September 2023 saw the Italian publishing house Carocci release two brand-new introductions to two of the most canonical Latin Classics, both authored by renowned Italian scholars: Luigi Galasso’s guide to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Sergio Casali’s to Virgil’s Aeneid. The title of Carocci’s book series, Bussole (Italian for ‘compasses’), renders precisely the task of these slender volumes: to guide readers through the ancient works, and at the same time help them find their way out of the marshes in the wide and often disorienting panorama of secondary literature. Italian students approaching Virgil’s Aeneid (as much as Ovid’s Metamorphoses), might be both surprised and demoralised at discovering how much of this critical literature is written in English, as can be surmised from a quick glimpse at Casali’s recommended introductory bibliography (134­–45). If Anglophone students, both in secondary and higher education, are already served by beginners’ guides to the poem, the same cannot really be said for Italian pupils, who will be immensely rewarded by the critical compass provided by Casali. Yet this volume can serve a larger audience than the one for which it was originally intended: in writing the present review in English, I hope to provide some of this extended readership with a sense of the richness of its contents.