There is no longer any need to excuse, herald or overly contextualise the publication of a book on Greek poetry of the Roman Imperial period. In English, there have been published since 2001 alone two substantial monographs on Nonnus, and a monograph and conference proceedings on Quintus Smyrnaeus, in addition to a number of commentaries, translations and editions on both these poems and a range of others (including the Orphic Argonautica) in other languages. The horizon promises an ever growing list of works forthcoming on poets such as Oppian, Triphiodorus and Dionysius Periegetes. These traditionally non-canonical authors are no longer quarries, targets of critical Quellenforschung, and are being integrated into University undergraduate and graduate curricula. M.C.'s book is a landmark in the developing scholarly discourse on these works. She has written a long-needed overview of all the Greek hexameter poetry extant (and non-extant) from 200–600 a.d., and includes in her discussion works written before or outside the Egyptian Thebaid. She concentrates in particular on Nonnus and his (so-called) successors, and combines a wide range of evidence, papyri and inscriptions in addition to the manuscripts, to construct a new understanding of the intrinsic nature and relationship of these poems, beyond the ‘obsolete model of the so-called “School of Nonnus”’ (preface).

M.C. covers much ground. Her study encompasses a synthetic treatment of the key figures who comprise Nonnus' predecessors and successors, an analysis of the metrical evolution, poetics and content of the (mainly) epic poems from the third century onwards, as well as (the most important contribution to scholarship in this book) a comprehensive overview of the role of culture and education in Panopolis and its influence on and manifestation in the rhetorical elements in the poetry. At every step of the discussion, M.C. derives evidence from a wide range of primary evidence, and is extremely thorough in footnoting a diverse range of scholarship (this approach, combined with the thorough index, makes her book an excellent starting point or bibliographic guide to poetry and education in this period and setting). M.C. accepts a chronologically diverse range of opinions on these poems, and therefore rarely challenges what are at times doubtful opiniones communes. To take just two examples: in the first chapter, M.C. makes the unqualified statement that the Posthomerica was composed to replace the lost epic cycle. This has never been determined, and in fact is still a matter of debate. Again, she puts forward a number of disparate claims on the dating of Triphiodorus' Sack of Troy, but does not settle on one herself, based on the evidence she gives. M.C. is exhaustive in her scholarly comparanda, but often she leaves the reader to read further rather than give a synthesis of scholarship and a definitive conclusion. Despite this clear conservatism, however, M.C. has read widely, and points to this research at every turn.

Style forms the subject matter of Chapters 3 and 4, after the second chapter which focussed on poetics (in particular the baroque, poikilos-style normally associated with the Dionysiaca). M.C. locates rhetorical patterns and set-pieces within the poetry of Nonnus and his immediate poetical context in Egyptian education in the third to the sixth centuries c.e., in particular Panopolis. Late-antique poetics are such, according to M.C., because of the progymnasmata of secondary education. In her fourth chapter, we find exegesis of a number of passages to illustrate types of narrative, ecphrasis, ethopoeia and encomium. M.C. makes repeated use of earlier rhetorical handbooks and treatises associated with another ‘so-called’, the Second Sophistic, and leaves the reader in no doubt of the strong connection between education and poetic production: her line of argument is especially convincing to explain the prevalence of ecphraseis in late-antique Greek poetry. M.C. does allow for the possibility of poets playing off one another, but this factor is not given the attention it deserves. Education played a role in all hexameter poetry, but especially so in Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic production. This is not a new type of education which M.C. artfully shows is behind the texts of Late Antiquity, and can therefore only partially account for the particular type of poetic aesthetics which characterise Nonnus and his successors (and, without doubt, his predecessors, especially poets such as Oppian). These are hexameter poems caught, inevitably, within a tradition, and that tradition is poetic. Many studies have now shown the demonstrable influence of Hellenistic poetics on Imperial Greek poetry (one thinks of Hopkinson's edited collection of essays on Nonnus in 1994 as a key starting point, and especially M. Whitby's essay). Even the nature of ecphrasis leads back to the innovations in narration evident in, for example, Moschus and Apollonius. M.C. has shown one side of the coin well. There is still much work to be done to understand and further demonstrate the link between Hellenistic poetry and its slow evolution which led to the style of Nonnus. This book does not ignore third-century c.e. Alexandria, however, and to be fair to M.C. it is not an important concern for her thesis, but it surely has as much claim as the progymnasmata. A Bloomsian anxiety of influence causes excess, more ecphraseis, similes and other features that the source of influence itself displays: inevitably Homer. Nonnus' self-proclaimed poetic father is refracted through Hellenistic poetry, and it this lens which surely is the most important.

This study will be essential reading for all working or embarking on study of Imperial Greek poetry. It is detailed, scholarly and encompassing. M.C. has raised important issues which inevitably change our preconceptions on the School of Nonnus, especially on the importance of rhetorical education. As M.C. states in the preface, this is a translation of the original doctoral thesis in Spanish: there are (therefore) frequent awkward expressions in the English which detract at times from the clarity of exposition.