One third of Pindar's surviving epinicians were written for Sicilians. Like the victors they honour, these poems have many connections with each other, and they share a distinctive historical and cultural context. As a group, they yield fruitful possibilities of criticism from various perspectives. In this book, an extensive revision of her doctoral thesis, L. focuses on how the poet uses local landmarks (both natural and manmade) to situate Sicilian civic identity within a wider Panhellenic frame, thus turning space into place. Although the landscape features in many other Pindaric odes, L. argues (e.g. p. 17) that it is particularly important in Sicily, which lacked the ancient, often autochthonous, ancestors and local heroes who contributed heavily to the identities of the mainland cities. Moreover, the Sicilian cities had suffered much in recent years from violent regime change and even the displacement of whole populations; meaningful places in the landscape, which had both powerful local force and, through mythical connections, Panhellenic resonance, offered a way to affirm common identity in challenging circumstances. In L.'s treatment, the Sicilian odes reveal the remarkable complexity of the poet's procedures. Particularly interesting is her demonstration that the nuances vary from city to city and from victor to victor. Theron of Akragas could claim generations in the polis cemetery, unlike the newcomer Hieron at Syracuse; in contrast to both of these, Psaumis of Kamarina and Ergoteles of Himera were not tyrants. One expects the poet to adopt different emphases for different victors, but it is perhaps less expected that the differences would extend to the way in which the landscape is figured. Instructive too are the differences (and similarities) between Pindar and Bacchylides; the former draws on the potential of landscape much more than the latter.

The introduction sets out the theoretical framework. L. describes the book first as an exercise in New Historicism, inspired especially by L. Kurke's The Traffic in Praise (1991). ‘[T]he majority of scholars of Pindar and Bacchylides’, she writes (p. 3), ‘now recognize that reading these odes in their social, political, and historical contexts helps to elucidate aspects of this poetry that cannot be understood through formal analysis alone. This is not to say that we should abandon the careful study of the odes’ literary effects; rather, the literary effects of Pindar's epinician poetry – as poetry that was composed for a specific victory from a particular city in a certain year – should be interpreted within their historical and cultural contexts.’ While not doubting for a moment the enormous progress made by Pindaric studies in this perspective, I do think it has tended to sideline the study of the poems as literature (the hierarchy is evident in the formulation). If one considers the poems’ literary aspects (which means much more than formal analysis!) only in so far as they helped the poet deliver his commission on the day of the first performance, one will miss much of what is going on, aesthetically speaking, in them. One can say the same about any Greek tragedy. Subsequent performance (or reading) of the text is a different experience, in some ways an inferior one, but in other ways superior. Pindar knew this. A historicist way of stating the point is that the historical and cultural context included these rich possibilities of re-performance, and within that wider context the literariness of the text came to the fore (the hierarchy was reversed). To be fair, this is not L.'s primary concern in this book (and she does occasionally consider re-performance). Of course, there is always more to be learned about the first occasion. But I do baulk at the implications of this formulation.

Secondly, this is an exercise in Cultural Poetics, wherein ‘texts are understood as sites of cultural contestation’; culture is a ‘dynamic force that is constantly being shaped and negotiated by groups with differing interests in society. Texts not only reflect but also react to, shape, and influence the cultures within which they are created’ (p. 3). ‘Like other texts, the epinician poems of Pindar and Bacchylides participated in, contributed to, and were influenced by the complex set of overlapping identities and ideologies that constituted the fifth-century Greek city’ (p. 4). Agreed, though out of the verbs here I would privilege ‘participate’, since it is often impossible to say whether a given feature of a text is there because the poet is reflecting, or because he is trying to influence, the surroundings. This can matter, because claiming influence presumes a view, often constructed in circular fashion from the text or speculatively with reference to unknown extra-textual realities, of the poet's standpoint. The meaning is sometimes then restricted to the one thing deemed to be the poet's strategic intention; other meanings are closed down rather than opened up. Pindaric criticism is full of examples. In fact, when the poet deploys figures like Typhon or Persephone, the myriad associations will interact with audience members’ experiences in different ways. Charting the polyvalence is the best response. L. is aware of the risk and often signals the variability of audience response (e.g. pp. 63, 70, 129, 131, 133). I resisted, however, her reading based on the point (which she admits is speculative) that Ergoteles’ arrival in Himera (Ol. 12) caused resentment and required the poet's ‘careful mediation’ (p. 234). We just do not know; what if he was welcomed with open arms? One could construct a quite different reading on that basis, no less valid or invalid. Similarly, it is not known whether Pindar was the first to place Typhon under Aitna (pp. 150–8); I think probably not (as B. Currie will argue in a forthcoming article). It would be nice to know, and spotting mythological innovation can be important, but often we do not actually need to know: the work Typhon is doing in the poem remains the same either way. A slightly different example occurs on p. 58, where L. writes ‘Pindar may therefore include the colonial metaphor [of the mingled waters of Arethusa and the Alpheus] as an emblem of the diverse civic makeup in Syracuse under the rule of the Deinomenids’. She makes the case very well that this is a legitimate association of the story, and in some sense in the text; but whether it was Pindar's conscious intention I do not know (perhaps it never occurred to him). These instances may be thought harmless enough, but my larger point is that very often in Pindaric criticism (not necessarily here, I add) the meaning of passages is thought to be coterminous with, and exhausted by, the poet's supposed intention on that first occasion. One must guard against expressions like ‘Pindar may include’ becoming more than a façon de parler.

Syracusan landmarks involving Arethusa (Chapter 1) and Persephone and Demeter (Chapter 2) are the focus of the following two chapters, as they pertain first to the city, then to the island as a whole; Aitna (volcano and city) and Akragas (especially its river) follow in subsequent chapters, and the book concludes with two contrasting ‘test’ cases of Ergoteles at Himera and Psaumis at Kamarina. All of the Sicilian odes feature, but Olympians 2, 4, 5, 12, Pythian 1 and Nemean 1 receive more detailed treatment. As well as offering close readings of the poems L. assesses the material evidence in superb detail (her discussion of the coins is especially to be mentioned). There are many acute observations, based on exact learning, keen sensitivity and an admirably multilingual bibliography. Pindarists will certainly need to consult this thorough study, as will anyone interested in the general questions raised above (whatever their take on them).