in addition there is an introduction which briefly sketches the history of the 'topos' in Homer and the ways in which it was interpreted by ancient thinkers, and a conclusion in which B. draws some general observations from the particular passages he has examined in various chapters. For the purposes of his analysis, B. isolates the various dream-passages in each of his authors and places them in four categories: the dream of 'external' origin in which a god or other divine apparition appears to the dreamer; the dream of 'external' origin in which the apparition is a shade of the dead; the 'realistic' dream which affords an insight into the psychological state of the character; and the 'allegorical' dream, based (as B. argues) on the philosophical notion that the soul,as it sleeps, perceives the divine realm and communicates cosmic truths in symbolic form. The kernel of B.'s thesis is that the former two types of dream (...) represent the standard epic dream, and it is for this reason that Virgil and Silius Italicus, the most 'epic' of latin poets, display a marked preference for this type of dream; while poets such as Ovid, Lucan, and Statius distance themselves from this normative tradition by their marked preference for allegorical and psychological dreams, which are most commonly found in the tragic poets. (...) B. imposes on the random world of the dreamer the rigid order of traditional philological scholarship (...). Thus the strength of B.'s scholarship is also its greatest limitation with respect to the subject he has chosen. The readings of individual passages, let it be said, are superbly detailed and rich in in technical exposition of the stylistic effects achieved by the text; yet the study as a whole is too much implicated in the traditional pursuits of order and structure to proffer any conclusions beyond that which we already knew. This book is of definite value to anyone who wishes further to explore the great technical expertise of the Roman poets in their handling of traditional literary motifs; but that it should offer anything beyond a mere affirmation of long-established scholarly techniques and practices is a dream that has passed through the gate of ivory.' (MARTIN BRADY in The Journal of Roman Studies, 2002, pp.224-25).