This thoughtful collection explores the idea of interpretation in two senses: Terence's own ‘interpretation’ of his literary predecessors and posterity's ‘interpretation’ of Terence. The papers are grouped by approach: intertextual studies comprise the first half; reception studies, the second. The book is aimed at scholars, but passages are translated for student readers. There is a brief general index and an index locorum.

There is a nice coherence to this collection. The intertextual studies, by Sophia Papaioannou (hence P., who contributes three chapters as well as the introduction), Jarrett Welsh, Evangelos Karakasis and Alison Sharrock, share some critical assumptions. Theirs is a Callimachean Terence, committed to aemulatio in imitando (variously termed antagonism, correction, supersession and telling it aliter, like Ovid), who self-consciously marks alterations to his intertexts with his own stamp. The focus is on subtleties that would be appreciated by ‘the most experienced and better educated among his audience’ (10), those who knew their Greek authors well and had attended dozens of Latin plays over the years. For example, P. argues that Terence's own ‘Telchines’, the malevoli who accused him of furtum, lacked the knowledge to recognize ‘inventive improvement aiming at superseding the model’ (104). She sees Terence as the victim of a recent, disputed change in the rules of adaptation, defending a new methodology that went unappreciated by his less astute rivals. P. places an emphasis on the scriptedness of Terence's dramas, noting, for example, repeated forms of scribo and poeta in the prologues. She brings a new perspective to familiar topics in Terentian scholarship.

Of particular note are the chapters by Welsh and Sharrock. (Since Karakasis’ fascinating study of allusions to tragedy and epic is kind enough to reflect favourably on my own work, I will not venture to judge it here.) Welsh's learned study of ‘irruptions’ of the traditional linguistic style of Plautus and others (ch. 2: ‘Singing the Sermo Comicus with Terence’) is a good example of the kind of innovation this collection claims for Terence. Welsh examines such passages as Charinus’ song at An. 625–38, where Terence appears to imitate the traditional sermo comicus through such features as sound echoes, lexical choices, prosodic liberties and syntactic variations. It is not, however, mere imitation: the Plautine material is in scare quotes, so to speak, invoked deliberately and self-consciously (here, to underscore that Charinus’ bluster is misdirected).

These are subtleties for the benefit of a select few. Sharrock (ch. 5: ‘Terence, the Corrective Reader and Innovator’) assumes that some audience members know their Menander well enough to appreciate Terentian alterations. For example, in a previously unnoticed pair of parallel passages where a husband withdraws an unkind judgement of his wife (Hec. 607–12 and Epitr. 883–8, 894–9), Sharrock identifies ‘corrections’ of the Menandrian intertext (defined broadly: the Epitrepontes is not a direct source for Hecyra), namely, more economical dramaturgy and an opportunity for the audience to experience the change of mind alongside the character. Terence subtly ‘corrects’ his most Plautine figures towards realism: Phormio is a homage to the servus callidus, but with real-world legal skills; Chremes, Terence's only senex amator, an un-Plautine, developing character whose misdeeds result in serious social consequences. Reference might be made here to the sycophanta type, as Phormio's skills are not entirely unprecedented, and one may not agree that all change is intentional improvement, but this chapter offers many inventive, thought-provoking discoveries.

If there is a common thread in the chapters on reception, it is that Terence was more extensively quoted than read. In an informational survey of Cicero's allusions to Terence (ch. 7), Manuwald concludes that Cicero certainly knew his Terence but did not necessarily import the original, contextual meaning of the quotations he used. Chapters by Maltby (ch. 8) and Demetriou (ch. 9) show a Donatus firmly in the grip of his own a priori assumptions, notably his underlying conception of stock types, evidenced in his remarks on non-verbal behaviours (Demetriou), and his unshakeable belief in Terence's sense of the ‘appropriate’ (proprium), which can lead to bizarre reasoning, as Maltby well illustrates. Brown (ch. 10) offers a fascinating study of interpretations of the Andria from Hrotsvitha to Wilder, via Machiavelli, Mendelssohn (who translated the play at the age of sixteen), Steele and others. For most of its Nachleben, the Andria was little more than a handful of famous quotes, often used — rather like many of Cicero's — without engaging the source. By the end of Brown's illuminating survey, one has the impression that, as far as Terentian literacy goes, Disraeli, Trollope, Churchill, Beckett and a rock band from North Carolina called ‘Your Name in Vain’ are about on par.

This is a reasonably coherent collection. A few repeated treatments of the same topic could have been cross-referenced (for example, Chaerea's rape monologue and the name of the Phormio source play). There are minor inconsistencies in chapters by P. (the reason for the Eunuchus’ success, 104 and 154, whether Naevius and Plautus adapted the same Colax, 39 n. 27 and 104) and some production errors, of which only a few are potentially confusing: 114, five minas, not five hundred; 115, five hundred drachmas, not minas; 205, περίστασις, not per…stasis; 272, add .pdf to the URL for Demetriou 2010. The copyeditor missed some non-standard English usage in a few chapters.