This handsome volume of essays represents a selection of papers from the twelfth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society which was held online in the ongoing turmoil of Covid-19 in 2021.

There are 28 essays in total, on a wide-ranging array of topics reflecting the broad remit of the original conference. The editors have done an excellent job of grouping these topics into sub-sections dealing with politics, philosophy and literary references, cultural practices and the uses of the past. Their introduction to the volume provides a useful and convincing rationale for the ordering of the papers in the volume. They claim, accurately, that the contributions "shed light on the intricate network of imperial period ideas and topoi, cultural associations and political concerns within which Plutarch and other authors of the time operated and underscore their distinctive modulations of their shared heritage and current imperial discourse" (xv).

Authors with whom Plutarch is compared include, but are not limited to, Pliny the Elder, Seneca, Valerius Maximus, Dio of Prusa, Lucian, and others.

All the essays are valuable, well-written and soundly underpinned by scholarship. I would particularly single out Colin Bailey's elegant essay on the motif of the abandoned agora in Dio and Plutarch; Richard Stoneman's and Geert Roskam's contrasting, but equally engaging, treatments of Plutarch and Epicureanism (Roskam using Maximus of Tyre as an illuminating comparison); Fabio Tanga's fascinating and learned piece on Artemidorus and Plutarch's dream of his own death (the only essay in the volume in a language other than English).

Maria Elena De Luna makes some most interesting observations on Arcadian traditions across Plutarch, Pliny and Pausanias, demonstrating the contrasting attitudes of the Roman author with those of the Greeks in a convincing manner.

Two essays deal with Lycurgus, those of Martina Gatto, who compares Plutarch with Pausanias' account and with Lucian's Anacharsis; and Iris Sulimani, who compares the Lycurgus with Tacitus' Agricola in form. These are both very interesting essays, though neither of them cites Hugh Liebert's Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which has some important remarks on Lycurgus-Numa.

Serena Citro's essay usefully studies the structures of the Sayings of Kings and Commanders, Valerius Maximus' Memorable Deeds and Words, and Polyaenus' Stratagems. She uses the test cases of Scipio Africanus and Peisistratus to draw out similarities and important differences between Plutarch and the other two authors. It is welcome to find some consideration of form in the volume. Laurens van der Wiel studies the prefaces of two of these works (Plutarch's and Valerius Maximus') and concludes that Plutarch rewrites Valerius in accordance both with the changed political circumstances of his day (the different characters of Tiberius and Trajan playing a major role there) and in accordance with Plutarch's Platonist desire 'to be a monarch's educator for the sake of the commonwealth'.

The final section of the volume includes two essays on gender. Dawn LaValle Norman offers a perceptive study of female characters in the Symposium of the Seven Sages and the Gnostic dialogue gospel Pistis Sophia. Tomohiko Kondo compares and contrasts Plutarch and Musonius Rufus, incidentally opening a perspective on Japanese scholarship on Plutarch of which this reviewer was shamefully unaware. Kondo prefers Plutarch's approach to Musonius. She takes Plutarch's texts very much at face value and as expressing his own views, which can be unwise, though in this case the comparison with Musonius tends to validate her remarks to an extent. I am not wholly convinced, however, that applying the term 'feminism', even elegantly qualified by 'incomplete' is a helpful conceptual framework to apply to any ancient author.

Delfim Leão contributes a stimulating chapter on the Table Talk, setting it in contrast to Petronius' Satyricon. Ginesti Rosell's thoughtful piece on the Table Talk and its relationship to Lucian's Symposium builds on the work of the late Françoise Frazier and convincingly identifies an intertextual relationship between the two works.

In the final essay in the volume, Michiel Meeusen elegantly discusses Plutarch's relationship to medical works and 'the literature of hypochondria'. This is a fertile and interesting topic, neatly brought up to date in the final pages, a fitting ending for a volume of papers from a conference hit by a pandemic.

Overall, the great merit of this volume is that it sets the works of Plutarch against a backdrop of the works of his predecessors, contemporaries and those of later authors. Plutarchan exceptionalism is thereby challenged, but often it becomes apparent that Plutarch was indeed an exceptional author, whose individualism was expressed in his works and who still stands out from the crowd of other authors. It is peculiarly satisfying that this important light cast on Plutarch's work is achieved by means of the comparative method to which Plutarch himself was so attached.

The volume is, as always with this series, extremely well-produced and handsomely presented. I have not identified any typographical errors. The editors, the contributors, and the publishers, are all to be congratulated.

Judith Mossman