This new volume is the result of a very effective collaboration between P. and Z., two great specialists of Eratosthenes' Catasterisms. The text has been established by P. and the translation is provided by Z., whereas the introduction and the extensive comments are co-authored.

The introduction is divided into five chapters. The first is dedicated to Eratosthenes, and gives a very useful and up-to-date presentation of the author's life. Furthermore, it describes the different parts of Eratosthenes' scholarly activity and explains which of its fields were relevant for the Catasterisms. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the content of the Catasterisms and highlight the specificity of Eratosthenes' contribution in ancient astronomy. These pages also contain a detailed analysis of the structure that Eratosthenes gave his collection, provide useful information about the form each story took and explain the choices he made when selecting the constellations that he includes in his collection. A large part is also dedicated to the sources which were available to Eratosthenes and the way he uses them. Finally, P. and Z. focus on the concept of catasterism, discuss its origin and explain the difficulties which are linked to its use since Antiquity. Chapter 4 deals with the reception of the work and the different adaptations, revisions and summaries which came down to us and finally Chapter 5 describes the history of the text.

P. takes great effort to present the difficult history of the transmission of the text. The original work, which was a collection of mythological stories explaining the names and the shapes of the most important constellations, has not come down to us. We rely therefore on different witnesses from Antiquity which are more or less close renderings of the original work and contain unfortunately many different readings. Because of this instability of the text, P. gives for each mythological story a very detailed apparatus criticus in which not only the variant readings of the manuscripts are given, but also the conjectures and propositions made by modern editors, especially when their interventions have been confirmed by more recently discovered manuscripts. In his choices, and hence in the presentation of the texts, P. is driven by the idea that because of the complexity of the transmission of the text each of the several stages through which the text went should be perceivable when reading the collection of mythological stories. In this approach he follows Bernabé, who sees the critical edition of a given text from Antiquity as a kind of ‘radiographie de la transmission’ (A. Bernabé, Manual de crítica textuale y edición de textos griegos [1992]). As P. acknowledges, the task was particularly difficult for the second, so-called astrothetic, part of each story. It deals with the description and identification of the several stars that form the constellations and these elements have constantly been altered, adapted and renewed by subsequent contributors or correctors of the text, which led to often contradictory readings in the different branches of the transmission. However, the reader is well prepared for the text and its difficulties, as the different stages of transmission, the several witnesses of the text and its large and diversified reception are explained in much detail in several sections of the introduction. For instance section 2 of Chapter 2 (‘L’état actuel de l'ouvrage') is very helpful as well as, of course, Chapter 4 (‘La tradition des Catastérismes et des Phénomènes’) and Chapter 5 (‘Le texte des Catastérismes’), so that P.'s choices and his presentation of the text become perfectly understandable.

The most distinctive feature of this new edition is, however, the fact that for each mythological story two versions are given. The text of the so-called Epitome, the oldest preserved abbreviation of Eratosthenes' work, is followed by the version transmitted in the Fragmenta Vaticana. This is an important witness of a different recension of the text which has not always received the attention it deserves. This editorial choice, therefore, provides new texts which were not easily accessible previously and helps to shed further light on some of the stories. The choice also highlights P.'s assumption that Eratosthenes' original work cannot be recovered except through the juxtaposition of the several reworked versions which we still possess.

The translation was entrusted to Z., whose large experience in translating ancient Greek texts is a further asset to the undertaking, especially as he has already produced a French translation of Eratosthenes' Catasterisms (J.P. Brunet, P. Charvet, R. Nadal, A. Zucker, Eratosthène, Le Ciel. Mythe et histoire des constellations [1998]). The two translations, although very close in their wording, are still distinct and adapted to the scope and the audience of each of the works. Z.'s contribution is particularly useful for the new translation he gives for the texts of the Fragmenta Vaticana, as it makes this version of the Catasterisms now available to a wide range of readers who may not all have the same level of skills in the original language. The extensive comments that accompany the translations are extremely helpful for the understanding of this interesting but still difficult text and this is certainly true for everyone, readers and scholars alike, who will work with this edition in the future. P. and Z. explain the different, mainly Greek, mythological traditions to which the texts allude and help to link the preserved elements to their larger context. They also give many details about the constellations involved and this requires comments on the Egyptian or Babylonian antecedents. Finally, they often add much needed information about the wording of the preserved text, its apparent incoherencies or when the choices either with regard to the Greek text or the French translation need further explanation. The volume is followed by a very full bibliography, which will provide an indispensable starting point for further research on any topic related to the Catasterisms.

This new volume is a very successful undertaking, which will make this unfortunately still seldom read collection of stories more widely accessible. This is particularly desirable as the theme of the work, the catasterisms, and the names of the constellations which these stories explain, still belong to our cultural heritage. Moreover, this work is an extremely valuable complement to the many studies P. and Z. have dedicated to Eratosthenes' Catasterisms and should therefore be seen as the result of all their efforts.