This collection grew out of a two-day conference held in Hamburg in 2021. It begins with an excellent introduction, co-authored by the editors, that situates the volume within the field of scholarly research on Aelian. Seven essays follow, divided into two sections. Part 1, "Aelian's Quotation Practices," contains essays by Katerina Oikonomopoulou, Lucía Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén, and Alexandra Trachsel. Part 2, "Other Literary Practices as Gateway to Aelian's Authorial Stance," contains essays by Arnaud Zucker, Philipp Stahlhut, Marcel Humar, and Hendrik Müller. What follows is a brief critical summary of the essays.

Oikonomopoulou demonstrates that Aelian wants to show off his lexicographical research into a range of literary genres. NA 7.43 offers a valuable case study. The spare, paratactic syntax throws into relief the unfamiliar quality of the catalogue's varied terms. Several structural principles become apparent: the exotic takes priority over the familiar, animals will get grouped together if their young share the same name, and some animals are juxtaposed in the catalogue based on a logic of opposition, or because they all belong to a type. Phonetic and morphological similarities also determine juxtaposition within the catalogue. Oikonomopoulou is persuasive in arguing that the catalogue of NA 7.43 illustrates Aelian's mental lexicon. This reviewer wonders to what extent Aelian's associative catalogue might also reflect contemporary didactic practice: is the development of a mental lexicon of this kind the way that students would have been taught and would have learned vocabulary in the classroom?

Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén's chapter examines Aelian's twenty-nine instances of engagement with the tragic poets in the NA and identifies a formal division between direct quotations, paraphrases, and references to the contents of various plays. Aelian quotes (1) at least one whole verse, (2) only a portion of a verse, and (3) only single words. When quoting whole verses, Aelian makes an effort to embed them within his sentence in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing and that does not disrupt the flow and rhythm of his own words (cf. Hermog. De meth. grav. 447). Partial quotation of a verse or quoting only single words gives Aelian more stylistic flexibility. Paraphrases of the tragic poets are very rare, and in both instances the poet is Euripides. Aelian's references to the contents of tragedies usually signal erudition, though even here such references serve the anecdote or lesson at hand. Ultimately, Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén emphasizes the strategic variety of Aelian's quotational and paraphrastic practices, which, I would add, mirrors the stylistic and organizational poikilia of the NA as a whole.

Trachsel argues that Aelian was aware of the scholarly discussions on key passages from Homer that he quotes and cites, and that he made an authorial choice not to mention those scholars by name in his discussion of those passages. Trachsel's case study is NA 10.26, and her detailed analysis of the chapter's structure illuminates Aelian's strategic use of two citations of Homer, the only authority named in the whole passage. The scholiasts turn out to be interested in the same phrases that Aelian is interested in, but Aelian chooses to deviate from the etymological authority of the scholiasts in order to advance his own, more idiosyncratic interpretations. What emerges from Trachsel's careful analysis is the image of a sophistic writer who appeals to Homer's poetic authority at will and who knows the traditions of Homeric scholarship, even if that means sometimes suppressing scholarly evidence when it is inconvenient.

Zucker's essay encourages readers to take seriously Aelian's stated belief that he has contributed to zoological learning. Of the ten claims to autopsy in the NA, eight are probably genuine. One is likely a later scribal interpolation (NA 15.26), and one remains a puzzle (NA 11.40). Zucker's reassessment of this latter passage is intriguing but not entirely convincing. Aelian claims to have seen for himself an ox with five feet, apparently in Alexandria, even though Philostratus reports that Aelian never left Italy. Some think Aelian appropriated the first-person claim from his source (Apion), but Zucker asserts that Aelian claims only to have seen the calf itself, not to have seen it in Egypt (95). Zucker supposes Aelian saw the calf in Italy before it was shipped to Alexandria. A charitable conjecture, but it does not account for Aelian's description of the grove in which the temple is situated, which seems engineered to support his claim to autopsy in Alexandria. To his credit, Zucker has got me thinking seriously about this passage again, and I encourage readers to consult NA 11.40 for themselves. Zucker is right that the NA is an "original text" (108) and not merely a collage of literary borrowings. Aelian is a writer who believes seriously in the project of zoological inquiry.

Stahlhut explores Aelian's use of personal memory and claims of autopsy to authenticate the more fantastical narratives in his collection. Of central interest here is the story of the intimate relationship between a dolphin and a boy from Iasos (NA 6.15), which Aelian corroborates with the evidence of the tomb at Iasos erected in memory of the pair and also the coins that were struck commemorating the story. On Stahlhut's reading, Aelian routinely incorporates realia into his work as a means of inviting the reader to engage with the world of non-human animals in both literature and real life. Failure to account for such interventions on the part of the narrative ego has contributed to Aelian's negative scholarly reception in the past.

Humar confronts the complex emotional life of animals in the NA. The author surveys five case studies that depict gradually increasing emotional complexity in the asterias bird, crabs, roosters, an erotic horse, and monkeys (131-140). For the author, these anecdotes prove that Aelian broke with Stoic attitudes that denied emotional complexity to non-human animals. Aelian's artistic and literary choice to represent non-human animals in this way is also philosophically motivated, bringing the NA more into alignment with Aristotle and Plutarch. Aelian's philosophical eclecticism may be an effect of his literary poikilia, but Humar's closing hypothesis is reasonable: Aelian wanted to see animals "as being close to us" (144).

Müller considers Aelian's miscellanies as proto-hypertexts and connects Aristotle's theory of associative thinking with the poststructuralism of Deleuze and Guattari. Theory is grounded by philology, and in a close reading of the opening of the VH, Müller expertly demonstrates how, through imagery and lexical choices, Aelian wove together the beginning of this new miscellany with the epilogue of the NA. The VH thus subtly announces itself as both something new, but also a continuation of what came before. Aelian's miscellanies create associative trails by means of topical similarity, contrast, and geographical or temporal contiguity, and a repertoire of narrative devices fosters the reader's hunting down of intratextual connections (152-161). The essay is a stimulating conclusion to the volume.

The volume succeeds overall, and the essays by Oikonomopoulou, Trachsel, Zucker, and Müller especially stand out. This reader is inspired once again to return to the literary tangle of Aelian's fascinating miscellanies.

Steven D. Smith