This book contains twenty-six articles, including three hitherto unpublished, on a wide range of topics in Latin literature by R. G. M. Nisbet, who was Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1970 to 1992. Some handle literary themes with a historical bearing: Gallus' elegiacs on Caesar and 'Lycoris', rediscovered in 1978; the relation of Virgil's fourth Eclogue to Isaiah; Horace as an eye-witness of the battle of Actium; the causes of Ovid's exile and his poetic response.

Other papers discuss Virgil's bucolic style; symbolism in Seneca's tragedies; how poems by Horace and Statius are coloured by the characteristics of their addresses. Articles on prose consider the reader's contribution to the understanding of Cicero's speeches and the use of rhythm to determine the punctuation of Latin sentences. Many textual conjectures are proposed on familiar Latin authors, notably Catullus, Horace, and Juvenal; other papers discuss Housman's Juvenal and 'how textual conjectures are made'.

The book ends with a criticism of the current tendency to exaggerate the ambiguities of Roman poetry.