For some years now, a lingering sense of inadequacy has plagued U.S. historians of ancient art and text, a sense of having somehow got behind in the great “race for theory” (Barbara Christian’s phrase). Everyone elsewhere and in other fields always seemed to have read more broadly and to have thought more originally about theoretical frameworks for scholarship. But The Art of Ancient Spectacle, an elegantly produced and intellectually sophisticated collection of nineteen essays on Hellenistic, Etruscan and Roman culture, demonstrates the pointlessness of continuing the lament; the majority of papers reveal a breadth of theoretical awareness and understanding, a light touch in the use of models from other fields, and an increasing consciousness of the utility and pleasures of messing about in other people’s kitchens. Rather than hearing philologists and historians claim that their training prevents them from using visual materials, or finding art historians and archaeologists complaining about the field being “behind,” we find a set of common interests in space, cultural performance, and representations of the visual world. In this collection, the common project of figuring out how to use all kinds of materials and approaches combines with the goal of understanding what constitutes spectacle and how...