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.