This volume contains revised contributions presented by friends at a conference in Cambridge in January 2013 to celebrate the seventieth birthday of M. D. Reeve, eminent scholar in Classics.

The brief and aetiological article by A. Barchiesi deals with the origin of the name Iulus (cognomen of Ascanius), which according to Cato in his Origines can be reconstructed as < Iolus ‘Little Jupiter’ <*Iouilius or *Iouilos. D. H. Berry identifies additions in various passages of Cicero (In Verrem 2.5, Pro Murena and Pro Milone). At In Verrem 2.5.83 he points out that the adverb denique should be added to the interpolation noted by Ernesti. At 2.5.143 he correctly considers the relative clause quae lautimiae uocantur to be a ‘pedantic gloss’. In Mil. 27 he detects a gloss in a Lanuuinis and subscribes to another two detected by Bake. Equally plausible are the glosses detected at Mil. 46. However, I see no sound reason to seclude the emphatic term arma in Mil. 96. D. Butterfield defends the view that the differences found in Lucr., DRN 1.936 (= 4.11) and 1.949 (= 4.24) are due to textual corruptions rather than authorial variants. He also suggests that Quintilian cited the verb contingunt from 1.938 in the form inliniunt, later corrupted into inspirant. In 1.306 Butterfield wonders why Lucretius adopts the surprising form dispansae instead of dispessae. After a meticulous analysis of this passage and 6.509, Butterfield suggests the reading candenti in sole in place of dispansae in sole after Nonius and as reinstated from the Aldine edition of 1515 by Naugerius.

G. B. Conte offers explanations on a number of passages of the Aeneid, previously introduced in the critical apparatus of his 2009 Teubner edition and in his 2016 Critical Notes on Virgil. He changes the punctuation at 9.463 (see, however, J. A. Estévez and L. Rivero, Latomus 70 (2011), 697–701) and keeps the singular cogit of the codices; he satisfactorily explains the text transmitted at 10.366 with no need for any change, following the line of Naugerius, De la Cerda and Heinsius; he proposes a number of seclusions: et genus ab Iove summo at 1.380, 4.126 (= 1.73) conubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo, 9.151 (= 2.166); he chooses to read Iuppiter ille at 7.110 rather than Iuppiter ipse; he rightly opts for the elegant syntactical Hellenism animum diducitur, although this was already the reading in Naugerius (editio Aldina of 1514, f. 110^r); finally, he follows Bentley and Kenney in changing incautum to incautus at 10.386.

M. Deufert, in view of the lack of external evidence for interpolations in Lucretius, attempts to reconstruct critical signs at an early stage of the transmission. He considers spurious some rubricated lines in the archetype (2.42–3, 2.706a, 2.710, 3.672a, 3.759, 3.805 and 3.949). M. R. Gale is set on regarding Catullus’ opening poem not as a poetic programme but the ‘construction of an ideal reader for the Catullus corpus’. I must admit to deriving more enjoyment from the first two excellent footnotes on the defence of arido (1.2) and < o > patrona virgo (1.9) than from the following theoretical literary considerations.

The long article by E. Gee explores the intertextual relationship between Cicero's Aratea and Lucretius’ De rerum natura. Thus, in the description of the Dog Star Lucretius (2.700–6, 5.878–906, 4.732–43) is inspired by Cicero's Aratea 107–19 and the passage on the snakes (5.32–4) also shows traces of Cicero (Aratea 34 and 214–18). There is a very interesting analysis of how Lucretius is influenced by Palaephatus; see also M. Alganza, ‘En torno a las metamorfosis “increíbles” de Paléfato’, in M. C. Álvarez and R. M. Iglesias (eds), Y el mito se hizo poesía (2012), 29–47.

S. J. Heyworth's contribution is outstanding for its admirable and painstaking treatment of the textual problems of Heroides 16. Heyworth considers the old question of the authenticity of letters 16–21, ruled out by some (Lachmann or Courtney) and defended by others (Kenney). These letters have begun to be read as amatory works written in exile (Barchiesi). Heyworth accepts this theory and posits posthumous publication for letters 16–21. He goes on to review the transmission of 16.39–144 and 21.145–248, the text of which first appears in the editio Parmensis of 1477 (π) by Stephanus Corallus, who notes that the passages are additi ex antiquissimo codice. Recently, the text has also been found in an incunable from Treviso (τ), probably from the year 1475 and independent of the Parma edition, as Heyworth shows in his comparative analysis, in particular of line 136, where τ reads incaluisse, rightly defended by Heyworth, for the intonuisse of π. Heyworth acts like a doctor curing possible corruptions or like a surgeon extirpating tumours of varying degrees of gravity introduced into the text by external factors, but without totally removing vital organs. So, for example, he rejects the idea that length is a weighty argument to rule out the authenticity of letter 16; he suspects that fama has been introduced into l. 38 to link l. 37 to 135ff.; he considers ll. 38–9 to have been ‘designed to fill a gap’, and he spiritedly defends the reading crede sed (l. 145) and proposes the simple conjecture solis ad occasus for inter formosas (l. 144); he deletes ll. 49–50 and not the whole block 39–144, as well as forcibly removing ll. 97–8.

L. B. T. Houghton analyses the political use which was made of the fourth eclogue of Virgil among relief artists, painters and writers in Renaissance Venice. It is hardly surprising, then, that Naugerius (1483–1529) should be inspired by Virgil's eclogue in the composition of the Genethliacon pueri nobilis (Lusus 44). M. Leigh argues that Catullus 68.1–40 is the introduction and 68.41–160 the body of a single poem, and that we are not dealing with two individual compositions as has been accepted by most editors today. S. J. V. Malloch retrieves the contributions by the young Valens Acidalius (1567–1595), whose Notae in Taciti opera were compiled by his brother Christianus and published posthumously in Hannover in 1607. Malloch analyses numerous passages of Annales judiciously emended by Acidalius, some of which were previously presented in his Cambridge commentary on Annales 11.

L. Morgan analyses Tristia 1.10 as an effort on the part of the poet to demonstrate that even in exile he was still Ovid, the one and the same poet he had always been, with all his poetic ingenium, and protected by Minerva. S. P. Oakley demonstrates meticulously and beyond all doubt that all the incunabula of Priscian's Periegesis are dependent on the editio princeps. If anything might be added to this splendid contribution on textual transmission, I would suggest reading F. Rico, En torno al error (2004). R. Tarrant announces a new edition of Horace for OCT. His edition will be based on a reading of all the codices from before 1100 and a selection of other, later ones. The critical apparatus will attempt not to fall into the obscurity of that of Klingner, but to maintain the clarity of Shackleton Bailey's and offer more information on manuscript readings and conjectures. He will publish Horace's works in chronological order: Satires, Epodes, Odes I–III, Epistles I, Epistula ad Florum, Carmen Saeculare, Odes IV, Epistula ad Augustum, Ars Poetica.

Having read the volume with great enjoyment, I am left with the pleasing impression that disciples and colleagues alike have paid a touching tribute out of gratitude, respect and admiration for the rigorous and impeccable scholarly career of M. D. Reeve, whose rich bibliography closes the volume (322–38; to which now add ‘The medieval tradition of Cicero's Verrines’, ExClass 20 (2016), 16–90).