This volume has its origins in a panel at the ‘Feminism and Classics’ conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2008, and is made up of thirteen chapters, the first of which is the editors' short introduction. The collection is intended as a provocative contribution to the interpretation of material considered to be ‘obscene’; the plural ‘obscenities’ of the title is intended to encapsulate a variety of approaches which attempt to ‘understand and theorize the more abstract concept “obscenity” through various of its individual manifestations’ (p. 2). And indeed, when one reads this volume from start to finish, it does present a wide range of analyses of moments at which we can read ‘obscene content’ in the Greek and Roman worlds in a range of contexts (religious, forensic, triumphal, theatrical, satirical etc.), at the point of production or later reception, including the visual, verbal and gestural. A broad chronological and geographical sweep takes the reader from (Part 1 ‘Greece’) Homeric hymns and other early texts through to the more familiar works of Classical Athens, to (Part 2 ‘Rome’) Plautus, the Carmina Priapea, Pompeian graffiti and wall painting, and ending with a queer reading of Juvenal, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century translations of Juvenal and Catullus into English (Part 3 ‘Ancient Obscenities and Modern Perceptions’). There are riches to be found here in all contributions, and a wealth of material in these various case studies, which is often deployed in innovative ways, even if not all authors wear their learning lightly.

For this reviewer, however, this variety of approaches is in one sense a weakness of the volume when read as a unity: each of the contributions in turn, albeit some more deftly and succinctly than others, tackles the problem of defining the term ‘obscenity’, from ancient or modern perspectives (or both). This leads to a great deal of (sometimes frustrating) repetition, and one is left with the feeling that the editors missed a chance in the introduction to pull together these various definitions and allow the individual chapters – almost always thought-provoking and fresh even when they cover familiar material – to sing for themselves. As it stands, the introduction is mostly a recapitulation of the contents of the book; I yearned for it to do more work of synthesis. I would also raise the broader and more pressing question of scope: obscenity in this volume is rarely taken to indicate anything other than mentions of sexual activity or the genitals, with a lesser role played by scatological matters; the cover image of an Attic pelikê showing a female figure watering or sowing a row of penises thus reflects the editors' association of sex and the genitals with the concept of obscenity (the only chapter which eschews sex altogether is that by S. Levin-Richardson, as below). This focus on sexual material is entirely reasonable from the modern perspective, since obscenity and sex are inextricably linked in the modern Western imagination; the text on the inside front fly-leaf tells us from the outset that it is ‘explicit representations of the body in its excretory and sexual functions’ which are of interest for the volume, but this focus misses the chance to explore the bigger question as to the range of ancient concepts of social taboo and to interrogate how far our range of culturally ‘difficult’ topics overlaps with those of the Greeks or Romans at any particular time – a genuine opportunity to explore the greater possible multiciplicity of ‘obscenities’ in the plural. Ancient obscenity will always be sexual if defined from the outset as occupying the same cultural space as in the modern West (in this light the title of Part 3 could be applied to other parts of this volume). There is indeed a sense that such more radical conversations were closed down by the editors, which strikes this reviewer as a real shame (I would highlight D. Lateiner, Chapter 5, ‘Ou kata Nomon. Obscene Acts and Objects in Herodotos’ Histories’, p. 91 and n. 2 [=p. 113]). Even if the editors chose not to adopt this more radical approach, I would have enjoyed hearing more of the debate which underpinned their decision. Lateiner's chapter stands out in this respect as a highlight of the volume, and his opening pages (pp. 91–100) should be read as an introduction to these broader issues which underlie the volume as a whole; the contribution is a must-read for anyone interested in questions of historical offence and cultural difference.

I suspect that this will, though, be a work mostly read for its constituent chapters, rather than from cover to cover (endnotes and bibliography are printed together with each chapter). Even so, some chapters deserve to be read together: the first three contributions in Part 1 by S. (Chapter 2, ‘The Anasyrma: Baubo, Medusa, and the Gendering of Obscenity’), K. Ormand (Chapter 3, ‘Toward Iambic Obscenity’) and R. Rosen (Chapter 4, ‘Aischrology in Old Comedy and the Question of “Ritual Obscenity”’) in particular form a coherent group, all of them examining at least in part the role of sexual language and gesture in religion and ritual, and aspects of the Iambe episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

Not all readers will be convinced by everything that is offered in the volume, but it is nonetheless a pleasure to be led to view familiar material with new eyes, as with M. Broder's highly accessible reading of Juvenal (Chapter 12, ‘The Most Obscene Satires: a Queer/Camp Approach to Juvenal 2, 6, and 9’), S. Jeppesen's reconstruction of gestures in Plautus (Chapter 8, ‘Obscenity and Performance on the Plautine Stage’) or J. Miner's discussion as to how far the Greek orators pushed their luck with both unsavoury language and topics (Chapter 6, ‘Risk and Reward: Obscenity in the Law Courts at Athens’ – note what appears to be a feminist reclamation of the word cunt [p. 130], one of the more genuinely provocative points in the volume). Equally invigorating is the re-positioning of material in its original setting, as with F. Hickson Hahn's contextualisation of sexual verses sung at the Roman triumph (Chapter 7, ‘Triumphal Ambivalence: the Obscene Songs’) and B. Kellum on how one of the more famous wall paintings from Pompeii would have been both physically viewed and culturally read (Chapter 9, ‘Weighing In: the Priapus Painting at the House of the Vettii, Pompeii’). Of special note is S. Levin-Richardson's wonderful catalogue of scatological – and urinary – Latin graffiti from Pompeii, discussed in light of its topographical and ideological significance (Chapter 10, ‘Bodily Waste and Boundaries in Pompeian Graffiti’): her map of the city (fig. 10.1) deserved to be given much more space. Personal highlights on language and sexual or scatological matters include the chapters by Ormand on Hipponax, and E. Young on ‘linguistic deterioration’ and how Priapus embodies a Latin at the same time both primitive and civilised (Chapter 11, ‘Dicere Latine: the Art of Speaking Crudely in the Carmina Priapea’). This volume highlights above all that the more unseemly and censored aspects of Greek and Roman lives are a fecund area of research in their own right, and that much promising discussion is yet to come: Young's words on poem 67 of the Carmina Priapea might stand as a general verdict on this subject – ‘pedicare has never looked so lovely’ (p. 270).