L.'s volume on ancient Greek and Roman folklore follows naturally from his previous paroemiographical work (e.g. Il proverbio in Grecia e a Roma [2010]). Here, L.'s coverage includes not only proverbs but also folkloric beliefs in such categories as ‘superstition’, ‘medicinal remedies’ and ‘weather forecasts’ (p. 153). He presents folklore that has survived from antiquity continuously through medieval times, the Renaissance and modern times in nine major regions of southern Italy (Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Molise, Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily), whose populations are directly descended from fourth-century c.e. Graeco-Italic families (p. 58). L.'s conclusions result from close readings of classical texts combined with interviews of local residents. This fieldwork comprises a crucial part of his research and adds an anthropological dimension that distinguishes L.'s work from purely philological and literary studies of ancient folklore. Understanding that his findings have uncovered only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ (p. 92), L.'s work does not claim to be comprehensive, but rather constitutes a call to fellow researchers in various fields – historians, philologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists – to create a ‘working group’ to continue studying the survival of ancient folklore in modern Italy (p. 17).

L.'s methodology includes identifying many Greek and Roman words and phrases that signal an oral tradition and therefore a potentially ‘popular’ piece of cultural knowledge being transmitted – terms such as λέγεται, credunt and traditur (pp. 22, 32). He uses such terms to identify hundreds of ancient folk beliefs. L. then composed over 150 questions, many with the expected response concerning the presence or absence of certain beliefs, such as, ‘“Is it bad luck when an owl hoots?” Yes or no’, and so on (p. 62). Then, in ‘an extraordinary collaboration’ with colleagues all over southern Italy, L. administered the questionnaire to hundreds of elderly residents across the nine regions, some via recordings (p. 15). The results are indisputable: over 90% of the topics L. identifies as ancient Greek and Roman folk beliefs are clear matches for information still present among the older residents of southern Italy (pp. 15, 63–4). Expecting criticism of his methods, L. often reminds the reader that his study merely provides a starting point: his results are, at a minimum, important enough to warrant further research.

L.'s eight chapters anticipate the ‘Repertorio’ that closes out the volume (pp. 153–245). This list comprises an inventory of the 207 topics L. encountered when tracing folkloric beliefs from antiquity down through the centuries. Each entry lists the belief(s) associated with it along with its ancient sources and modern testimonies. The entry ‘menstruation’ (123. mestruo), for example, presents the superstition, ‘A menstruating woman withers and ruins anything she touches’ (p. 208), citing Pliny NH 28.77–8, and listing an astonishing total – all 361 interviewees – familiar with such a belief. Sometimes the path from antiquity to modernity appears shaky: the last entry, ‘lameness’ (207. zoppo), says, ‘To see a lame man is bad luck’ (p. 245), when the only ancient source cited is Martial 12.54, in which the brevis pede does not clearly indicate bad luck; rather, the poem suggests that because Zoilus is so ugly, he is also dishonest (i.e. one's exterior reflects one's morals).

Because all the chapters preceding the ‘Repertorio’ refer to it, readers may wish to peruse this inventory before delving into the rest of the volume. In Chapters 1 and 2, his ‘Research Proposal’ and ‘“Popular Culture” According to the Moderns and Ancients’, respectively, L. enumerates the problems he encountered in his study, including the challenges of defining ‘popular culture’ and explaining why the study of folklore in the ancient world is important despite modern scholarly scepticism about the topic (p. 13). L. argues that investigating proverbs, folk songs and other ‘working class’ forms can illuminate the cultural life of men and women who were not of the elite, educated classes and whose interests varied considerably from those of canonical authors such as Cicero and Plutarch, who ‘were not only aware of a popular culture distinct from scholarly and officially transmitted culture’, but viewed it in a manner just as derogatory as that of later scholars (pp. 13, 24–5). L. observes that certain terminology in ancient texts, suggesting ‘popular tradition’ as opposed to educated views, has caused much of the scepticism: wording related to δῆμος and vulgus, to ἀγρός and rus, for example, has been used by both ancient and modern scholars to dismiss the potential significance of the information it signals.

Chapter 3, ‘A Focus on Superstition’, provides numerous examples of the continuity of superstitions and other types of folk belief over the course of 2,000 years. In Chapter 4, ‘A Critical Approach to Ancient “Beliefs”’, L. details his research methodology (summarised above), including historical demographics for the southern Italian regions and specifics about the oral histories he and his colleagues gathered. Chapter 5, ‘Folkloric Continuity and the Reliability of Sources’, discusses authors who recorded superstitions from early Christian times to the nineteenth century c.e., including Church Fathers such as Augustine and later Christian scholars such as William of Auvergne.

Chapter 6, ‘The Texts Surveyed’, lists the more than 130 ancient texts L. consulted for his research. He includes a wide range of authors and genres, such as the treatises of Columella and Varro, plays of Aristophanes and Plautus, Homeric epics, fifteen of Lucian's works, the Twelve Tables and Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics – but not the Aeneid, surprisingly, with its many superstitions. Chapter 7, ‘The Encyclopedia of Natural Correspondences’, discusses the concept of ‘cosmic sympathy’ and its reliance on similarities and oppositions so crucial to folk beliefs worldwide (p. 97). Regarding continuity between antiquity and southern Italy, L. finds the most frequent use of cosmic sympathy in agriculture (p. 98).

In Chapter 9, L. explains how he constructed his ‘Repertorio’ and how to use it. He describes extensively the background for the entry on ‘swallow’, for example, noting that the swallow, though among the most widespread of bird species, is considered bad luck almost only in southern Italy. Similarly, the practice of validating a solemn oath by swearing on a stone (151. pietra), which is then cast into a place where it will be impossible to find, appears mainly in southern Italy, tracing its roots back to Herodotus 1.165, where the Phoceans sink a mass of iron in the sea and swear never to return to Phocaea before the iron reappears. South Italian beliefs in using numbers to confound ‘the evil eye’ find their basis in Catullus as well as in various comments by the Elder Pliny (pp. 128–9; 134. numeri).

One might quibble with minor aspects of the book's production: for such a handsomely produced volume – high quality paper, with a sewn binding – one wishes there were fewer typos (‘Witschcraft’ for ‘Witchcraft,’ p. 19 n. 1; δεισιδαμονίας for δεισιδαιμονίας more than once, e.g. pp. 25, 43). Additionally, the bibliographies and indexes might have been more user friendly. L. provides extensive literature reviews throughout, but hundreds of references appear only in footnotes, while the two end bibliographies are reserved for specific studies on Graeco-Roman and modern Italian popular culture. A general index to refer readers to page numbers on which discussions of specific topics appear is also lacking; the only two indexes list where Latin and Greek words appear in the ‘Repertorio’.

Nevertheless, L.'s volume presents his research findings clearly and convincingly and, because of the variety of topics listed in the ‘Repertorio’, may be of interest to a wide audience of historians, classicists, folklorists and ethnographers. As L. notes, ‘My reading of the Greek and Latin sources is not yet complete … This is one of those investigations that can engage the entire life of a scholar. Research requires different approaches from many disciplines that perhaps only a working group could adequately provide’ (p. 17). This volume is thus an important call for future study to compile a much larger inventory of ancient and modern folklore.