182 BOOK REVIEWS Ovidio: Metamorfosi, Volume I (Libri I-II). Edited by ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla/Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2005. Pp. cxc + 310. Cloth, 27.00. ISBN 88-04-54481-3. Barchiesi's (B.) book is the first volume to appear of the long anticipated multi-authored (and multi-national) commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses. B., the general editor of the series, masterfully introduces the poem in this commentary on Books 1 and 2. This book?and the commentary as awhole?is a welcome and important addition to the study ofOvid. B.'s volume provides a richly reward ing interpretive commentary full of new and important insights. He is especially generous with discussion of Ovid's literarymodels and sources, but he also reveals throughout a sensitivity to thematic con nections, etymological wordplay, narrative structure, focalization, stylistic register and language. Also notable is B.'s alertness to the poem's Augustan context and potential political resonances, along with his numerous references toAugustan monuments. The wealth of bibliographic information makes this an indispensable scholarly resource. The audience for the beautifully produced Valla series is envisioned as broad; in the United States anyone interested inOvid (and fluent in Italian) will benefit from reading the book, but inevi tably most readers will be Classical scholars. The text is based on Tarrant's OCT, with some variations, all thoroughly discussed in the notes (most notably, B. defends the authenticity of six lines Tarrant bracketed: 1.344, 638; 2.226, 400, 520, 611). There is little in theway of grammatical assistance for the Latin student; a facing-page Italian translation isprovided by Ludovica Koch. The volume opens with a long introductory essay by the late Charles Segal entitled "II corpo e T'io nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio" (pp. xv-ci). Segal suggests that Ovid's metamorphic bodies reflect the instability and vulnerability of the human condition, the relation ship between corporeality and emotion, and the intersection of the natural and the artificial. He offersmany sensitive close readings of episodes that illustrate the differences between the treatment ofmale and female bodies in the poem. Segal stresses the arbitrary nature of violence inOvid's metamorphic world and suggests thatmetamor phosis serves as a trope for the poet's anxieties about identity, power and autonomy under the increasingly autocratic Augustan regime. Barchiesi himself provides an immensely instructive and illumi nating introduction to the poem (cv-clxi), followed by a bibliograph ical essay and an extensive bibliography (supplemented throughout the commentary). The range of B.'s introduction?from discussion of Ovid's ancient models, literary, political, and social, to parallels with modern culture and literature?offers new insights to any reader (although the "general" reader will surely become rather breathless BOOK REVIEWS 183 in the face of somuch scholarship). B. surveys Ovid's literarymodels and discusses his simultaneously inclusive ("l'imperialismo ovidi ano") and ambiguous relationship to them, along with the implica tions of themetamorphosis theme on the poem's narrative dynamics, tone, language and meaning. B. argues for a complex and even "moral" reading of the poem (especially concerning the issue of "jus tice"), stressing its innovations and ambiguities. Among other things, he also illustrates Ovid's Hellenistic doctrina, explains the implica tions of his disruptions of chronology and stresses the difficulty, but importance, of interpreting his depiction of power relations (read "Augustan politics/ideology") between humans and gods, and vic tims and oppressors. The commentary itself is full of insights, displays of erudition, and new perspectives. B. provides an introductory essay for each major episode and follows itwith line-by-line, in-depth commentary on selected passages and words. The introductory essays are gems of interpretation and mines of information about Ovid's literarymodels and the bibliography on the passage under consideration. To give some idea of the flavor of the commentary, its erudition, range and critical sensibility, Imention a few of the notes. The opening cosmo gonic sections ofMet. 1 invite an especially erudite explanation of Ovid's dense and complex intertextuality, outlining his multiple po etic and philosophical sources. On Met. 1.1 innova and fert animus, B. cites parallels from Alceus, Homer, Callimachus, Parmenides, Lu cretius, Vergil, Manilius, Sallust, Livy, Horace, Lucan and...