which, while still deadly and full of dangers, does not take unawares the Ovidian reader who strays in it.

E. Bexley discusses Lucan's use of epic catalogues, the inversion of which redraws the map of imperial conquest and anticipates the outcome of the respective armies’ struggles. The crossing of rivers and seas, especially by Caesar, signifies transgression and questions the character's morality, whereas traditional use of etymologies and genealogies is subverted in keeping with the epic's chaotic central theme, civil war. Next, R. Parkes demonstrates how Statius encourages comparison between the Argive army and other characters on the same route that are faster or driven by a less selfish motivation. The progress of the army is delayed by encounters, the landscape itself and the winding, almost invisible path that they and the narrative trace on their way to civil war, leaving their mark on a landscape that is bound to retain the memory of their journey. H. Slaney examines the voyage of the Argo as an itinerary through the familiar which contradicts the ship's claim to primacy but is in line with other colonial narratives of the Flavian period. Even though their purpose is the retrieval of the Golden Fleece, their rapacity, battles against monsters and opening up of unknown sea routes turns their voyage into an imperialistic expedition which transfers existing geographic knowledge, often replete with stereotypes, onto the new landscapes it encounters. Finally, G. Manuwald explains that Valerius’ selective provision of geographical information serves the poem's aim to emphasise the novelty of seafaring for the Argonauts. Repeated references to boundaries between Europe and Asia, together with landmarks which lie on their borders or divide them, stress the clash of the two continents that is the outcome of this pioneering journey.

The extensive indexes at the end facilitate the reader's access to treatments of specific themes, texts and plots. A more widespread presence of cross-referencing in the footnotes would make such selective browsing even easier. The volume, however, can happily be read from beginning to end, to give the student of epic, ancient geography and the representation of space in literature an impressive overview of topics and approaches. Even though the editors acknowledge their prioritisation of thematic unity over comprehensive coverage, Silius Italicus’ Punica and Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae, both of which are rife with spatial configurations, would have been welcome additions, especially given that there is no Latin work later than the first century a.d. to counterbalance the two Greek late-antique epics examined.