The subtitle of this book, ‘politics in prose’, foreshadows the author's intent to pioneer a new approach to the topic of magistracy. A study like F. Pina Polo, The Consul at Rome: the Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic (2011), or the recent edited volume, Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic (2015), provides prosopographical data, articulates stages of development and explicates the system underlying individuals’ behaviour. By contrast, Ayelet Haimson Lushkov argues, literary analysis of historiographical narratives provides the material for an investigation of moral and political complexities, and enriches our understanding of Roman political culture. In the epilogue at the end of the book, L. turns to drama as an analogue for history in order to explicate her methodology: historiography, like tragedy, often gives us ‘a vivid depiction of conflict and resolution, action and reaction, causes and motivations, emotional choices, and a didactic framework to leverage the aesthetic into the morally useful’ (172). Stories about magistracy provide a different kind of evidence than historical data, and thus allow L. to shed new light on magistracy, in L.’s words, ‘as a textual phenomenon’ (3). L. particularly selects passages which illustrate how conflicting interpretations of how a candidate or an elected magistrate ought to behave arise, and how those conflicts are ultimately resolved. Almost all of these case studies come from Livy, and almost all have to do with consuls or consular candidates, especially episodes in which a candidate's or a consul's claim to legitimacy or authority is challenged.

L. proposes reading magistracy through the heuristic of exemplarity, invoking the models of M. Roller (C.Phil. 99 (2004), 1–56) and J. Chaplin, Livy's Exemplary History (2000) in particular. She suggests that magistracy has a ‘triple valence when it comes to exemplary discourse’ because it ‘participates in the construction of other exempla’, provides a vehicle for individuals to act in a conspicuously exemplary way, and acts as a microcosm of sorts for the Republic as an ideological construct (4). L.’s definition of exemplary discourse seems to encompass individual magistrates’ attempts to assert moral excellence of various kinds (that is, exemplary qualities) as well as historians’ use of individual characters to prove more general points or illustrate moral truths. Her operating definition of exemplarity is thus broader than either Roller's or Chaplin's, sometimes stretching too far: not every event or personality trait necessarily warrants the label of exemplum, nor does every instance of evaluation or judgement fall under the umbrella of exemplarity.

In narratives such as L. selects, the ancient historian reveals multiple, conflicting interpretations of an individual's behaviour, which result from different views of how politics should work. He then narrates the process of how conflict developed and how it was resolved — that is, what political values carried the day. Ch. 1, for instance, presents cases in which consular auctoritas comes up against patria potestas in Livy's narratives. Ch. 2 deals primarily with Livy's narrative of the Roman disaster at the Caudine Forks and its aftermath in Book 9, particularly with the failures and redemptive successes of consular figures. Some of L.’s identifications of intratextual verbal echoes and examples of ring composition in Livy's episodes assume an almost Alexandrian attention to detail and intricacy. L. does not always provide historical or narrative context for the episodes (or full tria nomina for the individual characters) she brings into the discussion. Combined with the non-chronological organization of the case studies within each chapter, the overall effect is sometimes disorienting. However, L. is consistently conscientious about linking elements in each passage study to prominent tropes and motifs across Livy's narrative.

The author writes that ch. 3 ‘explores the construction of the magisterial (in this case, primarily consular) persona as a military figure and focuses in particular on how a specific context — electoral rhetoric — and a specific mannerism — the production of exempla — together fashion an image of the magistrate as a stereotype or embodiment of a Roman ideal’ (99), and that the chapter further revolves around the ‘army-as-city topos’ (98). In fact, the chapter's focus is narrower than this implies: L. selects episodes in which individuals intervene in the electoral process to assert that military achievements should be a prerequisite for election to the consulship, including attempts by soldiers in the field to carry out pseudo-elections of their own. Ch. 4 also focuses on elections, this time on candidates whose eligibility is contested on civil grounds, and on those candidates’ efforts to control the process and to decide the outcome. Only narrative, L. notes, fully spells out the motivations, actions and arguments of such assertive leaders as they confront opposition and resistance, and ‘the creative process whereby characters rise to exert authorship and auctoritas over the yearly narratives of the Roman state’ (132). Some of L.’s case studies highlight the use of propaganda or political theatre to project authority, or the effect of individual candidates’ machinations on the integrity of the electoral process as a whole. However, a precise sense of an integrated Livian (or generally Roman) ideology of the consular type, the sum total of the boundaries drawn in the individual case studies, remains elusive.

L.’s literary methodology offers an appealing new angle on the subject, and the case studies are often insightful, if not always joined together in a cohesive way. Stronger, more specific statements of purpose throughout the book would have enhanced the project's impact. However, that does not diminish the value of the case studies themselves, and the author makes a good case for the benefits of literary analysis and narrative as a source of understanding for historical institutions, which should be thought-provoking both for historians and for philologists.