Author: J C McKeown
Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010
Price: £17.95 (hardback)
Isbn: 9780195393750

This is a cornucopia of ancient forteana by a distinguished Latinist, with 23 (that number!) chapters on individual topics. Literary and other sources are quoted extensively in English, with Latin and Greek sometimes appended, and there are illustrations and a handy glossary of names and terms. McKeown’s scholia are tersely informative, enlivened by pertinent modern analogies, myth-puncturing (vomitoria were not Roman spewing-up rooms) and dry witticisms.

Every reader will pluck out their favourite plum, some doubtless making immediately for the ‘Not for the Puritanical’ chapter. My own (our choices define us) disembogues from the toilet graffiti: “Shit well and let the doctors suck you”, a rebarbative combination of Doc Martin and NHS grumbles. My runner-up is the polyonymous consul with 39 names – surely a clinching argument against ID cards.

I do have a few nitpicks. I’m puzzled about the Roman coin refusing to eat. Rome actually had more than one sundial, according to Plautus. Juvenal’s teacher-killing cold cabbage mocks bad student essays, not the curriculum. Huns rather than Goths were famed for horseback meat-warming (cf. Ammianus). And is Latin vocabulary really that small? Look at the size of its dictionaries!

Iam satis est. This delightful compilation is ideal for classy(cal) pub quizzes, FT readers, and QI elves. The best news? McKeown promises a Greek companion.