James O'Hara is the George L. Paddison Professor of Latin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (Princeton 1990), True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor 1996), and Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge 2007).
The commentary itself is a gem, and students and teachers of Aeneid 4 alike will be very grateful to James O'Hara for the excellent job he has done to balance comments that help with translation and comprehension alongside those that allow students to engage with current scholarly debates about the interpretation of the Aeneid, as well as with Virgil's literary, philosophical and cultural contexts... In conclusion, this is an engaging, learned and extremely useful commentary. It is well-directed to its intended audience of intermediate students but is also a useful resource for more advanced readers, particularly those wanting insight into the current state of scholarship on the Aeneid and significant recent debates about Book 4. It is lucid and well edited, and I highly recommend it. - Anne Rogerson, University of Sydney, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.04.08