This collection of seventeen essays by distinguished authors on the relation between Latin pagan poetical forms and Christian biblical exegesis from the patristic period to the high Middle Ages is greatly to be welcomed. The post-Constantinian régime's attack on Roman paganism in the later fourth century did not – could not – mean the abandonment of the traditional educational system, dominated by poetry, and especially by Vergil, although Jerome and Augustine ensured by their writings that scriptural exegesis would continue to be fundamentally in prose. Jerome, the anti-Ciceronian lover of Horace, allowed no place for poetry as such in the Christian literary system. Augustine was suspicious of all pleasure that was related to the senses; for him, Plato was right in expelling poets from his ideal state; but the ordinary Christian enjoyed hymn-singing, and it was Ambrose who became the pioneer of truly lyrical Christian worship, holding that dilectatio was ‘an intrinsic element in the Creator's purpose with his creation’ (p. 89). Prudentius and Sedulius might write for classically-educated Christians like themselves; most Christians found their intellectual satisfaction in the language of the liturgy, and there is a useful paper in this collection for the student of liturgy by A. A. R. Bastiansen on the origin of antiphons, responses and sequentia (though some readers will have reservations about his reckoning Augustine a poet on the strength of the Psalmus contra partem Donati). The difficulty confronting the Christian classical poet was that the more he approached the role of a teacher of the faith, the less he could be a poet in the tradition of Vergil. The biblical epic, like Arator's Carmen paschale, evolved into a new genus, with a primarily catechetical aim (pp. 277–9). Being a Christian poet meant defining oneself by using new and predominantly ecclesiastical role-models and accepting the formal restrictions accompanying them (p. 292). However, the pagan authors continued to be the basis of education and to delight chosen spirits like the schoolboy Alcuin, who skipped saying the Psalms in order to read Vergil, so the Christian author was constrained to forsake the epic model (‘the [Christian] epic poet likens his own role to that of the priest and his work to homiletic or catechetical teaching … A preacher cannot quote extensively’ [pp. 279–80]) and to turn to hagiographic poetry, which lends itself to long direct speeches more readily than biblical epic (pp. 280–4). This meant that pagan literature survived in European culture; but it also meant that Christian poetry found new forms, particularly in connection with the liturgy, so that in the first centuries of the second millenium great poems in the form of sequentia were written by Adam of St Victor and Thomas Aquinas. ‘It was a long way from the biblical Alleluia to Lauda Sion, but it was a straight line through the centuries’ (p. 271). Western biblical exegesis, considered as exegesis, remained dominated by prose throughout the Middle Ages; but prayer in general, and the liturgy in particular, enabled Christian poets to express their theology in verse and to enrich Christian culture with a noble legacy. This collection enables the reader to understand how this came about over the centuries. The editors and essayists deserve our grateful thanks. Laus Deo.