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I still remember the thrill of reading for the first time, as an undergraduate, Frederick Ahl's seminal articles ‘The Art of Safe Criticism’ and the ‘Horse and the Rider’, and the ensuing sense that the doors of perception were opening to reveal for me the (alarming) secrets of Latin poetry. The collection Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry is a tribute to Ahl, and all twenty-two articles take his scholarship as their inspiration. Fittingly, this book is often playful and great fun to read, and contains some beautiful writing from its contributors, but also reflects the darker side of Latin literature's entanglement with violence and oppression. For the latter, see especially Joy Connolly's sobering discussion of ‘A Theory of Violence’ in Lucan, which draws on Achille Mbembe's theory of the reiterative violence of everyday life that sustains postcolonial rule in Africa (273–97), which resonates bleakly beyond Classical scholarship to the present day. Elsewhere there is much emphasis (ha!) on the practice and effects of veiled speech, ambiguity, and hidden meanings. Pleasingly, Michael Fontaine identifies what he calls ‘Freudian Bullseyes’ in Virgil: a ‘correct word that hits the mark’ (141) that also reveals – simply and directly – the unspoken guilty preoccupations of the speaker: Dido's lust for Aeneas, Aeneas’ grief-stricken sense of responsibility for Pallas’ death. A citation from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night provides the chilling final line of Emily Gowers’ delicious article about what ripples out beyond the coincidence of sound of Dido/bubo. The volume explores subversive responses to power (for example, the articles of Erica Bexley and David Konstan), as well as the risk of powerful retaliation (Rhiannon Ash considers the political consequences of poetry as represented by Tacitus). There are also broader methodological reflections on interpretation, from musings on the reader's pleasure at decoding the hidden messages of wordplay such as puns, anagrams, and acrostics (as Fitch puts it, ‘the pleasure of wit, combined with the pleasure of active involvement’ [327]) to exploration of the anxiety of a reader who worries that they may be over-interpreting a text. Contributions variously address the ‘paranoia’ of literary criticism and the drive to try to ground meaning in the text and prove authorial intention: while John Fitch asks if the wordplay ‘really is there’ in the etymological names used by Seneca in his plays (314), Alex Dressler's article (37–68) helps frame the various modes of interpretation that we find in subsequent articles, by putting interpretation itself under scrutiny. His intriguing analysis introduces the helpful motif of espionage (interweaving Syme's possible post-war role in intelligence with Augustan conspiracy and conspiracy theories) and concludes that – like double agents – ‘secret meanings’ need a handler (53) and we readers need to take responsibility for our own partisan readings.
1 Ahl, Frederick, ‘The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome’, AJPh 105 (1984), 174–208 Google Scholar; Ahl, Frederick, ‘The Rider and the Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from Horace to Statius’, ANRW 2.32.1 (1984), 40–110 Google Scholar.
2 Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry. Edited by Mitsis, Phillip and Ziogas, Ioannis. Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volume 36. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2016. Pp. vi + 451. Hardback £89.99, ISBN: 978-3-11-047252-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Morphogrammata/The Lettered Art of Optatian. Figuring Cultural Transformations in the Age of Constantine. Edited by Squire, Michael and Wienand, Johannes. Paderborn, Wilhelm Fink, 2017. Pp. 530. 44 b/w illustrations, 16 colour plates. Paperback €78, ISBN: 978-3-7705-6127-8 Google Scholar.
4 Staging Memory, Staging Strife. Empire and Civil War in the Octavia. By Ginsberg, Lauren Donovan. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv + 229. Hardback £47.99, ISBN: 978-0-19-027595-2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Poetry Underpinning Power. Vergil's Aeneid. The Epic for Emperor Augustus. A Recovery Study. By Stahl, Hans-Peter. Roman Culture in an Age of Civil War. Swansea, The Classical Press of Wales, 2016. Pp. xii + 488. Hardback £45, ISBN: 978-1-910589-04-5 Google Scholar.
6 Le conflit propagandiste entre Octavien et Marc Antoine. De l'usage politique de la uituperatio entre 44 et 30 a. C. n. By Borgies, Loïc. Collection Latomus 357. Brussels, Éditions Latomus, 2016. Pp. 518. Paperback €74, ISBN: 978-90-429-3459-7 Google Scholar.
7 Mimetic Contagion. Art and Artifice in Terence's Eunuch. By Germany, Robert. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 198. Hardback £55, ISBN: 978-0-19-873873-2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 The Annals of Tacitus. Books 5 and 6. By Woodman, A. J.. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xxi + 325. Hardback £89.99, ISBN: 978-1-107-15270-0 Google Scholar.
9 Adams, J. N., Social Variation and the Latin Language (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 An Anthology of Informal Latin 200 bc–ad 900. Fifty Texts with Translations and Commentaries. By Adams, J. N.. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 719. Hardback £120, ISBN: 978-1-107-03977-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Early and Late Latin. Continuity or Change? Edited by Adams, J. N. and Vincent, Nigel. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xx + 470. Hardback £74.99, ISBN: 978-1-107-13225-2 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.