Like other publications in recent years, this book demonstrates a renewed interest in Homer's treatment of the Theban Cycle and in the functioning of the ancient epic.[1] These broad themes bring with them underlying questions, in particular that of the choice of the method of analysis for epic. One merit of this book, therefore, is the development of its introduction, both pointed and educational, devoted to linguistic methodology and its recent historiography. Should the epic be approached as a set of written poems or as a set of oral traditions-and should the latter include the Homeric Question? Following the methodological concept of "traditional referentiality" favored by researchers such as Foley, Graziosi, or Haubold, the authors defend the need to go past the text, to see how epic takes meaning in the interaction with its audience. In order to understand poetic creativity, the authors put the importance of context and performance in its proper place. This study's aim, however, is not to reconstruct the Theban Cycle through Homer. "Rivalry" is the key word of this book: it is about showing how the Theban Cycle was able to serve as a basis for the development of the Trojan Cycle, and this idea has to be shown in the framework of competition and dynamic traditions. Consequently, this approach is not only of interest to the philological researcher but also to the historian who is attentive to the dynamic processes structuring the emergence of cities and identities in the Archaic period (p. 266sq.). Indeed, heroes are deeply embedded in these processes, involving political claims-from the audience-and poetic ones-from the aoidoi obeying a necessary competition to gain authority. The very act of oral composition, composed in performance, refers to all this interaction. Therefore, to better describe the historical, cultural and artistic development of epics, Barker and Christensen use the vegetal metaphor of "the epic-rhizome" (p. 24) advanced by Deleuze and Guattari (Mille plateaux, Paris, 1980). Epic poems developed not in a mono-directional way, like a tree, which suggests only a relationship between fixed texts. Rather, epic poems developed in a more complex and multifactorial manner. Thus, dealing with Theban heroes appropriated by Homeric epics in rivalry with the Theban Cycle provides a good way to understand these oral and dynamic processes.