"...J.D. Reed states: `My main goal is to place Bion in literary history between the poets he admired and those whom he inspired, and to make clear both his debt to tradition and his originality.... Reed has without a doubt achieved exactly what he set out to do and has produced an extremely thorough and very impressive work. Bion was very lucky to have found such a dedicated and enthusiastic commentator. ...Reed has succeeded in showing that Bion is a poet worth paying attention to for the elegance of his work, his contribution to the bucolic genre, and his influence on later writers. I really enjoyed and learned much from this excellent book." J.J. Clauss, Bryn Mawr Classical Review