This collection contains a number of excellent studies on Lucan, his poem and its reception which will rightly feature on reading lists and influence future scholarship on BC. However, taken as a whole, the book lacks consistency in quality, cohesion (coherence is disclaimed in the foreword), and it misses some opportunities which compromise its overall success. Its significance reduces to the quality of its individual chapters, which do not as a rule interact with each other. Since it has been entitled a companion, it is fair to suggest that it does not serve the inexperienced reader of Lucan well enough. Especially in its earlier sections it is too attentive to issues that are marginal rather than basic to the understanding of the poem. Henderson writes a retrospective survey of the volume which A. claims obviates the need for an introduction, but the collection wants for a detailed statement of its aims, because the inclusion and classification of some of its chapters are not self-evident.

In Part A, ‘Author’, Fantham (this section's only chapter on the author) gives a full discussion of the evidence for Lucan's life from his infancy to his death; Reed presents BC as operating within the traditions of Roman epic; and Tracey makes a sophisticated argument for a complete poem, using Acoreus' Nile excursus as an internal model for deliberately open-ended narratives. Tracey's chapter is an incisive reading of the Nile excursus, but unconvincing as an argument for a complete poem. Linking the end of the poem to the Pisonian conspiracy corrodes the notion of Lucan's design before 65 and Tracey himself shifts his definition of completion, so that in his conclusion Lucan knew his days were numbered and ‘[strove] to arrive at some meaningful terminus’ (p. 53): i.e. BC didn't reach its planned conclusion. If the end as we have it is designed, why is the recovery of its political significance dependent upon ingenious argumentation when the rest of the poem's politics are so explicit? I would have liked a chapter exploring the structure of the poem as incomplete to balance Tracey's discussion.

Part B examines influences on Lucan: Apollonius (Murray), Virgil (Casali), Ovid (Keith) and Propertius (Caston). I assume that Manolaraki's chapter is in this section because she considers the influence of Seneca's Natural Questions and Epistles, but this is not her main purpose. I found the overall results in this section, particularly in contrast to the potential richness of the subject matter, disappointing. Homer and Senecan drama are important omissions; and neither Murray nor Caston makes a compelling case for their authors. Keith's chapter by contrast is a first-rate overview of a ‘Virgilian poetic program informed, if not deformed, by Ovidian literary precedent’ (p. 138): it is highly recommended. Manolaraki's chapter is a stimulating reading of Lucan's Nile: Acoreus liberates the river from geo-political reality to make it serenely disassociated from the war and the possibility of human control.

Part C, ‘Civil Warriors’, leads with Augoustakis on the influence of Lucan's Cornelia in Book 9 upon Silius' Saguntine women and Marcia. Compelling as it is, I wonder whether this chapter properly belongs in this section (Part E treats reception) and whether a broader discussion of Lucan's influence on Silius might have better served a companion. Seo offers a high-quality introduction to Lucan's Cato by way of Cato's engagement with his own exemplary status in imperial culture and Lucan's use of Cato's ‘suicide paradigm’. Her discussion presents Cato's suicide as the model for other prominent deaths in the poem (Vulteius, Scaeva, Domitius and Pompey), while Cato's prescription of himself as a model to emulate replicates his own historical status as exemplum. Tipping also examines Cato; he surveys scholarly opinions before illustrating his moral ambiguity. Fucecchi then reviews the (named) supporters of Caesar and Pompey. Bernstein provides an excellent survey of the dead in Lucan's epic, and draws out the implications of the contempt in which they are generally held. At stake is not only the general pessimism of the poem but its interaction with its literary past. In contrast to the two chapters on Cato, there are none dedicated to Caesar or Pompey.

In Part D, ‘Civil War Themes’, Walde presents BC as a ‘mediative representation’ of a traumatic event: the Aeneid and BC are thus not opposed but occupying different stages of the same heavily-schematised process of appropriating and assimilating the civil war. Bartsch's chapter adduces Velleius as a precursor of Lucan's narrative strategies and suggests that Lucan is biased because he presents a narrator who has suffered personal iniuria from Caesar. Sklenář illustrates Lucan's attention to formal elements of the genre. The notion of Lucan as a destroyer of form serves as a point of departure for his discussion, but I wonder how many scholars still hold the extremity of this position. Ganiban treats Lucan's influence on Statius' Thebaid through the lens of crime (again, why here and not in Part E?); he explores secondary characters in Lucan and Statius as commentators on the ethical and moral dimensions of their epics. Easton applies the work of R. Kaster on envy to Lucan and his narrator; he tracks the presence of various types of the emotion in BC before comparing Lucan's approach with the epic tradition before him. Thorne usefully places the tension between memory and oblivion in the poem against Roman funerary and commemorative practices, while A. reads Lucan's rationalising aetion of the ancile in Book 9 against Lucan's poetics of uncertainty in that book. Myers writes a solid introduction to elements of Lucan's geography: particularly boundary violation, implosion, transgression and decentralisation. Coffee offers expert guidance on the failure of social ties in Lucan and his omission or distortion of relational values.

In Part E, ‘Receptions’, Newlands provides generic, poetic, cultural and historical context for Stat. Silv. 2.7 and adroitly maps Statius' genethliacon onto the thematic emphases of Lucan's epic. Esposito treats early scholia and commentaries on Lucan and signals areas for future attention, while D'Angelo offers a bibliography with minimal discussion on his medieval reception. Marchesi considers elements of Lucan's influence on Dante's Divine Comedy. Hardie and Braund give superb orientation on English Lucan. Hardie tracks Lucan's reception in the English Renaissance with ample leads for the reader to pursue, in terms of both bibliography and areas of inquiry. Braund surveys the translation history of the poem, particularly from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; she attributes greater influence to politics than does Hardie, and attends to politically subjective translations, as illustrated by three versions (those of Gorges, May and Rowe) of Cato's eulogy of Pompey. D'Alessandro Behr illustrates BC's reception in Joseph Addison's Cato in terms of Lucanian scenes and expressions as well as the ethical parameters of his Cato who, D'Alessandro Behr argues, is marked by the same passion which she posited for Lucan's Cato in her 2007 monograph.

The book is poorly proof-read. Typographical and formatting errors are frequent; whole sentences are printed twice in succession (e.g. p. 23); references to texts are incorrect (e.g. p. 138); there are some errors of fact (e.g. p. 18 on Corbulo's death), some perplexing statements (e.g. p. 84 ‘love and war’ in the Aeneid's proem; p. 109 uertice = ‘an elm’: imported in translation?), and alternative options from the drafts of some chapters are left undeleted (e.g. p. 11 “VergilVirgil”; p. 226 “Cleanthes' [or Cleanthes's]”). Although this collection does not transcend the sum of its parts and is less accessible to students than one would have hoped for in a companion, scholars of Lucan will find much of value within many of its individual chapters.