This book applies some of the procedures of modern critical theory to the interpretation of Latin poetry. The author argues for an approach that sees the meaning of a text as always and necessarily involved in the process of 'reception, ' that is the way it has been read and interpreted from the time of its composition down to the present day. A study of its reception-history facilitates novel and more profitable ways of reading. He illustrates his approach with exemplary readings of Virgil, Ovid, Horace and Lucan.