This is a book that needed to be written in answer to a deep gap in our resources on Latin literature...we owe Fantham much gratitude for having the energy and wisdom to undertake this demanding and original project. Every Latinist should study her book. The book remains thoroughly absorbing from the account of late republican literary culture through the imperial, and especially the Neronian, periods, and continues to instruct and delight concerning cultural decline in the age of the Antonines.