A clear-sighted introduction gives way to four chapters that amply fulfil Christopher Trinacty's objective of ‘plac[ing] Senecan tragedy in its Roman literary context and explor[ing] Seneca's relationship with his literary predecessors, in particular, the strong influence of the Augustan poets (Vergil, Horace, and Ovid)’ (2). Ch. 1, perhaps the most ambitious of the four in its bridging of Seneca's philosophical prose and his tragedies, examines instances where Vergil and Ovid are quoted in the prose works — quotations of passages that are also evoked in the tragedies. T. tests for similarity and difference in Seneca's allusive technique across the prose/verse divide, and he offers many acute close readings to uphold what few Senecan scholars would now deny — that Seneca's ‘desire to reinterpret’ the Augustans in their new context is manifest in both his prose and poetry (26; cf. 59–61).

Ch. 2 explores the intertextual genealogy of Seneca's Phaedra and Medea, especially in relation to Ovid's treatment of both characters; Ovid is singled out for attention here partly to highlight Seneca's refining of rhetorical techniques and emphases that are already flaunted by Ovid, and partly to showcase in and for Senecan tragedy the generic hybridity that T. traces back to Ovid in particular. The focus turns in ch. 3 to the complex intertextual archaeology that T. claims for what he characterizes as ‘certain formal elements of Seneca's tragedies – the prologue speaker, choral songs, and messenger speeches’ (128); Juno (in Hercules Furens) and Oedipus command the spotlight before T. considers various aspects of the Senecan chorus in relation to Horatian lyric and finally probes epic features of the messenger speeches in Troades and Phaedra. In ch. 4, the proem to Georgic 3 and Horace's Ars Poetica figure prominently as T. widens his ambit, delivering ‘readings of additional moments in which Seneca seems interested in offering a view of his poetics through the intertextual critique of his precursors’ (186). A brief epilogue (233–6) restates the ground covered, concisely rounding out the efficiently organized and clearly signposted argument that unites the four main chapters.

The fact of Seneca's close engagement with the Augustan poets in his tragedies is well known, but T.’s study is nevertheless distinguished by the systematic rigour with which he examines the phenomenon from multiple angles; by the stress he places on Seneca's intertextual practice not as an end in itself but as a highly creative means by which to impose his own imprint on the tragic genre (234–5: ‘a close reading of Seneca's language uncovers hidden connections to Augustan literature and individuates his view of tragedy as a genre … metaliterary language helps to distinguish Seneca's project as an active reenvisioning of his predecessors’ works within the tragic genre’); and, perhaps above all, by the sheer perceptiveness and novelty of many of T.’s close readings. The book teems with fresh insights into the intertextual richness of the tragedies, and even if the reader is not always convinced by T.’s proposals in point of detail, they are consistently thought-provoking and persuasive in their overall demonstration of Seneca's intertextual methodology. Certain claims stretch at least this reader's credulity (e.g., 38 for the Laius summoned forth in necromancy in Oedipus related to Vergil as father-like source of intertextual reference; 194–5 for Med. 861 servat … colorem [sc. Medea] freighted with [too?] much interpretive weight in relation to Hor., Ars 86 servare … colores; 201 for modus as ‘limit’ at Ag. 691–2 constrained to imply ‘metre’; 219 for Oed. 536 edax vetustas echoing Ov., Met. 15.872, but then cast as able ‘also [to] be seen as a textual marker for discussions of poetic immortality’ in its new context). T. anticipates such objections (cf. 235), naturally conceding the subjective nature of certain interpretive emphases; but in general he shows good judgement in proposing intertextual contact-points that are for the most part plausible and in many cases as eye-opening as they are persuasive.

For all the strengths of the detailed readings that T. offers, the brief conclusions to the four main chapters are a little anticlimactic in feel, often resorting to safe generality rather than adding provocative stings in the tail. Then two wider concerns, the first of them prompted by T.’s use of terminology: while he is committed to an intertextual reading of Seneca tragicus in relation to the Augustan poets, it soon becomes apparent from his case-studies that by ‘intertextuality’ T. for the most part means direct Senecan allusion to a given source text, and not the more open mode of negotiation between texts that the term denotes in the larger theoretical discourse of the last decades; in this respect the book shows a more progressive ambition in the specifics of its readings than in its theoretical underpinnings. Secondly, T.’s focus on intertextual contact with the Augustan poets yields rich insights into the allusive complexities of Seneca's writing, but the committedly ‘literary’ approach on display here barely addresses the possible philosophical (cf. 28 for disavowal on this front) and sociopolitical resonances of the tragedies in their early Imperial context. T.’s intertextual agenda gains definition and a sureness of touch by remaining limited in scope, but he himself gestures at the fascinating sociopolitical implications of his own study — implications that are nevertheless left undeveloped, their potential unfulfilled (so, e.g., 17: ‘Seneca observes the promise of the Augustan period steadily eroding around him, and selected references draw attention to fissures already present in the works of Vergil and Ovid, especially references to issues such as civil war and the drawbacks of rule by one man’). Yet pressures of space of course limit T.’s room for manoeuvre, and the fact remains that his intertextual approach has yielded a book of great value to specialists in the fields of both Augustan poetry and Senecan tragedy.