Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities 9780199775545, 9780195176407, 2009019799

Citation preview

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

FRONT MATTER

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.002.0004 Published: April 2010

Page iv

Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

p. iv

 

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With o

ces in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2010 Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070071 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Copyright Page 

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, William A. (William Allen), 1956– Readers and reading culture in the high Roman Empire : a study of elite communities / William A.

p. cm. – (Classical culture and society) ISBN 978-0-19-517640-7 1. Books and reading–Rome. 2. Rome–Intellectual life. I. Title. Z1003.5.R57J64 2010 028′.90937—dc22  2009019799 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070071 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Johnson.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

FRONT MATTER

Published: April 2010

Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

I have been unusually lucky in garnering support for the writing of this book, and I wish here to record my debt to the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. The ACLS Ryskamp Fellowship was a particularly great boon, since Charles Ryskamp in his wisdom set up that fellowship with the sort of exibility that allowed me to take a leave just when I was ready to do a lot of writing. It is hard to see how this ambitious project could have come to fruition without that help. I have also had the bene t of summer grants and other support from the Louise Taft Semple Fund, which is also the basis of the extraordinary resources at the University of Cincinnati’s Burnam Classics Library that I have been able to take advantage of during these years. In a few places, I have used or adapted material that has seen earlier life in print: Johnson 2000, especially for the rst two sections of chapter 1, and Johnson 2009b, for an earlier and less documented version of chapter 9. Johnson 2009a contains in part some materials derived from chapter 6. In all cases, the formulation here supersedes earlier work. Like any broad-ranging study, this book is made possible only by virtue of its dependence on the work of earlier scholars, but three scholars deserve special mention. Champlin’s work on Fronto (1980), HolfordStrevens on Gellius (2003), and Nutton’s many works on Galen (see references) were invaluable guides to the sometimes di

cult terrain of these lesser-studied authors, and though none are scholars I know

personally, they have nonetheless acted as magistri as I have worked into these areas of study (and, of course, they are not to be taken to task for the failings of this virtual pupil). I am also deeply grateful to the anonymous reader, whose detailed and incisive comments were an important impetus to improvement of the manuscript in ways great and small, and to my graduate p. vi

assistants, Valentina Popescu, Jamie Reuben, and Austin Chapman.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070228 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Acknowledgments 

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

FRONT MATTER

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.002.0007 Published: April 2010

Pages ix–x

Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Periodical abbreviations follow L’Année Philologique: Bibliographie critique et analytique de l’antiquité grécolatine (Paris). Citations of papyri follow Oates 2002. ANRW: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. 1972–. Berlin. CAH: Cambridge Ancient History. 3rd ed. 1970–. London. CMG: Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. DNP: Der Neue Pauly, Enzyklopädie der Antike. 1996–. Stuttgart. IG: Inscriptiones Graecae. 1873–. Berlin. ISmyrna: G. Petzl. Die Inschriften von Smyrna. Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 23–24 (1–2). 1982–90. Bonn. Kühner-Stegmann: Kühner, Raphael. Ausführliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache. Vol. I rev. Friedrich Holzweissig. Hannover, 1912. Vol. II rev. Carl Stegmann, 5th ed. rev. Andreas Thierfelder. Hannover, 1976. (Reprt. 1997 Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover.) LDAB: Leuven Database of Ancient Books. Web resource: http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/. LSJ: Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, rev. Henry Stuart Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. 1940. New supplement added 1996. Oxford.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070322 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Abbreviations 

Mayser: Edwin Mayser. Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus der Ptolemäerzeit, mit Einschluss der gleichzeitigen Ostraka und der in Ägypten verfassten Inschriften. 1926–38. Berlin and Leipzig. OCD: Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. 2003. Oxford. OLD: P. G. W. Glare, ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary. 1982. Oxford.

R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds. Poetae Comici Graeci. 1983–. Berlin. p. x

Preisigke: Friedrich Preisigke. Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden, mit Einschluss der griechischen Inschriften, Aufschriften, Istraka, Mumienschilder usw. aus Ägypten. 1924–31. Berlin. 2

PIR   : Prosopographia Imperii Romani. 1933. 2nd ed. Berlin and Leipzig. RE: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. With many supplements. 1893–. TLL: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. 1900–. Leipzig.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070322 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

PCG:

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0001 Published: April 2010

Pages 3–16

Abstract This chapter investigates the question of how best to analyze the question of reading in antiquity. Reading for purposes of this study is seen not as an individual act, but as the negotiated construction of meaning within a particular sociocultural context. The focus of the book is, then, a particular set of contextualized reading communities, investigated from a constructivist angle.

Keywords: reading, reading communities, sociocultural context, constructivist Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction 1

Despite some movement in recent years, it remains true that for most of the last century, scholarly debate on ancient reading has largely revolved around the question, “Did the ancient Greeks and Romans read 2

aloud or silently?” Given the 1997 work of Gavrilov and Burnyeat, which has set the debate on new, seemingly rmer, footing, the question is at rst glance easily answered. Without hesitation we can now assert that there was no cognitive di

culty when fully literate ancient readers wished to read silently to

themselves, and that the cognitive act of silent reading was neither extraordinary nor noticeably unusual in antiquity. This conclusion has been known to careful readers since at least 1968, when Bernard Knox demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the silent reading of ancient documentary texts, including 3

letters, is accepted by ancient witnesses as an ordinary event. Gavrilov and Burnyeat have improved the evidential base, by re ning interpretation (especially Gavrilov on Augustine), by focusing on neglected but 4

important evidence (Burnyeat on Ptolemy), and by adding observations from cognitive psychology. The resulting clarity is salutary. Yet I suspect many will be dissatis ed with the terms in which the debate has been couched. I know that I am. Can we be content with a discussion framed in such a narrow—if not blinkered—fashion? In the fury of battle, the terms of the dispute have crystallized in an unfortunate way. That is, the polemics are such that we are now presumed fools if we suppose that the ancients were not able to read silently. But is it ignorant or p. 4

foolish to insist

that in certain contexts reading aloud was central? In any case, and much more

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

1 Reading as a Sociocultural System 

important, are these in fact the right questions to be asking? The moment has arrived, I think, when we need to reconsider whether the scholarly discourse is furthering what, I take it, is the goal: namely, understanding ancient reading. As a preliminary, and so that we can call to mind clearly the curious juncture to which we have now arrived, it will be useful rst to review brie y how we have come to such a pass—in which sociological consideration of ancient reading has been typically conceived within the terms of a debate over silent reading.

The roots of the debate are set in Eduard Norden’s Die antike Kunstprosa, an in uential work whose rst edition in 1898 brought to scholarly attention a passage in Augustine (6.3.3)—wherein, it appears, 5

Augustine nds it “inconceivable” that his bishop and teacher Ambrose reads silently to himself. At issue for Norden is not the idea that the ancients were unable to read silently, but rather that reading aloud of 6

literary texts was the norm throughout antiquity. 7

The controversy fully engages in 1927, when Josef Balogh (“Voces paginarum”) makes now a much broader p. 5

case: that for all texts (not simply

literary texts) silent reading was rare, that silent reading when it did

happen occasioned surprise, and that silent reading was possible only under extraordinary circumstances and by extraordinary people (such as Julius Caesar or St. Ambrose). To support his conclusion, Balogh marshals a large array of evidence: a dozen or so passages to support his claim that silent reading was viewed by the ancients as an aberration (84–95); another dozen passages claimed as direct evidence for the reading aloud of texts (97–109); passages in which reading is equated with hearing, or in which the acoustic e ect of a text is assumed (95–97, 202–14); and others. Anyone who has read Balogh’s article with attention will readily discern the tendentious way in which he often presents highly ambiguous evidence, as well as his heavy reliance on late sources. But the very weight of the material—64 pages!—wins the day. With the striking Augustine passage as prime witness (86), Balogh succeeds in convincing a couple of generations of scholars. Along the way Balogh introduces, almost as an aside, a point that will become central. For he links the phenomenon of reading aloud with scriptio continua, that peculiar ancient habit of writing literary texts without spaces between the words (227). A technological explanation now clari es why the ancients read aloud. The ancient reader reads aloud by necessity: faced with an undi erentiated sequence of letters, the ancient reader nds it di

cult, if not impossible, to see the word shapes, and thus for all but

extraordinary readers sounding the letters aloud is the only way to make sense of the text. 8

As the decades pass, with only the gradual accretion of the odd piece of evidence or counterevidence,

acceptance grows that Balogh has successfully identi ed a hitherto unknown “fact” about antiquity: the ancients always read their texts aloud, and silent reading of these texts was both di

cult and extraordinary.

By 1968 Bernard Knox (“Silent Reading in Antiquity”) seems to feel it necessary to hold no punches in his e ort to dislodge what is now the communis opinio. In a spirited and systematic attack, Knox o ers a pointby-point refutation of Balogh’s main points, and adds evidence of his own to demonstrate that—however the case may stand with literary texts—ancient letters and documentary texts certainly were able to be read silently. Once the dust settles, very little is left of Balogh’s edi ce. Augustine’s wonderment at Ambrose’s p. 6

9

silent reading still stands tall as “Exhibit A” for the notion that silent reading occasioned

surprise in

antiquity. The Acontius and Cydippe story (Callimachus, Aetia fr. 67 Pf. with Dig.; Ovid, Heroid. 20, cf. Heroid. 10

21.1 ) continues to be cited, despite Knox’s rough treatment.

But so much doubt has been cast on the other

chief classical passages (such as Horace, Satires, I 3.64f, 6.122f, II 7.1f; Lucian, Adv. Indoct. 2) that these are now largely abandoned. On the other side, the evidence for silent reading of letters seems suddenly secure. Two of Knox’s examples seem particularly unassailable. At Aristophanes’ Knights 115 , the comedy of the scene depends on the image of a man (Demosthenes) totally absorbed in the silent reading of a letter. As for

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Did the Ancients Read Silently or Aloud? A Brief History of the Controversy

the other example—evidence as unambiguous as one can hope for—a riddle from Antiphanes’ comedy Sappho (Athenaeus, X 73, 450e–451b) runs, “What is it that is female in nature and has children under the folds of her garments, and these children, though voiceless, set up a ringing shout … to those mortals they wish to, but others, even when present, are not permitted to hear?” The answer is a letter (ἐπιστολή), a feminine noun whose children are the letters of the alphabet. “Though voiceless (ἄφωνα), they speak to those far away, those they wish to, but if anyone happens to be standing near the man who is reading he will not hear him” (trans. after Knox, 432–23). Knox has made it clear then that in the case of letters, at least, silent reading is possible, and probably usual. The notion that silent reading was di

cult or extraordinary in

classical antiquity now depends more or less solely on the single passage in Augustine.

accepting that silent reading occurred when people read letters and documents, continue to regard the ancient book as an alien artifact for these “early” readers, one that because of its strange physical properties must be read aloud. Witness, for instance, G. Cavallo and F. Hild in Der Neue Pauly: “In antiquity the most usual way to read a book was out loud…. A good reading was almost like the interpretation of a musical score. Excepting very experienced or professional readers, the lection of a book was a di

cult

process: the text presented itself in scriptio continua, and was only seldom and irregularly articulated by marks of punctuation, so that the eyes only with di p. 7

the

11

whole sentence.”

culty could distinguish word boundaries or the sense of

Less careful scholars ignore Knox more or less outright, and the notion that the 12

ancients could only read aloud continues with a mysterious vigor.

In this context I jump to the recent (and rather strange) climax of the controversy, in 1997. In that year, a 13

medievalist, Paul Saenger, published a book (Spaces between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading)

in which

he begins with an analysis of the “physiology of reading” in ancient and medieval times (1–17). Assuming that reading aloud was the ancient habit in all or most contexts, Saenger constructs a detailed cognitive model to account for why, given the fact of scriptio continua, the Greeks and Romans could not have read in any way other than aloud (e.g., 6–9). Saenger describes in detail the trials of the ancient reader who, without either word boundaries or xed word order, found the task of decoding the text very di

cult, a challenge

that grew even greater in the case of literary texts, since they tend to combine less obvious meaning with greater freedom in word order. Under these circumstances, he explains, reading orally was necessary to help in the sorting out of the ambiguities. Saenger’s goal in this analysis is to chart the “evolution” of word separation, so as to demonstrate that (1) spaces between words, rst widely used in the tenth and eleventh centuries, allowed for the rst time a shift from reading aloud to reading silently, and (2) this change to silent reading led to the increasingly complex thought that characterizes the scholastic and subsequent periods. To make his case, Saenger must suppose for ancient reading an “orality and tunnel vision,” imposed by scriptio continua, that “obstructed the rapid appreciation of the word within its syntactical context, making the comprehension of propositions neurophysiologically more di

cult” (122, my italics).

Meanwhile, in a paper published the same year in Classical Quarterly, A. K. Gavrilov (“Techniques of Reading p. 8

14

in Classical Antiquity”)

uses some

of the same evidence from the eld of cognitive psychology to

demonstrate that in neurophysiological terms the Greeks and Romans must have been able to read silently. In addition to pointing out the disposition toward silent reading among mature readers in a variety of cultures, Gavrilov details how the concept of the “eye-voice span” proves the necessary ability of any lector to be able to read silently: “the person reading aloud needs to be able to glance ahead and read inwardly selected portions of the following text; the more experienced the reader, the more easily and reliably they do this. That is why for virtuoso reading aloud one requires not merely the ability to read to oneself, but skill at it” (59). Like Saenger, Gavrilov is able to use “science” to “prove” the conclusion he brings to the investigation. In the same article, Gavrilov usefully raises doubts about the traditional interpretation of the passage from Augustine, in which he sees not Augustine’s surprise at Ambrose’s silent reading per se, but Augustine’s

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

The reaction in the scholarly community to Knox’s argument is curious. A great many, even while now

puzzlement and irritation that Ambrose reads silently “in the presence of his parishioners” (63). I prefer to emphasize more the relationship of teacher to student, but in any case it does seem clear—once it is pointed out—that the “surprise” is occasioned by the speci cs of the social scene in which this silent reading is set. That is, Ambrose, as magister, is expected to share with his students both his texts, that is, his readings aloud (in a world where books were relatively rare), and his thoughts on these texts—exactly as Ambrose 15

implicitly does elsewhere, as at Confessions 6.4.

When, despite allowing the students to come visit,

Ambrose does not read the texts for all to hear and does not comment on the texts, the students naturally wonder why. Seen in this way, the scene may then be good evidence that in this particular social context (of the magister with his disciples), reading aloud was the expected behavior. But the passage does not speak to general habits of silent reading one way or the other—and thus the once grand construction of Balogh passages (Ptolemy, de iudicandi facultate et animi principatu 5.1–2 Lammert; Plotinus, Enneads I 4.10), in which reading silently and concentrating hard are equated; thus proving that at least some ancient thinkers p. 9

16

were not unaccustomed to the notion of silent reading.

Gavrilov’s

conclusion, to which Burnyeat

appears to subscribe, is that “the phenomenon of reading itself is fundamentally the same in modern and in ancient culture. Cultural diversity does not exclude an underlying unity” (69, my italics). But is this a proper conclusion? If we accept that the ancients did read silently, yet know also (what no one disputes) that they commonly read aloud, does it follow that ancient reading was really so like our own? Has this century of debate in fact brought us to no better understanding than that the ancient readers’ experience was, essentially, ours? My interest lies not, nally, in entering the controversy over whether the ancients always read aloud. Given the terms of the debate—wrongful terms rst set into motion by Balogh —I think that Knox and Gavrilov and Burnyeat have made su

cient response. I wish, rather, to redirect

scholarly attention to what is, I think, a much more interesting set of problems: how exactly the ancients went about reading, and how the ancient reading culture (as I will call it) does in fact di er from the readingfrom-a-printed-book model familiar to us today.

Reading Culture: What Do We Mean by “Reading”? When Gavrilov speaks of “the phenomenon of reading itself,” he seems to mean the cognitive act of reading. It is this, he states, that “is fundamentally the same in modern and in ancient culture.” But is reading solely, or even mostly, a neurophysiologically based act of cognition? Anthropologists, ethnographers, and sociolinguists have increasingly come to recognize in reading a complex sociocultural construction that is tied, essentially, to particular contexts. In a now classic study of literacy in more privileged (“Maintown”) and less privileged (“Roadville” and “Trackton”) communities in the Piedmont 17

region of the Carolinas,

Shirley Heath describes in detail the ways in which many aspects of reading are

informed by the reader’s subculture. Maintown children (1982: 51–56), for instance, learn from an early age to use children’s ction as a frame of reference for constructing real-world knowledge. While reading with parents and other adults, they learn school-oriented ways of using a text, such as interactive “initiation– p. 10

18

reply–evaluation” sequences,

which model the sort

of give-and-take used later in formal education.

But they also learn to value ction for its own sake, and to replicate it by telling stories that are not true. Moreover, they learn that writing may represent not only real events, but also decontextualized logical propositions to be used in taking meaning from their environment. Children from Roadville (1982: 57–64), on the other hand, while they also learn certain sorts of school-like habits of interaction with texts (e.g., “what-explanations”), regard the text itself from a markedly di erent stance. In this working-class, Christian community, reading to children past the toddler age is not interactive but performative, and behind the performance is the assumption that the stories told are “true”—real events that tell a message. The fundamental relationship between book learning and “reality” di ers: in Roadville, events in the real

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

collapses altogether. As a nal kick to the ruins, M. Burnyeat appends to Gavrilov’s article remarks on two

world are seldom compared to events in books; explicitly ctionalized accounts are thought to be “lies”; and the children are poor at decontextualizing their knowledge and applying it to di erent frames of reference. For our purposes, what is crucial is that the di ering reader responses are engendered not by the particular text, nor by the education of the reader, but by the sociocultural context in which the reading takes place. The meanings that readers construct di er, that is, largely in dependence on the (sub)culture in which the reading occurs. Recent anthropological and ethnographical studies, in an e ort to avoid the sort of vague generalities that so often devolve from discussion of literacy, now frequently attempt more speci c terminology, which seeks to refocus our view of the use of texts by the choice of a sometimes startlingly wide-angle lens. The studies. Three prominent examples: Shirley Heath speaks of a literacy event as “occasions in which written language is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes and strategies”; Brian Street proposes, more broadly and abstractly, literacy practices, referring thereby to “both behaviour and conceptualisations related to the use of reading and/or writing”; and R. D. Grillo extends this yet further to communicative practices, in which he includes “the social activities through which language or communication is produced,” “the way in which these activities are embedded in institutions, settings or domains which in turn are implicated in other, wider, social, economic, political and cultural processes,” and “the ideologies, which may be linguistic or other, which guide processes of communicative 19

production.”

Note how such terminology privileges study of sociocultural practices over the emphasis on a

speci c technology or medium. p. 11

Quite so wide a refocusing may, to be sure, make more sense for modern ethnographers than for historians of ancient culture. We do not have the opportunity to take eld notes from living informants, and the level of speci city advocated (which may in any case be overwrought) is simply not possible. But contemporary studies have, nonetheless, much to teach us about the deep dependency between a particular culture, narrowly de ned, and the reading of texts, broadly de ned. As will already be clear, reading is not, in my view, exclusively or even mostly a neurophysiological, cognitive act—not in fact an individual phenomenon, but a sociocultural system in which the individual participates. For clarity’s sake, and to help us begin to think this through, I list here some simple—if not simplistic— 20

propositions:

1. The reading of di erent types of texts makes for di erent types of reading events. Reading a tax document and reading love poetry are essentially di erent events, even for the same person in the same time and place. 2. The reading of a given text in di erent contexts results in di erent reading events. Reading love poetry in a scholastic context di ers essentially from reading love poetry over wine with a lover. Reading alone di ers essentially from reading with a group. 3. A reading event is in part informed by the conceived reading community. Whether based on an actual group (such as a class), or an imaginary group (intellectuals, lovers of poetry), the reader’s conception of “who s/he is,” that is, to what reading community s/he thinks to belong, is an important, and determinative, part of the reading event. Reading love poetry in a given context (say, alone in one’s living room) di ers depending on whether the reader thinks of the reading as preparation for class, or as participatory in elitist enthusiasms for high poetry. 4. The reading community normally has not only a strictly social component (the conception of the group), but also a cultural component, in that the rules of engagement are in part directed by inherited traditions. A reader’s stance toward course material is informed by scholastic traditions, some peculiar to the institution; more hazily, a reader’s stance toward the sort of material favored by

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

resulting view could not be more di erent from that which dominates discussion of reading in ancient

p. 12

enthusiasts for high poetry is informed by a set of inherited—that is,

trained—dispositions (such

as attention to intertextual references, or appreciation for certain aesthetic characteristics). 5. Reading that is perceived to have a cultural dimension (most obviously, literature of any sort) is intimately linked to the self-identity of the reader. Thus a person who identi es with the cultural elite will feel disgusted, or even polluted, by the reading of a “trash” romance novel; uplifted, and selfvalidated, by the reading of di

cult, but “excellent,” literature.

All of these propositions have many rami cations, and the details could be argued at nearly in nite length —so complex is reading—but even this simple analysis should begin to make clear why I prefer to look at many considerations beyond the decoding by the reader of the words of a text. Critical is the observation that reading is not simply the cognitive processing by the individual of the technology of writing, but rather the negotiated construction of meaning within a particular sociocultural context. An illustrative example from closer to hand may at this point prove helpful. When teaching ancient epic in translation (Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid), I have been deeply impressed at the high and general level of enthusiasm, indeed excitement, that the students bring to the reading of these texts. At least some of these texts are rather forbidding, after all, and not obviously to everyone’s tastes. Moreover, not many of these same people, as 40-something stockbrokers or business executives, would on their own nd these texts very engaging. Why is it that students commonly nd di

cult texts like Homer’s Iliad or Vergil’s Aeneid (or

Dante or Milton or Joyce) so deeply exciting within the context of a class? As I see it, this has far less to do with cognition than with the construction of a particular reading community, one that validates itself through texts deemed important to a shared sense of culture and cultural attainment. In a successful humanities class, we are not so much teaching texts as creating a reading community in which the members nd selfvalidation (as smart, cultured, etc.) in the negotiated construction of meaning from these texts. But let us think through this simple example further to see if we can gain a more vivid idea of what is intended by a reading culture. How, in this scholastic context, does such a culture materialize? In part, the reading culture devolves from traditions maintained by the institution. Institutionally, universities work toward creating the disposition that knowledge of, and directed engagement with, particular humanities p. 13

texts is socioculturally important: it is elemental (or so says the cultural tradition)

to being educated, a

necessary item in the cultural baggage of those who aspire to the elite of the society. In part, though, the reading culture is contrived by the teacher. Individually, teachers work toward creating the disposition that a particular text (the one we are studying in class) is meaningful and relevant: it is a necessary tool if the student is to apprehend the knowledge, and experience that sense of meaningfulness, that bonds the group together as a productive, self-validating unit. Yet the group itself is also complex: not only the class, but also that more vague conception of people who are “educated” or “intellectual,” or even “sincere.” Part of the reader’s conception is bound, then, by broad cultural in uences well beyond institutional or pedagogic manipulation. In any case, the group dynamics—the construction of the attitude that Homer is important, that Homer should be interesting—are fundamental to this particular type of reading experience. Which is to say: the reading experience depends on a dynamic, continually negotiated construction of meaning within the context of the conceived group. Reading is, to be sure, the individual’s construction of meaning, but it is never wholly interior; rather, sociocultural in uences always inform the meaning that the reader seeks to construct. In attempting an analysis of ancient reading culture, I therefore wish emphatically to promote two principles. First, we must proceed from a clear and deep perception that what we seek to analyze is an immensely complex, interlocking system. Even for particular questions (“Did the ancients read silently or aloud?”) it will not do to focus narrowly, as in the recent debate, on a single mode of inquiry such as cognitive analysis. Similarly, the analyses (not reviewed here) of scholars like Goody, Havelock, Ong, and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

reading not as an act, or even a process, but as a highly complex sociocultural system that involves a great

their followers—who nd in writing, and in its re ex, reading, a technology with (various) determinative consequences for the society—will, from this point of view, be seen as too simplistic, even reductionist, and 21

too inattentive to the particulars of the speci c cultures under study.

This leads to the second principle: that we must seek to analyze ancient reading within the terms of its own sociocultural context. Let us return for a moment to Bernard Knox’s important 1968 article (summarized above). Toward the opening of that article, Knox writes (421–22) the following: Balogh’s insistence that silent reading was not just unusual but almost unheard of seems to go too far; common sense rebels against the idea that scholarly readers, for example, did not develop a technique of silent, faster

reading. Are we really to imagine that Aristarchus read aloud all the

manuscripts of Homer he used for his edition? That Callimachus read aloud all the works from which he compiled his 120 volumes of Pinakes? That Didymus wrote his more than 3,000 volumes and read the countless books on which he based them, pronouncing every syllable out loud? “Common sense” rebels, however, because our modern cultural construction of scholarly e

ciency is

predicated on silent reading (a point central also to the arguments of both Saenger and Gavrilov). As it happens, though, we have a detailed account of the work habits of one of antiquity’s more proli c scholars, the Elder Pliny. In a well-known letter (3.5), the Younger Pliny describes the solution to his uncle’s (evidently unusual) desire for reading e

ciency: he had a lector read to him over meals and scolded a friend

who made the lector slow down to repeat a mispronounced word (11–12); when taking a bath he had a book read to him or dictated notes (14); he traveled with a secretary, who performed the same duties in any spare moments (15); to allow similar accommodation during the journey itself, he always used a litter in preference to walking (16). None of this precludes the Elder Pliny writing for himself (it is probable that he does: 3.5.10, 15), nor does it preclude Pliny reading to himself (though whenever the Younger Pliny is speci c, he mentions a lector). But clearly, when Pliny looks for increased e

ciency in his studies, silent

reading is not, as for us, the “natural” solution. Rather, Pliny “naturally” turns to a scheme for insinuating more time into his day for servants to read aloud and take dictation. There is, in short, no “common sense” about it.

Contextualizing Reading Communities We begin to perceive how large a task is at hand. Even the seemingly straightforward question with which we started—“Did the ancient Greeks and Romans read aloud or silently?”—is, strictly speaking, unanswerable: not only is the contextual grounding of the question unspeci c, but the casual use of read begs the very point under investigation. The more proper goal, as I have argued, is to understand the particular reading cultures that obtained in antiquity, rather than to try to answer decontextualized questions that assume in reading a clarity and simplicity it manifestly does not have. Approaches to understanding a dynamic cultural system are, however, by nature asymptotic. The very complexity of the system defeats nal analysis, and all the more so when, as for classical antiquity, the p. 15

details of the system are so dimly apprehended. This circumstance does not remove the possibility

of

better understanding, but we need to be clear from the outset that progress is by necessity limited—since this a ects not only conclusions but also the strategy of attack. In what follows, I will concentrate on the sociocultural contextualization for reading events within speci c 22

communities during the high empire.

The rst focus will be the Trajanic period (chapters 3–4: Pliny,

Tacitus; cf. chapter 2: Quintilian); then certain communities under the Antonines (chapters 5–8: Galen, Gellius, Fronto, Lucian); with a brief look at second-century communities in Graeco-Roman Egypt (chapter 9: The Papyri). For the most part, these will be communities as described in literary texts, which brings

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 14

along its own set of challenges. Each text is chosen for its serendipitous ability to illuminate the subject; I make no attempt at exhaustive treatment. Each text is taken on its own terms and merits: it will not do, in my view, to treat the evidence in Pliny and Galen and Gellius and Lucian as if these texts are all painted with the same brush, and thus in each case I take care to situate the evidence within the literary text. The overall result is a series of case studies, vignettes rather than landscapes. By the end, I think we will come to see some of the mountain ranges and valleys, but always somewhat hazily, even uncertainly. This, I take it, is what we must expect, given the complexity of the topic and the unevenness of the evidence. Note that the particularity of contextualization is not what we might like it to be. The case studies are at times and by design deeply re ective of one another: Pliny and Tacitus had close personal connection, as did is considerable concentration on Rome, the evidence also requires a look at Graeco-Roman culture more broadly. Moreover, the focus on literary evidence means that the discussion will address elite reading communities almost exclusively. I think the parts do begin to add up to a whole (see chapter 10: Conclusion), but much of the merit of the study will lie in the details. And nally: it is fundamental to the enterprise that we begin to get a sense of the reading culture not simply by accumulation of historical detail stripped from the texts, or even by analysis of the societies described in these texts, but also and importantly by apprehending the program of the literary endeavor, and how each literary program seems to map onto the p. 16

social ambitions and cultural traditions

of the time. We cannot directly examine the ways in which elite

circles in Rome used literary texts, but we can see how that is depicted, and, critically, we can also see how extant literary texts were deployed as a part of the negotiated construction of a community that centered around literary texts.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

E.g., Cavallo and Chartier 1999, the essays in Johnson and Parker 2009; for an overview see the bibliographical essay in Werner 2009. Gavrilov 1997, Burnyeat 1997. Knox 1968; “at least” since Knoxʼs conclusions are (as he acknowledges) in part anticipated by the more cautious reading of the evidence in Hendrickson 1929, by Clark 1931, who argues briefly but vigorously against the notion that silent reading was extraordinary in antiquity, and by Turner 1952a, 14 n. 4, who adduced evidence for silent reading in classical Athens. Gavrilov 1997, 61–66 (on Augustine), 58–61 (on cognitive psychology); Burnyeat 1997. Unbegreiflich: Norden 1898, 6. The passage runs: “When Ambrose read, his eyes ran over the columns of writing and his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and his tongue were at rest. O en when I was present—for he did not close his door to anyone and it was customary to come in unannounced—I have seen him reading silently, never in fact otherwise. I would sit for a long time in silence, not daring to disturb someone so deep in thought, and then go on my way. I asked myself why he read in this way. Was it that he did not wish to be interrupted in those rare moments he found to refresh his mind and rest from the tumult of othersʼ a airs? Or perhaps he was worried that he would have to explain obscurities in the text to some eager listener, or discuss other di icult problems? For he would thereby lose time and be prevented from reading as much as he had planned. But the preservation of his voice, which easily became hoarse, may well have been the true cause of his silent reading.” Observations on the Augustine passage form the conclusion to a lengthy paragraph whose theme sentence begins, “Wir haben aus dem Altertum selbst einige Zeugnisse für die Sensibilität der Menschen jener Zeit gegenüber der Musik des gesprochenen Wortes”: Norden 1923, 5–6. Starting with the second edition, Norden collects passages exemplifying “die Gewohnheit lauten Lesens” in an appendix; see Norden 1923, 451–53. Before Norden, the importance of reading ancient literary texts aloud is already frequently propounded: see Balogh 1927, 85 (on F. Nietzsche); Hendrickson 1929, 192–93 (on C. M. Wieland); Norden 1923, 6 (on E. Rohde); cf. Gavrilov 1997, 57. More on the early history of the controversy in ValetteCagnac 1997, 11–15. The original version of Baloghʼs article was published in Hungarian in 1921 (Knox 1968, 421). In 1929, G. L. Hendrickson independently (see 182 n. 1) published a similar analysis of ancient reading, which is however much briefer, more cautious

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Gellius and Fronto in a di erent sense. Still, the evidence spans roughly three generations, and though there

8.

9. 10.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070431 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

11.

in its conclusions, and far less influential. Lesser contributions to the accumulation and analysis of evidence, not included in the survey here: Wohleb 1929; Clark 1931 (an early dissenter against the view that silent reading was extraordinary); McCartney 1948; Turner 1952a, 14; Di Capua 1953; Stanford 1967, 2; Allan 1980; Starr 1990–91; Schenkeveld 1991, 1992; Burnyeat 1991 (in anticipation of Burnyeat 1997); Slusser 1992; Horsfall 1993a; Gilliard 1993 (reacting to Achtemeier 1990); Johnson 1994; Gilliard 1997. Knoxʼs words, 422. Knoxʼs argument against the passage (that as a poor African provincial, Augustine may not have known about silent reading, 422) has not proven convincing. Discussion at Knox 1968, 430–31; L. Koenen contra Knox, in Johnson 1994, 67 n. 5; Gavrilov 1997, 72. The story depends on Cydippe reading aloud what Acontius has written on an apple, and the physical circumstance (i.e., that rotating the apple prevents reading ahead in the sentence) is perhaps worth remark. Physical causation and verisimilitude are, however, largely beside the point. Readers in the twentieth century do not stop to ask why Cydippe reads aloud what is written on the apple, and I suppose readers in antiquity were accepting of the fairy-tale conditions of the story in much the same way. DNP 2.815, s.v. “Buch” (the common simile of the musical score originates in Hendrickson 1929, 184). Similarly, E. J. Kenney in the Cambridge History of Latin Literature, 12: “In general it may be taken for granted that throughout antiquity books were written to be read aloud…. It might be said without undue exaggeration that a book of poetry or artistic prose was not simply a text in the modern sense but something like a score for public or private performance.” Kenneyʼs remarks are quoted by Gavrilov 1997, 56, in the introduction to his article—somewhat tendentiously since the quotation is supposed to buttress Gavrilovʼs assertion of widespread acceptance among Classicists that the Greeks and Romans “did not read to themselves silently, save in rare and special cases.” Kenney, however, carefully restricts his comments to the reading aloud of literary texts. A startling example is the naive summary of the debate, which serves then as the basis for a study of New Testament texts, in Achtemeier 1990 (who seems unaware of Knoxʼs arguments inter alia; corrected in part by Gilliard 1993). This example points up how conclusions on ancient reading can be vitally important to work in related disciplines. The book expands upon ideas first presented in Saenger 1982. Gavrilovʼs conclusions were already known to some specialists from reports of a similar article that appeared in a Russian journal in 1989 (reference at Gavrilov 1997, 69 n. 52). The scene at 6.4 is helpfully clarified and placed into the broader context at Stock 1996, 63–64. Burnyeat 1997. Again, this evidence was already known to cognoscenti, from a letter Burnyeat wrote to the Times Literary Supplement (Burnyeat 1991). Balogh 1927 was also aware of the Ptolemy passage (first brought to notice by A. Brinkmann), but he glosses over it: 105 n. 27; cf. Burnyeat 1997, 75. The Plotinus passage was first cited as a central piece of evidence in Stock 1996, 286 n. 53. To Burnyeatʼs two passages, add the list of “passages where silent reading is more or less certainly implied” at Gavrilov 1997, 70–71, though much of this evidence is more ambiguous than he allows. (Gavrilov omits Antyllus, excerpted in Oribasius, Collectiones medicae 6.10.23–24 [CMG VI 1.1, 163–64 Raeder], who writes of the great consumption of wet things in the body for those who “read audibly,” τοῖς ἀναγινώσκουσιν ἀκουστόν, a phrase that seems to imply the commonness of its opposite.) Heath 1982, cf. Heath 1983; conveniently summarized, with illustrative examples from other cultures along the same lines (as, e.g., Clanchy 1979), in Street 1984: see the chapter “The ʻIdeologicalʼ Model,” esp. 121–25. Standard terminology in early childhood education. A simple example: Initiation (teacher) = “What time is it?” Reply (student) = “1:30” Evaluation (teacher) = “Very good.” Replacing “Very good” with “Thank you” would make this interaction unmarked conversational discourse rather than instructional or pseudo-instruction discourse. Heath has in mind text-centered interactions that follow this sort of formula. Summarized and quoted in Street 1993, 12–13. The quotations are from Heath 1982, 50; Street 1988, 61; and Grillo 1989, 15. Partly in order to avoid the political and other baggage that follow the term literacy, I will prefer the following terms: reading (by which I mean the experience of reading, broadly conceived), reading events (by which I mean to emphasize the contextualization of a particular “reading”), and reading culture (by which I mean to signal the cultural construct that underpins group and individual behaviors in a reading event). The problems of this sort of technologically determinative analysis are by now well rehearsed. For summary and criticism, see Thomas 1992, 15–28; Finnegan 1988, 1–14; Street 1984, esp. 44–65; Olson 1994, 1–20, 36–44; Johnson 2002, 10–13. For speculation on certain cognitive aspects of ancient reading, see Johnson 2000, 610–612. Use of high empire: cf. CAH vol. 11, The High Empire, 70 AD–192 (2000). I concentrate on the high empire for the pragmatic reason that this is where much of the best evidence lies. Further work along these lines could be profitably pursued also for the classical period (esp. Cicero) and for the context of early Christian writings.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0002 Published: April 2010

Pages 17–31

Abstract This chapter examines various practical and logistical aspects of reading in antiquity. The chapter presents in detail the ways in which “bookroll culture” in the rst and second centuries AD di ered from reading a modern book, and the ways in which the reading system worked symbiotically with the particularities of the ancient reading experience, including the use of scriptio continua, relative lack of punctuation, and the use of lectors. The text of Quintilian is examined for what it has to say about early imperial education in reading, both of schoolboys and of more experienced readers, and how literate education among the elite di ered in habits and assumptions from reading today.

Keywords: reading, bookroll, Scriptio continua, Lector, Quintilian, literate education Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction Before embarking on the case studies, the rst order of business will be to get clearly in mind the experience of an ancient book: what it was to hold one in the hand, how it was used and to what e ect, and what sort of training was assumed in its use and digestion. I begin with a sketch of the book-as-object, and work toward questions of the mechanics of the reading system as embedded in educational traditions and social institutions.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

2 Pragmatics of Reading 

Bookroll Culture 1

In the high empire, literary texts copied in extenso were written almost entirely on rolls of papyrus. The writing was disposed along the length of the roll in columns running from left to right ( gure 2.1). The script itself was almost always a book hand, a style of writing in which the letters were kept wholly or mostly separated to improve legibility. Prose texts were written in columns narrow relative to their height, roughly analogous to a modern newspaper; verse texts were di erent, since the column width was simply a function of the script size and the verse length. In either case, the layout was remarkably exact for a hand-produced item. The measurement from the left edge of one column to the next column stayed typically within ±1.5 2

the straightness of the written line, rough p. 18

evenness in spacing between lines, fairly exact alignment in

the run of the left edge of the column (and rough justi cation of the right), and alignment of the top and bottom of the columns relative to the top and bottom of the roll. A telling detail is scribal attention to Maas’s Law, by which is meant a tilt forward to the columns ( gure 2.1), such that the left and right edges of the column move steadily to the left as the scribe works his way down to the bottom; in the high empire, this forward-leaning look to the column seems to have been deeply in vogue among the Greek texts where our 3

evidence lies. The bookroll, in short, shows distinct signs of deliberate design and attention to what is stylish, as well as exactness in execution involving both measurement and expert estimation. All of this is consistent—as a general picture—with the conclusion that bookrolls were, generally, the product of scribes trained to the task, that is, to an artisan apprentice trade.

Figure 2.1

The Bookroll That trained scribes were predominantly involved in book manufacture is not surprising, but note that it 4

need not have been so. Making a bookroll involved no more than taking a premanufactured papyrus roll, writing out the text, attaching additional fresh rolls as the length of text required, and, when nished, cutting o

the blank remainder. Needed were the papyrus rolls, pen, ink, sponge, glue, and knife. This could

have been a casual process. But in fact, as the evidence from papyri shows us, it was not. Scribes clearly had a strong sense of the cultural demands on the product. For a bookroll to qualify as such required a particular look and feel with well-de ned traditions of detail. Counterexamples exist, of course, but—school texts of Homer to one side—it is important to stress how rare these are.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

millimeters—the width of a broad pen stroke—as one ranges along the roll. Also typical were evenness in

The writing itself, formed with a view to clarity, was laid out in continuous letters (scriptio continua), that is, without spaces between words. It is sometimes said that ancient books lacked punctuation, but that is not strictly true; what is true is that in ancient books the punctuation was far less elaborated. Minor points of articulation or breath pause, where our editions place comma or colon, go unpunctuated for the most part; 5

when marked, raised dots are normally used, and these are usually additions by a reader. Punctuation is, p. 19

however, routine for marking periods (i.e., full

p. 20 6

sentence stops), changes between speakers in drama and dialogue, and other major points of division, such as the poems within an epigram collection. Sentences and other dividing points are most often signaled by space or raised dot (·) at the appropriate point in the line of text. Other aids to reading were few. In Greek texts, elision and dieresis are often, but not always, marked; breathings and accents are rare aside from school texts and Greek lyric. Latin texts, from what we can see, were almost entirely unencumbered of 7

diacritical or other reading marks. Little interferes, then, with the run of the text aside from the paragraphoi. For the reader, the paragraphoi naturally act as landing points for breath and mental pauses, 8

and as visual cues for returning to a passage when a reader looks up from the text. But the overall e ect is (to us) of a radically unencumbered stream of letters. Thorough training was necessary to be able to read this scriptio continua readily and comfortably. Note that the net e ect is designed for clarity and for beauty, but not for ease of use, much less for mass readership. Importantly, this design is not one of primitivism or ignorance. The Greeks and Romans knew perfectly well, for instance, the utility of word division—the Greek school texts on papyri bear eloquent 9

testimony to the need for emerging readers to practice syllable and word division. Similarly, philhellenism in the early empire led to the adoption of scriptio continua in Latin literary texts, which earlier had used interpuncts (raised dots) to divide the words—that is, word division was discarded by the Romans in 10

deference to Greek aesthetic and cultural traditions.

As already mentioned, readers would sometimes add

detailed punctuation to texts as a guide to syntax and breath pauses, yet the punctuation does not elaborate over time: in general the deliberate scribal practice was to copy only the bare-bones punctuation of major 11

points of division even when detailed punctuation was available.

Documentary papyri and inscriptions

often have elaborate visual structural markers, such as to signal a new section, which, however, nd no p. 21

re ection in the bookroll. Strict functionality, clearly, is not a priority in bookroll design. Nor was thrift. The margins above and below the columns tended to be quite wide: 3–5 cm was a typical measure for run12

of-the-mill manuscripts, 3–7 cm for deluxe, with extreme examples ranging to 8 cm and more.

Practicality is in play, since the papyrus roll tended to fray at the edges, but a margin of 2 cm would have 13

served.

There is surely something here of aesthetic display and even of conspicuous consumption. Typical 14

bookrolls used only 40–70% of the front papyrus surface available for writing.

The bookroll seems, then, an egregiously elite product intended in its stark beauty and di

culty of access to 15

instantiate what it is to be educated. This comes as no surprise. Whatever the cost of papyrus (debated),

the surviving Edict of Diocletian (our best evidence for relative pricing of goods) makes clear that the major cost of a book—the scribe’s work—was fully two to two and a half times what it cost to have a scribe scribble out a contract: To a scribe for best writing, 25 denarii per 100 lines; for second quality writing, 20 denarii per 100 lines; to a notary for writing a petition or legal document, 10 denarii per 100 lines. (Edictum 16

Diocletiani de pretiis rerum venalium col. 7 41–43)

Still, one must be careful not to overstate the case. It is true that relatively few bookrolls were written in cursive or otherwise substandard scripts, and the evidence from papyrus suggests that perhaps a third were 17

written in a formal or semiformal script with at least pretension to elegance.

But over half were written in

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

the paragraphos (a horizontal line at the left edge of the column: see gure 2.1), usually conjoined with a

fairly rapid, nondescript hands (mostly “second quality,” in the terms of the Edict of Diocletian, one supposes). Now these do not look like tax receipts, to be sure. Documentary texts do sometimes mimic various aspects of a bookroll, such as generous margins or the use of a book hand, but literary texts written on rolls hardly ever exhibit strictly documentary features. Even in the case of bookrolls written in nondescript hands, there is generally enough attention to detail of layout and text to support the iconography of the bookroll here delineated. A bookroll was not always a fully elegant product, then, yet also never cheap or inconsequential: even a second-quality book hand was twice the expense of the hand typical of a legal document under Diocletian’s Edict. p. 22

Unlike most utilitarian, documentary texts, the bookroll was often used—deployed, as we shall see—in a or in a context such as dinner entertainment. But even when used alone and in private, the bookroll carried along with it cultural baggage, an emblem of educational and other status. We see this evident in iconography, in which hundreds of reliefs, statues, paintings, and mosaics bear witness to the bookroll’s 18

importance as an emblem of high culture.

As a signi er, the bookroll is analogous in many respects to

statuary in a garden, or to the luxurious plate on which dinner is served in an elite household. The bookrollas-object seems, to the modern eye, something more akin to an art object than to a book, and this is, I think, not merely the consequence of our di erent cultural register. The literary roll exempli es high culture not just in the demonstration that the owner is literate and educated, but by means of the physical aesthetics the bookroll also points up the re nement of the owner. Moreover, the use of the bookroll, much like walking in a splendid garden or dining from a beautiful plate, demonstrates the owner’s ability to integrate a sense of aesthetic re nement and cultural knowledge into every aspect of daily life and society—an important goal in hellene and philhellene elite behaviors during the Roman era.

Reading System, Writing System When we conjure to mind the ancient bookroll, then, we see an object that to modern perception seems, with its lack of word spaces and bareness of punctuation, spectacularly, even bewilderingly, impractical and ine

cient as a reading tool. But that the ancient reading and writing systems interacted without strain is

indisputable: so stable was this idea of the literary book, that with only small variations it prevailed for over 700 years in the Greek tradition. How was it that the Greeks chose not to adopt obviously useful aids like word spaces, elaborated punctuation, structural markers, and the like in the writing of their literary texts? And how was it that the Romans chose to discard some of these elements as philhellenism took deep root? We, surely, cannot imagine a stylistic preference by which we choose to eliminate spaces between words in our literary texts—which signals strongly how di erent our own reading culture must be. Surprising as it p. 23

may seem, the conclusion is hard to avoid that the ancient reading culture felt no need

for such things,

that in terms of the total system of reading, habits like scriptio continua and scant punctuation worked, and worked well. To understand this better, we need to pause for a moment to re ect more generally on how reading intersects with writing as a system. All scripts are inadequate in conveying prosodic and paralinguistic features like tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact, body language, and other elements that make spoken utterances quite di erent from written scripts. Writing not only records incompletely the locutionary act (what is said) but is poor as a conveyance of the illocutionary force (how the speaker intends 19

what is said to be taken).

Indeed the di erence between written style and spoken style can be largely

ascribed to lexical and syntactical elements that writing adds or subtracts, so as to try to get around the fact that it is not speech. But writing (whatever its advantages) is always to some extent handicapped by lack of the subtle contextual clues that personal speaking a ords. In David Olson’s elegant formulation, reading becomes, then, in large part the reader’s attempt to project illocutionary force into the bare locutionary

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

display setting: for example, the reading might be accomplished by a lector, among associates and friends

20

signals of the written script.

The nature of this projection will itself be, by necessity, socioculturally

informed. Writing is also adaptive to needs. Scripts naturally adjust when inadequate for conveying something essential for the contexts in which the writing is used. Linguistic examples are perhaps most obvious. Ancient Semitic scripts commonly omit vowels, since these are for the most part linguistically nondistinctive, and, famously, the Greeks, when taking over the Semitic alphabet from Phoenicia, reassigned some consonantal letters (aleph for alpha, etc.) to describe vowel sounds, since Greek is heavy in linguistically distinctive vowels. Similarly, we can see linguistic motivations for why, for instance, ancient Greeks felt the need to distinguish in their alphabet aspirated “p” (phi, e.g., φόνος, “slaughter”) from against unaspirated “spin,” phonetically di erent but phonemically nondistinctive). Sociocultural factors come into play as well. Prescriptions from doctors often are readable only insofar as they need to be: the rst letters of the name of the drug, the essential numbers. This makes the script of prescriptions illegible to most of us, but perfectly understandable to pharmacists, who work within the terms of these formulaic designations every day. We see exactly the same phenomenon in ancient papyrus p. 24

documents, in which the rst few letters of a word or even an expression are su

cient for

formulaic

items such as receipts. I have written elsewhere about the interesting contemporary example of emoticons (smiley faces and the like) in e-mail correspondence, in my view an adjustment made in the script as e-mail 21

correspondents struggle to write in a style that mimics a chat.

The emoticon, that is, has become the

conventional solution to a perceived need to convey crucial subtleties like teasing and irony without resorting to the stylistic devices of formal writing. The curious rise of the emoticon is a good example of how closely reading system and writing system interlock: it is exactly the peculiar mode of discourse in email (conversational in style, so to speak) that leads, directly, to the need for such a device. The emoticon is a directive as to how to read, how to project proper illocutionary force, within the frame of a type of conversational writing that does not have an adequate, established set of stylistic devices to convey certain aspects of conversational tone. The fact that Greek and imperial Roman texts look the way they do, and not as we might expect, signals 22

something important about what they are and how they were used. In our own literary texts

we seem to

require division into chapters and sometimes subchapters, thorough paragraphing, detailed typographical signals such as italics and boldface, fully elaborated punctuation, and, of course, spaces to mark word division. What does it say that in the high empire there seemed no need for scriptural devices with like or similar functionalities? There is, to be sure, no simple answer to such a question, but we can observe at once that certain features of ancient literary texts seem to di er, essentially, from modern texts in what is assumed in the burden upon the reader. Literary texts in our culture are characterized by an elaboration of hints to the reader. These in turn convey certain well-de ned types of paralinguistic information about the text: large-scale conceptual boundaries (chapter, subchapter, paragraphs, bullets, and other subheadings); small-scale structuring of sentence within paragraph and phrasing within sentence (period, semicolon, colon, comma, dash, parenthesis); and points of conceptual or tonal stress (italics, boldface). The reader thus readily perceives certain (conventional) aspects of the conceptual framework, as well as certain (again, conventional) aspects of authorial tone and emphasis. Note that by no means all paralinguistic information is included: expression of irony, for example, is only sometimes possible within this set of conventions, and often must be stylistically signaled. Nonetheless, typography and layout in modern texts are designed to p. 25

reduce certain types of di erences in

reader interpretation. Competent readers encountering italics in 23

the sentence, “There’s always something not right,”

will come away with a uniform impression of the

authorial intention for stress in this otherwise ambiguous expression. In the ancient bookroll, by contrast, very little paralinguistic information is conveyed, and the necessary consequence is that the ancient reader had much more responsibility for interpretation. We have seen this

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

unaspirated “p” (pi, e.g., πόνος, “work”) in a way that English speakers do not (cf. “p” in aspirated “pin”

already in the detail that, within a period, punctuation (our colon, semicolon, comma, dash, parenthesis) is sometimes added by a reader, but only sometimes and sketchily, and that this level of detail is however 24

usually not copied by the scribe in making a new bookroll.

That is, the phrasing of a sentence—even

something as basic as whether a sentence without an interrogative might form a question—is left to the reader’s interpretation. Or, more precisely, the phrasing emerges from the con uence of the author’s 25

careful stylistic construction—the literary style—and the reader’s informed interpretation and rendering. The ancient Greeks and Romans were well aware of this, of course. Most explicit on the question of the reader’s phrasing and the mechanics of reading, at least in the period under examination here, is 26

Quintilian’s treatise on the education of the perfect orator, the Institutio Oratoria.

Quintilian comments

by the reader, that is, the need to be able to sense correctly not only larger elements of structure, but also 27

the disposition of the comma, the colon, the period as one reads.

Being able to perceive the proper phrasing

—Quintilian somewhat indi erently uses the vocabulary of breath pauses, discernment of rhythm, 28

apprehension of meaning —was critical both for understanding and for appreciation of literary texts. Quintilian addresses an ideal, to be sure, but many of the attitudes he brings to bear are fundamental to the times and warrant examination in some detail.

p. 26

Quintilian and the Mechanics of Reading When Quintilian writes of the education of the perfect orator, he makes it clear that, following Cicero’s lead, he is describing not a reality but an elite goal: “[just as in Cicero’s Orator] the orator who is to be trained by us is not one who now exists or once did exist, but rather an image that we create, in our mind, of an orator perfect down to the smallest detail” (1.10.4; cf. 1.pr.9). Quintilian’s treatise is not an everyman’s manual to learn the methods of oratory, but rather a lengthy dissertation on the ner points of raising a gentleman to the art. The enterprise is in every regard elitist. For example, he advises in minute particulars on the nursemaids, the pedagogues, the choice of teacher and school for the young orator-in-training (1.1.4–5, 8– 11, 1.2.9–16). He is explicit that the high pleasures of literature (litterae) are the domain of the educated, who are also the good (boni, 12.1.1–19), and to be distinguished from those who spend their leisure time on theater, dicing, idle talk, banqueting (1.12.18, cf. 12.1.6). He condemns those who take fees for advocacy and trusts “that there is not one even among my readers who would think of calculating the monetary value of literary studies (studia)” (1.12.17, trans. after Butler). He warns that de ning correct usage as “merely the practice of the majority” (quod plures faciunt, 1.6.44) would be “a very dangerous rule a ecting not merely style (oratio) but life as well.” Usage, therefore, must be de ned as the “agreed practice of the educated” (consuetudinem sermonis vocabo consensum eruditorum, 1.6.45). Even these few examples already suggest how thoroughly Quintilian situates training in oratory within a broader terrain. In a typical passage at 4.2.1– 2, Quintilian, in laying out guidelines for construction of the narratio in a speech, gives exemplary passages from history and poetry as well as oratory (Sallust’s History, Vergil’s Georgics, Cicero’s Verrines). That is, literary studia in general, rather than study of oratory in particular, are assumed as the essential resource for the gentleman-orator. This insistent focus on general literary education is a theme we will see play out repeatedly in the chapters that follow, but with an interestingly variable pinnacle to which these challenging studia tend: oratory (Quintilian, Pliny, Fronto), medicine (Galen), philology (Gellius), philosophy (Lucian). When Quintilian remarks in detail on the mechanics of reading for his perfect orator, he is thinking about bookrolls, and not about accounts or tax receipts or even letters. We need to be clear that his interest has little to do with mere functional literacy, and everything to do with what is necessary to render the bookroll, that icon of elitism already described. Interestingly, Quintilian speaks in terms that generally do not suggest a lector, even though he does not, for instance, hesitate to discuss in some detail the use of an amanuensis

p. 27

for dictation (a habit he urges against: 10.3.18–19, 22,

cf. 1.1.28). We know, of course, that slaves and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

repeatedly and insistently on the importance of proper understanding of the artistic structure (compositio)

29

freedmen were trained to the task of reading, and often performed the lector function.

Quintilian, too,

mentions lectors, but only once and by the way and not in the context of the perfect orator whose training 30

he advises.

The emphasis in his treatise is, rather, on the long, hard work necessary for the orator-in-

training to gain full reading competence. His own view, clearly, is that the gentleman-amateur needs to command the art of reading as well as the art of speaking. Moreover, the very fact that Quintilian does not need to argue the point (as he does with the gentleman’s use of a scribe for dictation) seems to indicate a general consensus. Quintilian advocates a thorough, systematic approach to instruction in letters, starting from an early age (1.1.15). He rst remarks that one should start with Greek, but add Latin quickly into the curriculum, a rm beginning of the reading process, as we expect, he emphasizes the memorizing of alphabet and syllables. 31

Learning the alphabet was not unlike our own e orts (1.1.25).

Following the alphabet, the possible

syllables were methodically memorized (1.1.30–31): ba, be, bi, bo, bu, ca, ce, ci, co, cu, through all the letters of the alphabet; then bab, beb, bib, bob, bub, and so forth; and even including certain consonantal combinations 32

(bra, bre, bri, bro, bru, etc.), through all the permutations.

The focus on syllables seems strange to us, but

was, as far as we know, a universal part of the method for learning to read among the Greeks and Romans 33

from at least the fth century BC and continuing through the middle ages. p. 28

Quintilian is very emphatic on

the need for thorough command of syllables: No short-cut is possible with regard to the syllables. They must all be memorized thoroughly and there must be no putting o

the most di

cult of them, as is commonly done, since that leads to an

unpleasant surprise when the student needs to spell the words. (Inst. Or. 1.1.30) Let us pause to think about this. At rst, the focus on syllables seems wholly schematic, if not strange and 34

tedious and pedagogically unsound.

Considered more sympathetically, though, one can see real point to it,

since the student learns the varying phonemes systematically and in context. Thus, the di erent phonetic qualities of /a/ in -ba-, -bal-, and -bar- are taken care of in the course of systematic memorization of syllables, and the student does not have to deal directly with the fact (which emerging readers often nd 35

confusing) that the letter “a” represents several di erent sounds.

We can further speculate that in a

bookroll without word division, the thorough familiarity with the contours, visual as well as audial, of the syllables could lend important grounding as the reader looks ahead and tries to identify the oncoming letter groups. In any case, Quintilian is convinced that thorough memorization of syllables is key. To continue the passage quoted above: Indeed, we must by no means place too much con dence in a child’s memory. It is better to repeat and train in the syllables over a long time, and, when the boy reads (in lectione), not to hurry him to read continuously or rapidly, unless the letter combinations can suggest themselves immediately and unhesitatingly, without the slightest delay or stopping to think. Once that is done, he can begin to grasp (complecti) words from the syllables, and then to link together (conectere) sentences from the words. (Inst. Or. 1.1.31) The di

culty Quintilian anticipates as he urges command of the fundamentals is exactly that which we see

in any young reader as he or she struggles to render the text, too easily losing the meaning if the syllables and their sounds have to be puzzled out. For a bookroll written in scriptio continua, this will be more challenging, to be sure—even grasping the words can be di

cult at rst. But success is by no means

impossible as long as the student is brought steadily along: It is amazing how much undue haste adds to delay in reading competence…. Reading (lectio) must therefore rst be unerring (in identi cation of syllables), then connected, and slow for a long time, until practice makes speed come to pass, without error. For to look to the right, which everyone

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

reminder of the bilingualism assumed in elite intellectual society in the high empire (1.1.12). For the

p. 29

teaches, and

to look ahead is a matter not so much of logic or method as of practice: one has to

speak out (dicenda) what precedes even while keeping the eyes on what follows, and the mind’s attention is necessarily divided, a most di

cult circumstance. The result is that the voice is busy

with one thing while the eyes are busy with another. (Inst. Or. 1.1.32–34) This last will be recognized as Quintilian’s description of the eye-voice span, a technical term in modern reading studies already mentioned in chapter 1. Command of the syllables and ready perception of the words is necessary before one can learn the trick of reading ahead while speaking so as to know how to phrase and intone and otherwise bring out the meaning. Quintilian is not explicit, but this part of the process seems to 36

last for some years.

Again, this stems from the fact that his interest lies not in functional literacy but in elite education. Consider this passage: Reading (lectio) is our nal topic. As regards reading, it is only possible to show in actual practice such things as knowing when to take a breath, where to place a pause in a line, where a new sentence ends or begins, when the voice ought to be raised or lowered, what in ection should be used for each phrase, and what should be spoken more quickly or more slowly, more excitedly or more gently. On this point, so that he can do all these things, I o er therefore only this one precept: he must understand [what he reads] (intellegat). (Inst. Or. 1.8.1–2) Reading, in Quintilian’s view, goes far beyond decipherment of the letters. His explicit focus is on oratory, 37

so we accept as a matter of course his emphasis on proper phrasing, breathing, and modulation of voice.

But note that in the education he urges, reading aloud is intimately tied up with learning the phrasing—for everyone, not just budding orators—and phrasing is, naturally, linked with accurate apprehension of the meaning of the text. Lectio in the early stages requires that the boy stand at the teacher’s knee, read aloud, and have the text, at rst, interpreted by the master, and, later, inquired into by the master to con rm that the student has su p. 30

38

cient understanding (cf., e.g., 1.2.12, 1.8.13–17, 2.5.5–17).

Elocution, in Quintilian’s

presentation, is always closely linked to instruction such that the student comes to

“a clearer

understanding of what is to be read” (2.5.6, cf. 9.4 passim). This, too, is a long, grinding process. As the learner matures, lectio becomes a more internal and re ective process. Although the passage starting at 1.2.11 provides by-the-way mention of student recitation before the master, the main thrust of the passage is that for the student, even a fairly young student, the teacher should not always be o ering instruction “since [the boy’s] studies require far more some time apart” (cum praesertim multo plus secreti temporis studia desiderent, 1.2.11). No need for the teacher to stand over him as he is “writing, learning by heart, and thinking” (1.2.12); “further, not all reading (lectio) needs the master to be in charge and o ering his explication; for if it did, how would the boy ever become acquainted with all the authors required of him” (1.2.12, trans. after Butler). In the context of the passage, it seems implicit that the student is imagined at a school, so at least some of this “time apart” for reading, writing, memorizing, thinking occurs within a group setting; but explicitly the reading process does also happen secrete, that is, in some sense “apart” and to himself. (The interesting intersection between private and group reading activities is a subject we will explore further in chapters 6 and 7.) In Book 10, the fully mature reader (that is, the advanced student in prospect at this point of the Institutio Oratoria) has now progressed to the stage that his reading experience can be contrasted sharply with the 39

experience of hearing a text read aloud.

Again, the subject hovers between oratory in particular, with its

speci c performance characteristics, and reading of literature in general. But in what follows, the reading of literary texts in general is clearly in view:

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

For Quintilian the strict mechanics of reading are never far removed from the literary matter of the text.

But the advantages conferred by reading and listening are not identical (alia vero audientes, alia legentes magis adiuvant). The speaker (qui dicit) stimulates us by the animation of his delivery (etc.) … (19) Reading (lectio), however, is free, and does not hurry past us with the speed of oral delivery; we can reread a passage again and again if we are in doubt about it or wish to x it in the memory. We must return to what we have read and reconsider it with care, while, just as we do not swallow our food till we have chewed it and reduced it almost to a state of liquefaction to assist the process of digestion, so what we read must not be committed to the memory for subsequent imitation while it is still in a crude state, but must be softened and, if I may use the phrase, reduced to a pulp by frequent reperusal. (20) For a long time also we should read none save the best authors and such as are least likely to betray our trust in them, while our reading must be almost as thorough as if we were work from cover to cover and then read it afresh, a precept which applies more especially to speeches, whose merits are often deliberately disguised. (Inst. Or. 10.1.16, 19–20, trans. after Butler, italics added) p. 31

I italicize some typical elements in this passage that will come to exercise us in subsequent chapters: the need for thorough reading, the need for rereading, the requirement of worthwhile reading, the need to understand in meticulous detail before internalizing what is read. All of these, as we shall see, are emphatically fundamental to elite models for reading behavior. Now, to be sure, Quintilian is advocating—the Institutio Oratoria is his design of the best education for a perfect orator and not necessarily a description of reality—but his view nonetheless points up an ideal, and that ideal is, as we shall see, deeply seated. He both advocates and assumes that the reader’s role is a di

cult one, hard to master, requiring many years of necessary education for basic competence. We gain

the sense of a deliberate raising of the hurdle such that reading becomes something truly di

cult, far

removed from any notion of mere functionality. We do not know how routinely or in what circumstances the elite may have used trained lectors—use of functional slaves is too unmarked a condition for much remark in our sources—but lectors were in any case no excuse for not being able to read oneself, and with full 40

competence.

Moreover, the practices Quintilian advocates and describes make sense within the dynamics of the broader 41

reading system. The slow, methodical, even painful attention to syllables, words, phrases, even melodies,

and the urgency with which Quintilian insists upon command of structure, style, and other literary details, are consistent with an idea of book that was not readily accessible and that required considerable e ort and practice to be able to read with competence and approval. From the pages of Quintilian one senses the critical importance of deep internalization of things literary. Within this worldview, it becomes hypoelementary, and an insult to the elevation of elitism advocated, to mark the phrases of a sentence or the basic units of compositional structure in a speech. Along similar lines, we can infer a profound symbiosis between this exaggerated idea of reading competency and the idea of a literature that was itself challenging, 42

in many prominent cases necessitating years of advanced study to fully apprehend.

The upshot of all this

is that the bookroll culture in the high empire was one designedly reserved for elite of a certain stripe, able and willing to devote immense time and energy to its mastery.

Notes 1.

The codex first comes firmly into the historical record in Martial (1.2, 14.184–92; first century AD), but as a curiosity, not as a norm. Very few codices of pagan texts are dated to the Antonine period or earlier among extant papyrus fragments; perhaps the best claim is POxy 1.30 (De bellis macedonicis), a Latin text dated palaeographically to the second or early

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

participating in the writing. Nor must we study it merely in parts, but must read through the whole

2. 3. 4. 5.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

6. 7.

third century. For a catalogue of codices claimed for either second or third century, see LDAB. On the early history of the codex, see Roberts and Skeat 1983, 24–29; Harris 1991. Johnson 2004, 50–54. Johnson 2004, 91–99. Papyrus was sold not in sheets like modern paper, but in rolls. More detail on this and other technicalities of production in Johnson 2009b. Ancient grammarians speak of other punctuation dots (ἡ μέση στιγμή, ὑποστιγμή) used to mark lesser pauses in a sentence, but of this the papyri show evidence that is sporadic and inconsistent—certainly not part of a generalized system used and understood by readers: Turner and Parsons 1987, 9; Johnson 1994. The notion of elaborated punctuation as “particularly important” comes only in the medieval period: Parkes 1991, 1–18 (quotation, 17). Quintilian 8.2.17: “compass of a single breath” (ultra quam ullus spiritus durare possit); cf. 9.4.125. See Muller 1964; Townend 1969. Quintilian 1.7.2 tells us that long marks (apices) are only rarely added to a text. Direct evidence for Latin texts in the early and high empire is sparse. The Latin papyri are collected in Cavenaile 1958; see LDAB for an up-to-date catalogue. More on this in Johnson 1994. Cribiore 2001, 132–33, 172–75 (on syllabaries and exercises in syllabic division), 134 (reading exercises with slashes and spaces between words). A couple of examples: Cribiore 1996, no. 182, 379. Oliver 1951, 241–42; Muller 1964, 34–35; Wingo 1972, 50–63, 132. Johnson 2004, 35–36. Johnson 2004, 130–41. Earlier scholars seriously underestimated the typical size of margins. As it did, apparently, in Ptolemaic bookrolls. On narrow margins in Ptolemaic rolls, see Blanchard 1993; Johnson 2004, 133–34. Percentages are based on the data in tables 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 in Johnson 2004, 162–200. Backs were typically le blank to protect against damage and ink transfer. Skeat 1995. Translation and discussion in Turner and Parsons, 1987, 1–4. Percentages from tables 3.1 and 3.2 in Johnson 2004, 162–84. The most complete assembly and discussion remains Birt 1907. Austin 1962 introduced these terms, fundamentals of what is now known as speech act theory. Olson 1994, 91–114, esp. 92–93. See Johnson 2002. By literary text, I intend not simply “literature” but (the sense assumed in antiquity) the cultured writings of educated men and women, including poems and novels but also history, scholarly writings, and so forth. The example is taken from Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning (Ballantine Books, 2005), 18. Johnson 2004, 15–59, for the full story. Jerome complains about an author (Jovinian) who writes in such a way that itʼs hard to tell where sentences begin and end: Jovin. 1.2, cited by Knox 1968, 17. The Inst. Or. was written a er Quintilianʼs retirement (2.12.12) but before Domitianʼs death in AD 96 (10.1.91): see Kaster 1995, 333–36 for details and bibliography. Quintilian is o en reflective of a deep tradition and restates much material known from elsewhere, esp. Ciceroʼs Orator; in general terms, then, he seems to summarize widely held views. Throughout, I follow the text of Winterbottomʼs Oxford Classical Text. The long section 9.4.1–147 is devoted to this theme, addressed passim throughout the work. For definition and discussion of comma, colon, period, and Latin equivalents, 9.4.122 . E.g., 9.4.68. Starr 1990–91; other passages collected by H. Beikircher in TLL s.v. “lector” IB. Starrʼs survey restricts itself mostly to servants who are designated as lectores, and thus encompasses only one part of the activity of reading texts aloud. In any case, as Starr points out (342), the use of a lector is so assumed that only happenstance preserves direct mention of the lector in the ancient source. See the helpful discussion of other terms for performative reading in Allen 1972; further useful comments and bibliography in Horsfall 1995. Inst. Or. 6.3.44; cf. 2.5.6 for the gentleman student as lector. With, however, more by way of mental gymnastics in which the student is asked to deliver the alphabet in various sequences, such as backward, or even skipping a fixed number of letters. On this, and insight as to why this may have been so (to practice oneʼs numbers), see Cribiore 2001, 165–67. Bonner 1977, 168–69; Cribiore 2001, 172–73. These could even include quadriliteral sets like bras, bres, bris, bros, brus. Cribiore 1996 catalogues and discusses the evidence, mostly Greek, from papyri; see no. 78 for an example of a quadriliteral set.

33.

34. 35. 36.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196070872 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

37.

First attested in Calliasʼs 5th-century comedy, The Alphabet Show (Athenaeus Deipnosoph. 10.79 Kaibel, 453c). Cribiore 2001, 174: “the e ectiveness of building on syllables to teach reading and writing was not questioned throughout antiquity,” citing Small 1997, 24–25. The concentration on syllabaries has a long history: see Reynolds 1996, 7–10 for late antiquity and the middle ages; and for the broad sketch, see my article, “Teaching the Children How to Read: The Syllabary” (forthcoming in Classical Journal). Cribiore 2001, 173 describes the emphasis on syllabaries as “bizarre,” “painstaking and pointless,” and speaks of the “tyranny of the syllables.” We of course do not know the exact vowel quantities for either Greek or Latin, but it is certain that the phonetics shi ed in contexts such as a following liquid or nasal, and perhaps in other contexts as well. Ancient sources are notoriously inexact on the timing of elementary education (only Plato at Laws 7.809e gives a number: three years for learning “letters,” εἰς γράμματα), probably because there was little consistency: see Cribiore 2001, 42, 56, 162 with references. There is a great deal in the Inst. Or. on the rhythm and even melody of speaking or reading, e.g., 9.4 passim, esp. 68. Cf. also n. 41 below. E.g., the grammaticus will ask the boy to give each part of speech, detail the metrical qualities, point out barbarisms and other improper uses, quiz on word meanings, require categorization by figures of speech or thought, and so forth. (Example from 1.8.13–17.) A similar contrast plays out at 11.3.4. As Valette-Cagnac 1997, 29f notes, the goal—the “last stage”—of reading and education is, for the Roman, expressive reading aloud rather than, as for us, swi , silent reading. 1.8.1–3 (modulations, but only manly ones); 1.10.27; 1.120.29 (cf. 31). Cf. also Gellius, NA 1.4.8. Speaking of contemporary compositions, Quintilian objects to “a wide-spread opinion among many, that one should consider a work elegantly and exquisitely written if it requires a commentator” (8.2.21), but the catalogue in Book 10 makes clear that he expects a wide and deep knowledge of classical texts, including very di icult ones, in Greek and in Latin.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0003 Published: April 2010

Pages 32–62

Abstract This chapter examines the Letters of Pliny the Younger to understand better both the ways in which Pliny constructs a reading community and the particularities of that community. Pliny’s construction of literary culture is found to have a broad basis in regular, balanced ideals of daily regimen. Also explored is the relationship between Pliny’s deliberate highlighting of the institution of recitation and the reading community he seeks to construct, as well as other aspects of Pliny’s construction of community around literary ideals.

Keywords: reading community, literary culture, Pliny the Younger, recitation Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction: Plinyʼs Construction of Literary Culture Elucidation of the sociocultural dimension of literary and other intellectual pursuits is fundamental to the case studies that follow. To that end we will as a rst task focus on readers, in order to establish more clearly the mechanisms by which literature became and remained central to the construction and identity of elite community. Pliny the Younger o ers a convenient starting point, both chronologically and notionally, since 1

in many respects his Epistles   revolve around exactly this point: how things literary intersect with the particular part of society that he seeks to bring under wing. Pliny was an important man in Roman polity and society. A Transpadane Italian born in Novum Comum (modern Lake Como), he had the good fortune that when his father died young, his neighbor Verginius Rufus was appointed as his guardian (2.1.8), a man not well-known today but one of the premier politicians and military men of his time: thrice consul (cos. ord. 63 II su . 69 III ord. 97), legate of Upper Germany, and 2

twice o ered election as emperor during the tortured events of AD 68/69. Pliny was subsequently adopted by his uncle, the elder Pliny, who, though an equestrian and unambitious politically, was a wealthy man, in p. 33

3

later life an advisor to Trajan, and, of course, had considerable claims as an intellectual. Pliny’s own career

was, by any reckoning, a distinguished one: he became consul in 100 at the young age of 39, soon after 4

augur, and was Trajan’s choice as special legate with full consular power to Pontus and Bithynia. Three of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

3 Pliny and the Construction of Reading Communities 

the few thrice-consuls of that era were his close associates and supporters, a detail that suggests the depth 5

of his political network. He was in uential as an advocate, specializing in inheritance cases before the centumviral court and public prosecutions for corruption. He also served under Trajan in the consilium principis, that is, he was routinely called on as one of the two or three dozen amici consulted on complex 6

a airs. Though not proverbially rich, he was very wealthy, with a large estate in Tuscany (5.6, 3.19, 10.8), another along the beachfront in Latium (2.17), and several on the waterfront at Lake Como (9.7, 7.11.5, 9.7.2). Perhaps the best measure of his wealth is the fact that he gave away during his lifetime at least nine 7

million sesterces, an enormous sum second only to the emperors in the inscriptional record of the era.

Pliny also had luminary literary connections. Quintilian was his teacher (2.14, 6.6); he counted among his 8

well acquainted with Silius Italicus (3.7), of the previous generation. He does not mention Plutarch directly, p. 34

9

but they shared two close consular friends.

“There is hardly anyone who is a lover of literature who is not

also a good friend of mine,” Pliny writes (1.13.5), and many other literary gures in his circle were apparently well regarded in his day though obscure to us. Pliny writes, for instance, in extravagant terms of the literary gifts of Pompeius Saturninus—praising his brilliance in oratory, history, love poetry, and, it seems, epistles (1.16)—an author we know of from no other source. Importantly, the literary connections themselves were often formed within the context of power and wealth. Lesser known literary gures in 10

Pliny are mostly equestrians and senators.

Of the better known gures, Quintilian was an intimate of the

imperial family; Tacitus (cos. 97 procos. Asia c. 113) was a consular; Silius Italicus (cos. 68, procos. Asia 77), a consular and fabulously wealthy (3.7.8); Suetonius, of equestrian family but an imperial familiar, held three important posts under Trajan and Hadrian (a studiis, a bibliothecis, ab epistulis). Moreover, Pliny celebrates, as we shall see, the rich and powerful who spent their leisure time on literary pursuits. His guardian Verginius Rufus was well known for his retirement to Alsium, where he pursued literary studies including erotic poetry (5.3.5, 6.10.1). We shall come in a moment to the cases of Vestricius Spurinna (cos. II 98, III 100), Pomponius Bassus (cos. 94), and Arrius Antoninus (cos. su . 69, procos. Asia c. 78/9, cos. II 97). His uncle the elder Pliny, though less potent politically, was another such. The list could be easily extended. These circumstances of Pliny’s life should be kept in view as we turn to look at the program of the letters. Pliny is sometimes supposed an intellectual lightweight and (wrongly, in my opinion) stylistically jejune. He certainly does not have the novelty or intensity of Tacitus, to whom he writes with evident admiration and even deference (e.g., 1.20.24–25, 7.20, 8.7). Yet Pliny repeatedly states his intention to emulate Tacitus. At 7.20, he writes in a self-conscious, indeed self-ful lling, mode, “How delighted I am to think that, if posterity has any interest in us, they will always tell the tale of our congenial, honest, and loyal relationship. It will be a rare and striking tale, of two men pretty much equal in status and age, each with some considerable reputation in literary a airs … who nurtured one another’s literary pursuits.” He writes again p. 35

of his and Tacitus’s shared

literary fate in the eyes of posterity at 9.14. At 9.23 he tells with satisfaction

the tale of a Roman eques, a stranger, who struck up a conversation with Tacitus at some games. After speaking learnedly on several subjects, the eques asks Tacitus (whose accent, it seems, was not Roman) whether he comes from Italy or the provinces, to which Tacitus replies, “You know me, surely, from your readings (ex studiis).” To that the man says, “Then are you Tacitus or Pliny?” However we evaluate Pliny’s writings, it seems a reasonable starting point to suppose that Pliny thought himself and his writings worth attention. He was an important person, not simply elite but super-elite, a man who survived Domitian without stumbling in his career, and who from middle age developed and maintained close connections to the emperor Trajan and his inner circle. Pliny was, in short, a Big Man in the society, and enough so to think, appropriately, of himself as the focal point to his own circle. Elaine Fantham, in her book Roman Literary Culture, writes of Pliny’s Epistles: “The sheer self-consciousness of these letters, the concern with self-representation, is … characteristic of this postclassical phase of Roman culture. These are more like autobiographical essays, composed, not merely selected, to create a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

amici Tacitus (1.6, 1.20, 7.20, etc.) and Suetonius (1.24, 10.94, etc.) and Martial (3.21); he was less familiar but

picture of Pliny’s world, and in this world literary activities are even more prominent than Pliny’s public 11

commitments as senator and advocate.”

One can go further. We should entertain the possibility that Pliny

may not be so much “creating a picture” of a world that exists as constructing a picture of the world as he wishes it to exist. This is not to deny an underlying reality in the content of the letters, but rather to argue that the selective and “literary” nature of the project serves to highlight, deliberately, a set of (idealized) models, habits of valuation, and modes of interaction that de ne how Pliny wishes the elite to behave, and how in his view the elite can nd meaning in what they do. Questions seldom asked about Pliny’s nine books of Epistles are: What were his readers supposed to think about this product? What motivated Pliny to fashion such a work? In terms of genre, the Epistles have no straightforward

12

precedent.

In composing and compiling them, Pliny was not simply plying a traditional

activity. The Epistles seem, rather, to constitute Pliny’s interventionist attempts at de ning what elite culture and community are, or should be, about. In what follows, we will explore the consequences of this interpretation. In social terms, Pliny’s literary project embodies his e ort to establish himself as focal point and leader within his circle of amici, and to circumscribe clearly and publicly the approved behaviors that make his elite circle distinctive. Pliny draws the lines of his circle largely in terms of literary culture. He needn’t have done so, and not everyone did. Much of elite society then, as now, fashioned itself along other 13

lines, of politics or familial connections or material pursuits or shared entertainment.

Pliny, however,

makes a conscious choice in the Epistles to depict his group as one in large measure rooted in—de ned by— shared literary interests. As we will see, “literary culture” for Pliny embraces not simply what or how you read, but the attitudes one holds toward texts and textual authority, the ways one does (or does not) incorporate texts into daily life, and the self-validation and feeling of worth that one derives from these activities.

Art of the Daily Regimen 14

The portrait of the daily regimen of Vestricius Spurinna

given in the opening letter to Book 3 provides an

excellent starting point because it explicitly (3.1, 12) sets forth Spurinna’s behavior as the model (exemplum) for an elderly man of high status. The high status is remarked on (Spurinna, like Pliny, “held magistracies and ruled provinces,” 12) to suggest, as so often, a public rather than a private audience for the letters. p. 37

Spurinna’s activities are marked both by strict regularity (2–3)—itself a sign of the man who “knows himself,” that is, who understands the moderation and self-control appropriate to a man of substance and culture—and by an elegant, indeed artful, integration of aristocratic behaviors into his daily life. Literary pursuits are a central component of Spurinna’s regimen, but, tellingly, are not ends in themselves. Rather, it is their incorporation into his other activities that makes his a model of cultured existence. Among these activities are diverse types of moderate exercise: a long walk in the morning (4), a carriage ride and short walk toward midday (5), more vigorous exertion with a ball immediately before the midafternoon bath (8). The exercise, explicitly (4), is designed to invigorate the animus as well as the body. Alternating with the physical exertions are activities meant to divert and exercise the mind more directly. After the morning’s walk, Spurinna may converse with friends, but if this occurs the conversations are honestissimi sermones (4), that is, they have a serious purpose and a re ned, gentlemanly (honestus) quality. In addition to or in lieu of conversation, a book may be read, even if friends are present, as long as they do not nd the reading burdensome (si … illi non gravantur, 4). The word gravantur suggests that the morning’s reading typically regards a more challenging text, in explicit contrast and comparison with the reading that follows the afternoon bath, which is of something “more relaxed and pleasurable” (remissius … et dulcius, 8). The light physical exercise of the morning is coupled with more di

cult mental exercise, which is balanced

in artful chiasmus by the vigorous exercise (vehementer et diu, 8) and lighter mental fare of the afternoon. In between, Spurinna insinuates yet other modes of physical and intellectual activity, for his carriage ride—a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 36

15

“passive exercise” —is accompanied by a mode of conversation (tête-à-tête with a chosen companion, 5– 6) that di ers from his conversations of the morning, and is followed by time spent alone, in which he 16

composes lyric verses in Greek and Latin (7).

In most of these activities, the integration of his amici is

seamless, for they are invited to participate or not, as they prefer (8). The day is capped by a dinner, served as is tting on dinner plate that is elegant but not immoderate, and the dinner itself is punctuated by literary entertainment during the meal (Spurinna favors reading of comedy), “so that the pleasures of dining may be spiced by enthusiasm for letters” (ut voluptates quoque studiis condiantur, 9). The fascinating structure of Spurinna’s regimen exhibits a balanced rotation of physical, intellectual, and p. 38

social exercises, and a contrived varietas

(table 3.1). The design of Spurinna’s day is worthy of a poetry

This artfulness is not, I submit, happenstance. The artfulness bespeaks the very nature of the ideal, in which 17

the social, literary, and physical arts are tightly knit into “a more complex and organic paideia.”

Not

simple skill in, but the elegant integration of, all these arts is the mark of the truly cultured man. Moreover, like the doing of philosophy so central to Plato’s conception of the life worth living, the doing of culture is critical to Pliny’s conception of the ideal within his Greco-Roman society. Spurinna actively plies the arts of the body, the art of intellectual discourse, the writing of poetry, the social graces, all with emphatic 18

moderation and balance (as dictated by a wide stream of hellenic philosophical thought).

Quintessential to

Pliny’s portrait is the symbiotic combination of high social and political status with high culture: here is a man who was consul ter and a provincial governor, but who spends his morning in reading of di

cult texts

and in serious conversation, who at midday writes lyric verse in both Greek and Latin, who punctuates his p. 39

day with leisure forms of physical exercise, and

who at day’s end gracefully manages a lengthy social

dinner that seems long to no one, tanta comitate convivium trahitur (9). Table 3.1 Spurinnaʼs Regimen Physical arts

Literary arts

Social arts

Morning

Long walk Rest

Group reading of a challenging text

Serious conversation with group

Midday

Carriage ride + short walk Rest

Poetic composition

Serious conversation tête-à-tête Solitude

A ernoon

Vigorous exercise + bath Rest

Group reading of a lighter text

(Lighter conversation, presumably)

Evening

Relaxation over dinner

Performance of dramatic text

Dinner conversation and divertissement

Reading in this society is tightly bound up in the construction of the community. Group reading and serious conversation devolving from reading are twin axes around which much of the elite man’s community turns. The reading here described—of literary prose—is sharply distinct from pragmatic reading of documents and the like. Reading of high literature, often di which fences o

cult and inaccessible to the less educated, is part of that

the elite group from the rest of society. Habits like use of servants or friends to help with

the lection (explicit in the phrase interim audit legentem remissius aliquid et dulcius, 8), or group reading and discussion, are particular to the social group, and mesh together with other, related customs, such as routinely inviting friends to dinners with performance entertainment or simply having a group of friends commonly to hand at one’s estate. Reading functions as group entertainment, intellectual fodder, and aesthetic delight, but sociologically plays a role beyond the sum of its functional components. Reading, that is, is subordinated to a broader conception of culture, one that integrates a variety of behaviors, prominently including physical exercise and social arts.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

book, a re ned garden, or in fact any “art” that counterpoises a unifying structure with elaborate variation.

Other senior statesmen are praised along similar lines. At 4.23, Pliny writes the consular Pomponius Bassus that he is delighted to hear from mutual friends that Bassus has both planned and carried out a program of exemplary leisure in his retirement (disponere otium et ferre, 1, cf. pulcherrimae quietis exemplum, 4): “you live in an utterly charming setting, and you exercise your body sometimes on land and sometimes in water; moreover, you have serious debates (multum disputare), you listen to a great deal (multum audire), you read 19

aloud a great deal (multum lectitare),

and though you know a lot, you learn something new every day. In

just such a way ought a man to grow old—a man who has held the most distinguished magistracies, commanded armies, and devoted himself entirely to the state as long as it was tting.” (1–2). Again, we see the deliberate arrangement (disponere) of the perfect life in retirement: a beautiful house and locale, and artistic combination of structure and variety in one’s activities, with physical exercise alternating between p. 40

The presence of amici at the

great man’s villa is, as usual, assumed without comment. Great men as a

matter of course had friends in attendance at every turn. The whole adds up to an ideal. At the end of this brief letter, Pliny asks, “When will it be possible, when will it be the honorable (honestum) time of life for me to imitate that exemplar of lovely quietude?” (pulcherrimae quietis exemplum, 4). Similarly, at 4.3 Pliny introduces Arrius Antoninus as twice consul and distinguished proconsul, a “ rst man of the state” (princeps civitatis) by reason of virtue and stature and age, but elegantly trumps this laudation with the comment, “I admire you even more for your style of relaxation” (in remissionibus, 1). His gravity in public is matched by his playfulness and geniality in private (2). Pliny goes on to praise Arrius, in extravagant fashion, for his wonderful Greek epigrams and mimiambs (“when you write, it seems that bees tie the words together and ll them with owers,” 3). Pliny repeatedly depicts even trivial literary relaxation as essential to a proper balance in life, a suitable otium for the retired, an important counterweight to those still involved in the negotium of the Forum. Pliny plies such literary remissiones himself (4.14, 5.3, 5.15, 7.4, 7.9, 8.21), and defends dabbling in nugatory poetry as good elite practice by giving a long list, starting with Cicero, of famous statesmen who did exactly that (5.3.5). Literary pursuits must, however, be one part of a larger, balanced whole. We can see the danger of literary preoccupation—the unbalanced life—in (for instance) Pliny’s depiction of Silius Italicus. At 3.7, writing his friend Caninius Rufus, equestrian and fellow littérateur from Comum, Pliny o ers an assessment of Silius immediately after his death. Pliny moves gingerly. Like Arrius, Silius is said to be among the principes civitatis, but we are immediately told also that he was believed a willing collaborator in Neronian crimes (3) and served as consul under that deplorable regime (9, 10). Pliny’s literary evaluation is blunt: “Silius wrote poems characterized more by diligence than by talent” (5); moreover, he sometimes subjected his own work to public recitations (iudicia hominum, 5: note homines, not amici or pauci), an implicit criticism. When he 20

retired in his elder years from Rome, he kept entirely to his villa in Naples,

refusing even to attend the

emperor Trajan at his homecoming, an extraordinary impertinence, as Pliny notes (6). He was a lover of things ne (φιλόκαλος, 7), but excessively fond of buying (emacitatis, 7). He had multiple villas in the same places, neglecting older houses as he enthused over the new; and these were stu ed with books, statues, p. 41

21

portraits, which he did not merely own but venerated to a fault.

Vergil, in particular, he celebrated with

an inappropriate reverence that bordered on worship (8). Moreover, his elderly body was, we are told, “more delicate than sick” (delicato magis corpore quam in rmo, 9). The depiction is itself delicate, with more by way of subtle implication than direct castigation. But to a Roman of Pliny’s time, the innuendo is clear: here is a man of dubious moral character, who in old age neglected social duty and adopted e ete habits in his preference for inappropriate literary and acquisitive obsessions. An inevitable consequence, by implication, is a debased literary pursuit, not the sort of studia that Pliny advocates for himself and his friends, the sort that “we can bring as evidence of the fact that we have lived” (14) and through which 22

achieve immortality (15).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

land and sea, and mental exercise that varies between serious conversation and (passive and active) reading.

Throughout the Epistles, Pliny presents positive and negative models, real people who by their—sometimes 23

idealized—ways of living provide directives for approved and censured behaviors.

Literary activities are

usually involved, but always within the context of the community. Pliny presents us with paradigms for the young (e.g., Sentius Augurinus, a talented writer of poematia, who spends much time with Pliny’s distinguished friends Spurinna and Arrius Antoninus, 4.27; Fuscus Salinator and Ummidius Quadratus, outstanding orators who will embellish not just the present age but litteris ipsis, 6.11), for teachers (Isaeus, 2.3, and Genitor, 3.3, outstanding rhetors who will serve the sons of friends well), and for women (Arria, 3.16, Calpurnia, 4.19, Fannia, 7.19). Still, as any reader of Pliny knows, by far the commonest model for behavior is Pliny himself. I’ve already suggested that this may well have seemed less odd and disagreeable to amici of the great man than it does to us. Be that as it may, Pliny presents himself both explicitly and (2.6, 3.12), on treatment of sons (9.12) and slaves (8.16) and freedmen (9.21, 9.24), and on giving of gifts (9.30), to cite but a few. The letters are also heavily sprinkled with brief stories or vignettes showing Pliny at his best: o ering the right kind of civic benefaction (1.8, 3.6, 4.2, 4.13, 7.18), showing personal generosity and support (1.19, 2.4, 3.21, 6.3, 6.32, 8.16; 1.24, 2.9, 2.13, 3.2, 3.8, 4.4, 4.15, etc.), hosting the suitably moderate dinner (1.14), acting as oratorical model for the youth (6.11), attending recitations as a leader in literary a airs (1.13, 5.17, 5.21, 6.17, etc.), working on his studia in preference to typical elite activities like hunting (1.6, 5.18, 9.36.6; cf. 9.10) and chariot racing (9.6). p. 42

Pliny, in short, often serves as the ultimate model for his own program. In this regard, it is not surprising to nd a reprise of the Spurinna letter toward the end of the Epistles. In Epistle 9.36, Pliny replies to a friend who has asked how he spends his days in the rustic environs of his Tuscan estate. Pliny’s sketch includes the now familiar elements of a daily regimen varied by controlled rotation among literary, physical, and social activities: he spends the morning writing, followed by a drive and a walk (1–3); then practices oratorical reading (in Greek or Latin), followed by more physical exercise and a bath (3); next comes a dinner, which, if only with his wife and a few friends, includes a book read to the group, followed by comedy or music (4); after which follows another walk with members of his household, some of whom (he defensively assures his friend) are educated and well bred (eruditi), and thus able to o er varied conversation (4). The similarity to Spurinna’s regimen needs no comment, but in this description, unlike that of Spurinna, Pliny goes on to mention one of the less artful occupations of his day. On some days, he says, he gives time to his tenants, “whose boorish complaints (agrestes querelae) freshen my enthusiasm for literary pursuits (litteras nostras) and the civilized works of life (haec urbana opera).” Note here that the disagreeable behavior of these griping rustics is explicitly opposed to the literary pursuits that, by implication, are an essential basis for what distinguishes the life and manners of the elite—the good life—from those of their inferiors.

Recitation and the Community of Readers A great deal has been written, and continues to be written, about the custom of recitation, and its depiction 24

by Pliny.

But the role of recitation in the fashioning of literary community is seldom discussed in detail,

and little has been said from the constructivist viewpoint. Scholars rarely if ever seem to keep clearly in view that Pliny’s remarks on recitation form an authorial choice. A comparison with the younger Seneca will make the importance of this clearer. Seneca focuses much attention on the details of literary pursuits, their centrality to the community, and the social interactions surrounding them. All indications are that the sociohistorical situation of recitation did not materially change between Seneca’s and Pliny’s generations: p. 43

Persius’s biting satire of recitations (1.13–23), written at the same time

as Seneca’s Epistles, echoes 25

depictions that we read in Pliny’s contemporaries Martial, Tacitus in the Dialogus, and Juvenal. 26

Seneca, among his many descriptions of literary pursuits, scarcely mentions recitation.

And yet

In Pliny, by

contrast, recitation is a common—deliberately chosen—theme, explicitly mentioned 24 times and often in 27

considerable detail.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

implicitly as paradigm. The Epistles are full of direct advice on a wide variety of topics: on hosting dinners

Coupled with this authorial choice—to make recitation an important theme of the letters—is another feature seldom kept in view. Pliny repeatedly portrays certain aspects of the recitations of his own works as eccentric, which therefore attract criticism among elite circles and need repeated defense in the Epistles (at 4.14, 5.3, 7.9.9–14, 7.17, 8.21; cf. 5.12, 2.19). This, too, is a choice. The rhetorical posture, moreover, is not simply defense but also advocacy. Let us take 8.21 as an example. Pliny opens the letter with the observation that “just as in life so in literary pursuits” (ut in vita sic in studiis) the serious and the lighthearted ought to be mixed, so as to temper both. This characteristic emphasis on balance, and on the close relation between studia and life, is the frame for Pliny’s description of a recitation event in which he presents to his amici his latest nugatory poetry (“little poems in varied meter,” 4):

of these ready to bring out, so I selected just the right time and place: so that my poems could from now on get used to being heard by an audience that was unoccupied (otiosis) and in a dining room (in triclinio), I gathered my friends together in the month of July, when the law courts are quiet for the most part, and with chairs placed in front of the dining couches. As it happens, on that very morning I was unexpectedly summoned as a legal advocate, and that gave me a reason for adding some prefatory remarks. I began by hoping that no one would accuse me of having no regard for my duty, since I did not hold back from business in the forum when I was about to give a recitation, albeit to friends and only a few (few being the de nition of real friends). I added that I keep this order in writing too, that is, I put duty before pleasure, serious matters before enjoyment, and I write rst for my friends, and secondly for myself. (8.21.2–3) p. 44

A couple of elements of this description are particularly striking. First, there is an abiding anxiety to privilege serious matters: the recitation has to happen when no one is expecting to have to work; if work comes up, that must be put rst; even the work of more serious writing (for Pliny, oratory) must come before such nugae. Pliny makes clear in another letter (4.14.2) that he writes light poetry only in o moments: when he has spare time in his carriage, at his bath, over dinner. The positioning of literary pursuits strictly within the boundaries of otium is critical for the dutiful Roman, a theme we have already seen (recall Silius Italicus) and to which we will return (cf. esp. chapter 6). Second, Pliny implies an improvement in procedure. Pliny will encourage his friends to exemplary habits: listening while altogether 28

free from the obligations of the forum, and in the intimacy of a dining room (though not at dinner).

Implicitly contrasted are recitations that disturb the negotium of both the great man and his amici—that important sense of duty to one’s clients and fellows that greased the wheels of the elite social machinery— and recitations that happen in areas more public than the triclinium, addressed to a circle of acquaintance beyond the “few” (pauci) who are close friends. It must be said, though, that the activity of Pliny’s recitation does not sound entirely lighthearted. Pliny recites over two days (biduo) by common assent. Now this is not necessarily as long as it may seem. In another letter (3.18.4) we hear that Pliny gave a recitation of his Panegyricus over three days, and that 29

speech, which survives, would require about 50 minutes per day if it were recited without pause. p. 45

no way of knowing how much by way

We have

of pause and interruption there would be for such recitations, but

Pliny repeatedly welcomes, even demands, active intervention by the audience, and as we shall see, this active intervention is a normal mode of reading behavior in the high empire. Perhaps, then, a couple of hours is imagined. In any case, two days—however full or partial—seems a lot of time for friends to invest 30

in nugae. Especially so, since the goal, as Pliny makes clear, is not pleasure:

While others skip over certain parts (of the works they are reciting), and expect credit for that, I omit nothing and I also declare that I am not skipping over anything. I read everything so that everything can be made right, which can’t happen for those who recite selections. Selecting is more modest and perhaps more considerate; but what I do is more straightforward and more

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Thus I intersperse my more serious literary endeavors with playful, humorous works. I had some

31

loving. For he is loving who thinks he himself so loved

that he need not fear boring his audience.

Besides, what duty are my close friends discharging (alioqui quid praestant sodales), if they are simply getting together for their own pleasure (voluptatis suae causa)? Someone who would rather listen to his friend’s good book rather than to help make it good is unmanly/self-indulgent (delicatus) and behaving like a stranger (similis ignoto). (8.21.4–5) This is a most curious passage. Although Pliny convenes his friends in an intimate setting to hear “playful and humorous works,” they are not there voluptatis suae causa. Pliny’s friends are too educated, too manly, too disciplined and well connected for that—the opposites of delicatus and similis ignoto. Instead, they assume responsibility and o er something of value for their friend. (These are the connotations of praestant. event.) Epistle 8.21 is not, then, simply a description of a recitation event, but prescriptive, Pliny’s signal of what is appropriate behavior for the boni of his circle. They do not get together, even in otium, for frivolity, but with the serious purpose of getting even light verse right, and that within the frame of a necessary, humanizing (humanissimum, 8.21.1) balance to the serious matter of oratory and the business of the forum. Let us look more brie y at a couple of other letters in which Pliny speaks to criticisms of his recitations. In Epistle 5.3, Pliny writes to an important jurist and member of Trajan’s consilium, Titius Aristo, in reply to his report that Pliny was the subject of a long and critical dinner discussion among friends at his house for the “composition and recitation” of light verse (versiculi, 5.3.1). Pliny o ers a spirited defense. Composing in p. 46

light verse has, he 32

Cicero).

says, a long tradition (he lists 20 examples of senatorial-rank versi ers, starting with

Though none of the models of yesteryear gave recitations (5.3.7), Pliny defends his own. He needs

recitations because (1) the prospect of auditors sharpens his wits as he writes, and (2) doubtful bits resolve themselves “as if by the judgment of a council” (quasi ex consilii sententia), whether by (a) explicit advice or (b) the implicit criticism of body language (5.3.8–9). Moreover, he summons to his recitations not “the crowd into an auditorium” (populum in auditorium), but “friends into a private room” of his house (in 33

cubiculum amicos).

Again, this seems a lesson in propriety. For the great man, as for the emperor, it is

perfectly suitable to summon a consilium to a private chamber to give advice; the metaphor is perhaps a 34

measure of the seriousness of the a air.

The same metaphor of the consilium (and again explicitly the few,

pauci), and the same double rationale for recitation, in this case of a short speech (oratiunculam), appears in 5.12.1. Similarly, Pliny in 7.17 defends his recitation of speeches. Against the criticism that recitation of oratory is not traditional, Pliny states that, as with his versiculi, he recites oratory in order to get the emendatory advice of his inner circle of friends. Again, the friends will not necessarily enjoy themselves. To the objection that oratory is less satisfying when it is recited, Pliny sco s, “I wish not to be praised when I am reciting, but when I am read.” Getting the written text right requires a lot of work from his inner circle: I overlook no kind of correcting activity. First, I work through the text on my own; then I read it to two or three; then I hand over the written text to others for comment, and the criticisms of these, if I have any doubt, I ponder together with one or two others; nally, I give a recitation to a group, and if you can believe it I then make the most severe of revisions. (7.17.7) Again, the ones he summons for these activities are not just anyone, but a select few (non populum advocare sed certos electosque soleo)—those “whom I have regard for, whom I trust, whom I look to as individuals and fear as a group” (quos intuear quibus credam, quos denique et tamquam singulos observem et tamquam non singulos timeam, 7.17.12). p. 47

All this dovetails with the observation that recitation by a vir magnus should happen only under closely controlled circumstances. When Pliny recites literary materials, it is always to a limited group of his amici, 35

in the comfortable embrace of his own house (4.19?, 5.3, 5.12, 6.6?, 8.21, 9.34; cf. 3.18, 7.17),

or the house of

an amicus (2.19), and, as far as we know, always in a private area (cubiculum, 5.3; triclinio, 8.21). Such is the behavior preferred by Pliny himself, then, but it is hard to know to what extent this maps to a broader social

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

This reciprocity—that the amici have something to o er in return—seems a necessary condition of the

reality. Vergilius Romanus (otherwise unknown, but not a youth) recited his comedies to a few, pauci (6.21). Pliny’s friend of status, Titinius Capito, a distinguished equestrian, secretary ab epistulis under Nerva and Trajan, recited to friends at his home and bene cently loaned out his house to literary protégés (8.12; cf. 1.17, 5.8)—what area of the house is not mentioned. For the great man to assert some protection against vulgar ears appears to be traditional. Or at least, as Peter White has observed, what evidence we have suggests strongly that recitations by the elite or those attached to the elite typically took place within a 36

house and usually a great man’s house.

37

A seeming exception is the case of Pliny’s archenemy M. Aquillius Regulus. p. 48

Domitian, extremely wealthy and powerful,

A delator under Nero and

Regulus stands as the model of immoderation. Pliny

oratorical style weak in fundamentals (1.20.14, 4.7, esp. 4.7.4–5, 6.2), for the gross ostentation of his house (4.2.5), and for his extravagant mourning for a child (including the Iliadic sacri ce of the boy’s ponies and dogs: 4.2). At 4.7, Pliny turns again to deride Regulus for his excessive grief, criticizing the many statues Regulus had made of his boy (in wax, bronze, silver, gold, ivory, and marble), and in like vein his invitation of an enormous audience (adhibito ingenti auditorio) to hear him recite “a book on the life of the boy—the 38

life of a boy, but he recited nonetheless.”

Regulus had a supersized residence in Rome, so even this large

event may have taken place in Regulus’s house; but the semipublic nature of the event—a huge audience, not the pauci—is in any case put forward as an example of grossly inappropriate behavior. We have already seen how Pliny insists that for his own recitations he brings amicos in cubiculum and not populum in auditorium. Despite Pliny’s prescriptions for recitation by great men, not all recitals within his larger circle of acquaintance need be limited to close friends and intimate settings. For protégés and literary wannabes, recitations of a rather more public character seem usual. In these cases, a place for the auditorium would be found in a large room of a great house (cf. Ep. 8.21, Juvenal 1.13–14), but other buildings—almost always 39

domestic houses, it seems—could be used (Juvenal 7.40, Dialogus 9.3).

It is permissible even for a magnate

to choose a more public room for himself, but only with suitable controls in place, such as a secure 40

reputation for literary merit.

Early on in the Epistles in a well-known letter, Ep. 1.13, Pliny depicts a

generalized—thus apparently common—scene in which the audience is by no means closely attached to the reciter: This year has brought a great harvest of poets: in the whole month of April hardly a day has gone p. 49

by without someone giving a recitation. I am pleased

that literary matters (studia) ourish, and

that men pro er and put on display their talents, despite the fact that an audience is slow to congregate. Many sit around in public hangouts (in stationibus sedent, cf. OLD 2a s.v. statio) and while away the time with gossip when they could be listening to literature. From time to time they have a servant announce to them whether the reciter has entered, whether he has nished his prefatory remarks, whether he is far into the bookroll; then nally they come but also slowly and reluctantly, and even so they don’t stay but leave before the end, some craftily and stealthily, others openly and freely. (1.13.1–2) The listeners are invited, to be sure: “These days a man with all the time in the world (otiosissimus), invited long before, reminded many times, either doesn’t come or, if he does come, complains that he has wasted his day—precisely because his day has not been wasted” (1.13.4). But that this group goes well beyond the 41

amici  

becomes clear just a bit later. Pliny notes that he, as a model of right behavior, goes to almost every

recitation. “I have failed in my duty (defui) for almost no one. A great many, admittedly, have been my friends: for there is almost no one who loves studia but is not also a close friend of mine” (1.13.5). Pliny’s self-assertion of specialness makes clear, by implication, that great men are routinely invited to recitations 42

by people who do not rank as amici, that is, by acquaintances, or the protégés of friends and acquaintances.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

criticizes him for his unstable (2.11.22, 4.2.1) and malevolent (1.5, 2.20) character, for an over-the-top

The passage under consideration here makes clear what a small town Rome was for the elite circles, both in social network and in physical layout: preferred public hangouts are nearby wherever recitations are being held. It also makes clear why it is that a great man needs to control carefully the way in which he participates in such an event (an event that, in Dupont’s words, is “always on the verge of becoming 43

theater” ), and how sharply di erent from the common run of recital event is the intimate literary workshop that Pliny orchestrates for himself. Why does Pliny choose to publish so many letters with emphasis on recitation and its details? It should by now be evident that one reason is to lay down for those with literary interests speci c protocol for dutiful, proper behavior (and to castigate what is not), as well as to demonstrate what is special about Pliny’s model 6.17, Pliny publishes a letter in which he calls to task two or three diserti (“learned souls, or so it seems to p. 50

themselves and their close friends”) who came to the

recitation of a “really accomplished book” (liber

absolutissimus), but sat there like deaf-mutes (surdis mutisque similes, 2). Speci cally, he criticizes the fact 44

that they did not move their lips, or move their hands, or rise to their feet.

What’s the point of such self-

defeating solemnity, he asks? In a telling bit of social calculation, Pliny asserts, “Whether you are capable of better or worse or the same, whether he is inferior or superior or equal, you should praise the man: praise one who is superior since, unless he is worthy of praise, you cannot yourself be worthy; praise your inferior or equal, since it is in your own interests that this man—the one whom you better or equal—seem as good as possible” (4). To this negative exemplum of the mistaken diserti we can contrast the positive image of audience reception in 5.17—centering, naturally, on Pliny himself. Writing Vestricius Spurinna, Pliny gushingly praises the recitation of a patrician youth, Calpurnius Piso, who read in exemplary fashion his 45

own composition of a learned poem on Catasterisms (myths in which someone is transformed into a star).

When the recitation is nished, Pliny goes up to the young man and gives him a great many kisses (multum ac diu exosculatur adulescentem) along with words of encouragement; and he congratulates the mother and the brother, who, he says, show memorable loyalty in attending the recitation with such evident excitement (ex auditorio illo … pietatis gloriam … retulit). Note how Pliny writes himself as the doyen in this scene, the elder who makes the occasion special through his bene cent and public gestures of approval. One nal example. In 4.27, Pliny writes that he has attended with enthusiasm a three-day recitation of short poems (poematia) by the youth Sentius Augurinus (senatorial, later proconsul of Macedonia under Hadrian). “Nothing quite so accomplished (nihil absolutius) of that type of poetry has been written in many years, I think—unless my love of the man misleads me, or the fact that he has carried me away with his praises” (4.27.2). Pliny then quotes eight (terrible) hendecasyllables that themselves praise Pliny’s own hendecasyllables as the pinnacle of contemporary nugatory artistry. The end of that letter is most interesting. Pliny instructs his correspondent (the young senator Q. Pompeius Falco) to “love this youth and p. 51

congratulate our times for such talent, a talent which he embellishes with his good character.

He lives

with Spurinna; he lives with Arrius Antoninus; the kinsman of one, the intimate associate (contubernalis) of both. You can guess how well the youth has been ‘emended’ (emendatus), from the fact that he is so loved by these distinguished elders” (4.27.5–6). Both Spurinna and Arrius, as we have seen, themselves daily write verse in secessu (3.1, 4.3), and Augurinus is, then, one of the crowd of amici that attends these men as they lead the balanced, good life at their villas. The connection Pliny draws here between literary pursuits, association with model elders, and good character is, from his point of view, inevitable. Pliny’s playful use of emendatus for how the young man has been corrected and perfected by his elders shows well how thoroughly literature and character combine in Pliny’s worldview. Literature is not, in short, simple entertainment, but rather a critical element in the proper construction of a well-balanced and worthwhile elite life. Pliny’s remarks on recitation are usually taken as purely descriptive, and also as an indication of Pliny’s simpleness in contrast to more sophisticated contemporaries like Martial, Tacitus, and Juvenal, who

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

community of sodales. A few more examples added to what we have already sketched will esh this out. At

46

characterize recitations as a wearisome or even risible social duty.

Yet Pliny, too, read these authors and

was well aware of the topos of the tedious recitation, which in the literary tradition goes back at least to Horace (Sat. 1.4.74–8). In Letter 1.13, as we have seen, he directly challenges that traditional view, disparaging anyone who complains that “he has wasted his day [by going to recitations]—precisely because his day has not been wasted” (4). Pliny’s remarks can be read, then, as a sort of call to arms: they occur, after all, in the context of published letters. He insists that those who are serious about things literary, and about being taken seriously as littérateurs, have to take recitations seriously. He thereby fashions himself as a leader in the enterprise, a trendsetter who against the conventional wisdom refuses to succumb to the cynical, disinterested stance of the diserti. It bears repeating that the letters depict two distinct situations, p. 52

47

which we should be careful to keep separate.

In the one, Pliny describes negative and positive models of

populus goes well beyond close friends. He depicts himself as one who, with obvious condescension, attends almost every recitation, with directed dutifulness, acting purposefully and with calculation (6.17.4) as an instrument of validation for the reciter, praising him both at the time and through his published Epistles. In this way, Pliny both delineates appropriate behavior for his community and sets himself up as the model. Separate (if also related) is another type of recitation, the kind to which Pliny invites his amici in the private areas of his home. Other men of rank do this too—Verginius Rufus, probably Vestricius Spurinna, Titinius Capito, Octavius Rufus—but Pliny claims for himself and his community a special and particular role. He claims a special determination to keep these activities from con ict with the primary business of the forum. He claims a special commitment to the fashioning of oratory, such that he will deploy even the mechanism of recitation—however tedious for the audience—to better an already declaimed, written, to-be-published speech. He claims a special attention to emendatio, such that the improvement of language—be it oratory or hendecasyllables—is the rst and often exclusive focus of the group, and not the pleasure that literary work 48

can bring.

Within his circle even nugatory poetry is regarded, rst and foremost, in the light of its

functionality in the improvement of speaking and writing abilities (7.4.4, 7.9.12–14; cf. Quintilian 1.10.29 and book 10 passim, Tacitus Dial. 10.4). Pliny’s auditors are serious people, not simply ful lling the o cium audiendi (1.13) in weary fashion, but friends dedicated to the literary enterprise that Pliny espouses. The community is characterized by a reciprocity that mutually recognizes common values, “of which the most important is the rhetorical mastery of language” (Dupont 1997: 54). The recitation as presented in Pliny is, however, also part of a larger fabric of social negotiations relating to literary production. It is time now to examine more concretely the ways in which recitation intersected, generally, with the social mechanics surrounding the literary practices that Pliny recommends, and, speci cally, with the need to make public—to “publish”—creative literary endeavor. The relationship of recitation to publication is often presented as a straightforward matter. For instance, Roland Mayer (2001: 92, on Dialogus 2.1) writes, “the public reading of a literary work by the author himself was designed to elicit advance criticism so that the author could revise his work for publication.” Sherwin-White (1966: 115) p. 53

writes,

“[recitation in the Silver Age] became the popular form of initial publication, providing the

cheapest and quickest means of making works known to the largest educated audience available.” Sociologically, however, the relationship is far more implicated. In Pliny’s circle recitation was a critical mechanism for active engagement with literary pursuits, functioning so as to chart a middle course between the glory of widespread acknowledgment of one’s value as an author and the negative potential for rejection. We’ve already seen how Pliny operates as a sort of cheerleader, encouraging literary activities regardless of their merit, because their encouragement leads to good things one way or another—either good literature, or literature against which better e orts can be judged more positively. In Roman society, 49

there was no publisher or other agent who acted as a gatekeeper for publications.

“Publishing” (emittere,

edere) was simply the o er to let others copy your literary work without stipulating that they keep it to themselves. If the o er is made with fanfare—a poem presented to a dedicatee in a social gathering, for example—there is a psychologically fragile interval while the author awaits acceptance or rejection. Will the literary crowd choose to make copies or not? Will it be read? Will it be approved? Will it be read in the future?

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

behavior at recitations, mostly by younger or lesser people, before an audience that if not literally the

But this course of action—o ering up a work with fanfare—is by no means the only, and very probably not the normal, route for new, not-yet-established authors to try to gain acceptance. The gatekeeper function was the product of a complex social interaction, and the various circles of the literarily interested—such as the circle around Pliny—played an essential role in promoting or rejecting new authors. Since there were no “publishers,” the only clear route to recognition as an author was by attachment to, and promotion by, one of these circles. A circle could then make one of its protégés known by word of mouth, written letters, and by recitations to which a larger acquaintance was invited. This will be, for instance, how Pliny came to know the likes of Martial, and it is how he proposes to make talented amici and protégés known to others (e.g., 1.16, 2.10, 5.17, 6.21, 9.22).

50

ambitions could nd a haven for their activities. p. 54

Calpurnius Piso, the aristocratic youth who wrote a book

of elegies on Catasterisms (5.17), is validated in his poetic endeavor, since acknowledged

by great men like

Pliny, regardless of whether his poetry circulates further. Pliny himself shes repeatedly for more widespread acknowledgment of the worth of his hendecasyllables: he writes to a friend for advice on whether his poetry is truly worth his time and e ort (4.14), hoping of course for a glowing response; he quotes a poem by a youth who praises Pliny’s poetry to the sky (4.27); he boasts that his hendecasyllables are “read and copied and even sung,” put to music by enthusiastic Greeks (7.4.9). In 4.14, we can see the web of social negotiation in action as Pliny writes, “Please be honest and tell me what you are going to say to someone else about my book” (4.14.10). These are, it must be recalled, not letters posthumously or casually 51

collected, but published letters carefully chosen and written self-consciously with a public in mind.

Pliny

seems, that is, to be hoping that his circle will promote him as the next Catullus. That does not happen, of 52

course.

Still, Pliny can gain considerable validation through the mechanism of the closed recitations of his

poetry to his amici, and the (limited) praise and circulation that this garners—without, it should be noted, any real possibility of a face-losing rejection and loss of dignitas. Epistle 2.10 operates as a sort of road map for how a man of social distinction and some literary ambition might play it safely. The letter is written to Octavius Rufus, an elder of rank (1.7: perhaps the su ect consul 53

of 80)

whom Pliny has previously mentioned as a writer of hexameters (1.7). The topic is his poetry, and

Pliny begins in obsequious, stilted fashion: “How patient a man you are, or rather how hard and almost cruel, to hold back such outstanding poetry books for so long! How long will you begrudge pleasure for us and praise for you?” (2.10.1). Pliny urges immediate publication, noting that “some of your verses have become public, and have broken out of their cage despite you” and might well be plagiarized if he doesn’t make public the whole (3). But “you will say, as you usually do, ‘My friends will see to it,’“meaning, as Pliny goes on to make clear, that Rufus’s friends can bring out a posthumous edition if needed (4–5). “Do what p. 55

you like then about the publication (editione), but at least give a recitation (recita): in that

way you may

become more inclined to publish (emittere) and you can nally come to know the joy that I have long since con dently anticipated. I can picture to myself the crowd, the admiration that awaits you, the noise, and even the hushed silence …” (6–7). The social scene seems, then, to be this: a consular has written a hexameter poem in several books, thus a major work. From readings to friends or excerpts circulated among friends, some snatches of the poem have become widely known. The consular hesitates to test whether there is a broad audience for the whole, however, whether by o ering a reading to a group beyond the amici, or by making the whole available (“publishing”). His position is that his amici can always publish the books of poetry after his death (cf. Vergil, Aeneid; Silius Italicus, Punica; Statius, Achilleid), a convenient and facesaving stance if, in the event, no one really thinks the poetry worthwhile. The private recitation (and possibly distribution) among friends ful lls then an important function, leading to validating praise within the circle without, again, any real risk of damage to dignitas. The letter of praise that Pliny publishes can itself be read as, in e ect, an e ort by Pliny to play tastemaker and declare the poetry of su wider circulation.

cient merit for

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Importantly, though, recitations also provided a venue in which those with literary interests and even

In general terms and in summary, the recitation as presented in Pliny forms part of an intricate web of interlinked social functions. Most important among these functions are the following: 1. A proposal for circulation. The invited community is implicitly asked that the written text be considered for circulation when it is fully revised. Because the work is put forward as “not completely nished,” there is an easy way out for those for whom the reception is insu

ciently encouraging—

they can simply not nish and never release the work. As long as the community cooperates in the protocol that Pliny delineates—in essence, a custom of damning by faint praise and encouraging 54

through extreme hyperbole—no loss of dignitas is possible.

of whose writings will be considered good and whose not good enough. This, rather than through a 55

“publisher,” is the place where the critical rst step is (or is not) made toward literary fame.

3. A type of circulation, and hence social validation, in itself. The recitation event creates a validating p. 56

mechanism for the e ort of

creating literary work, even in cases where the written work is not

circulated further. Again, this only works properly if the audience assumes the behavioral protocol that Pliny advocates. 4. Polling and display of the circle of amici. Whether the gathering is more private (cubiculum, triclinium) or more public (auditorium), the amici will see and be seen, and the gathering is likely to be widely 56

known in such a close-knit elite community.

By their very presence, the amici make a statement

about allegiance to the circle and its values, which brings validation to the circle as a whole and to the leader(s) in particular. 5. Validation of the great man. Those who can get a community of amici to cooperate in these events will be regarded perforce as the leaders of a circle. This leadership position can involve the sharing of resources, such as a room in the public area of one’s house large enough to act as auditorium for the recitations of protégés, and in any case folds together with other patronal and cliental behaviors in Roman society. Pliny’s role as a leader and tastemaker in literary a airs thus falls naturally together with his status as consular, forensic advocate, and one of the super-elite. The reason that recitation comes up so often in Pliny has to do, then, with Pliny’s own assertion of status as a literary mover and shaker. He accomplishes this in a number of ways in the Epistles, but one way is in his attempt to reform the practices of recitation, both the semipublic type (in which he insists upon certain speci cs of decorum in order to make these events more self-validating) and the private type (in which he insists upon a seriousness of purpose by the core group). This is one of the means by which he presents, through his published letters, his construction of the (idealized) community around him, as well as his own position of leadership and authority.

Reading and Community In Pliny’s construct, Roman elite among their many activities seem to have three essential dutiful occupations, neatly summed up in Ep. 7.15: “You ask what I am doing? The usual: I discharge my public p. 57

duties, I service my friends, I work on my studies” (requiris quid agam? quae nosti: distringor 57

deservio, studeo; cf. 8.9, 7.3).

o cio, amicis

More explicitly, these three occupations are: 58

1. Public duties, such as magistracies (distringor o cio, 7.15.1).

This obviously important part of Pliny’s

own civic work is mentioned only in passing in the Epistles. 2. Service to friends both greater and lesser (amicis deservio, 7.15.1; cf. amicitiae tam superiores quam

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

2. Adjudication of value. The audience reaction to a recitation is an important element in the negotiation

minores, 7.3.2), such as defending them in court, soliciting advancement for them and their protégés, assisting and advising in a variety of legal and nancial and other logistical a airs. Though not in focus here, the service to friends is a major theme of the Epistles, which are heavily sprinkled with accounts of legal and logistical interactions. Many of the longest letters are forensic accounts. 3. Devotion to studia (studeo, 7.15.1). We have already made the case that studia are more closely linked to the circle of amici—to the sense of community—than one might expect. Recitations have already been discussed at length. Circulation of 59

writings among friends for critique is one of the most common themes among the letters.

Often the 60

61

friends to concentrate on their own literary e orts is another common theme.

Pushing

Close friends were imagined

to know each other’s work well: knowing passages, or at least excerpts, by heart is a surprisingly common expectation (cf. 6.21, librum … ediscendum, 6.33.11, memoriter tenes omnes , 9.18, qua intentione, quo studio, qua denique memoria legeris libellos meos; Pliny claims to quote from memory poetry of his friends at 3.21, 4.27). That reading and writing literature can act as an analogue to community engagement may seem to us a curiosity, but for the elite Roman the leap of logic was shorter. The thread runs from the society’s pervasive clientalism to oratory—the critical ability to speak on behalf of one’s friends, both in public and in private—to literature. Literary e orts are a re ex of the community’s consensus that mastery of language is a key skill. p. 58

 Studia are not only notionally central to the community, however, but, as Pliny presents it, they also form a central part of what the community gets together to do. Most of this activity we have just surveyed: attending recitations, participating in more private readings where critical exchange is expected, giving written critiques on manuscripts in progress, working by mouth and by letter—and in Pliny’s case also by publication of letters—to negotiate the value of one another’s literary e orts. It is striking how often 62

activities that might seem obviously solitary to us in fact were not.

Revising his own manuscripts

commonly required for Pliny the input of friends in propria persona, as we have seen. We have reviewed at length the case of Spurinna (and similarly Pomponius Bassus, Arrius Antoninus, Verginius Rufus), in which unnamed friends, assumed as a regular part of the household, share routinely in a variety of reading activities throughout the day in his well-balanced life. That a writer spend time removed from the a airs of the city, free for one’s studia (cf., e.g., studiosum otium, 1.22.11; secretum μουσεῖον, 1.9), by no means entails 63

that the writer be, strictly speaking, alone. Roman elite stayed at one another’s villas as a matter of course, and there seems a common assumption that one’s amici, like one’s servants, were to hand to participate in reading events of a variety of sorts. A central context for the gathering of amici both in town and at one’s villa was the evening meal, and Pliny

mentions in several places the use of reading as dinner entertainment. Spurinna o ers a simple but elegant meal distinguished by the entertainment of comoedi (3.1.9). The emperor Trajan, too, in his villa at Centum p. 59

Cellae sets an admirably modest feast, accompanied

by conversation and acroamata—which could mean

readings or singing or a play (6.31.13; cf. LSJ s.v. ἀκρόαμα). Pliny himself, while apparently in Rome, chides a friend for choosing a dinner with oysters, tripe, sea urchins, and Spanish dancing girls (Gaditanae) over his own dinner, which featured simple fare and either comic actors or a lector or lyre music as entertainment 64

(comoedos vel lectorem vel lyristen, 1.15. 2).

In his villa at Tuscany, he o ers “a book read during the meal

and afterwards a comedy or music” (liber legitur; post cenam comoedia aut lyristes, 9.36.4). Similarly, Pliny mentions that at the Laurentine villa, he sometimes chooses after dinner to work on his writing in preference to the usual comedy or lyre playing (9.40.2). In-house provision for entertainment seems to have been normal for a great house. This was part of what Plutarch calls the “drama of wealth” in elite Roman 65

households.

Pliny had a personal trained lector, Encolpius (8.1), and we are also told of his freedman,

Zosimus, who though especially gifted as a comoedus (“he speaks out clearly, intelligently, aptly, and even gracefully”), also plays the lyre well (“better than is needed for a comoedus”) and “reads orations, histories,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

circulation is presented as the response to a friend’s explicit request to share a literary e ort.

and poetry so comfortably that this might appear to have been his sole training” (5.19.3). The skills of Zosimus (and probably Encolpius and others) seem to have been standard o erings for dinner entertainment in Pliny’s household and seem deliberately to involve little by way of display—it seems that 66

Zosimus gives little more than an elaborated recitation as comoedus.

As always, the behavior described

o ers an implicit paradigm, and the attentive reader will surely notice the analogy of Pliny’s dinners to the simple o erings of model luminaries like Spurinna and Trajan. Pliny’s community is directed to choices that are suitable to re ned gentlemen: comedy (not mime) or lyre music (i.e., traditional, not exotic, music, and not involving dance) or readings from literary texts. The implicit exhortation is, again, one to serious purpose even in otium. Quintilian tells us in no uncertain terms of the formative bene t of comedy and p. 60

music for the training of

67

his perfect orator,

and Pliny, we recall, was Quintilian’s student. These choices

ideas of re nement and moderation and self-improvement, and since they o er a sense of superiority and exclusiveness, in contrast to those whose pleasures tend toward sea urchins and Gaditanae. In a telling letter in his nal book (9.17), Pliny advises his friend Julius Genitor—again, recall that this is a published letter— to be tolerant of the preference of others for cinaedi and scurrae and moriones. “It strikes me as not at all novel or amusing if some preciousness of a catamite or shamelessness of a jester or idiocy of a fool is put on display. But I relate here not a matter of reason but of taste (stomachum)” (9.17.2–3). With smug con dence in the rightness of his own view, Pliny goes on to point out how little the jester-loving crowd would like the choices he and his friends make: “How many demand their shoes when the lector aut lyristes aut comoedus is brought in?” Music and comedy may seem agreeable enough in the abstract, but in Pliny’s depiction these are clearly the choices of the more earnest, serious, upright community. Nor need we assume that the readings would be entirely light fare. Earlier (chapter 1), we encountered some ways in which the elder Pliny’s attitude toward “scholarly” reading seems at rst glance close to our own, even if his methods di er. The elder Pliny, we recall, used lectors and note takers to help in his goal of compiling information (as, e.g., for his monumental Natural History). A singular detail of this account of Pliny’s work habits (Ep. 3.5.11–12) betrays, however, an important di erence. For the sake of e

ciency,

Pliny, we are told, customarily had a book read to him during dinner and dictated notes. But, even in this context, we learn that Pliny is not alone with his servants: “one of his friends” asks the lector to repeat a mispronounced word—to which Pliny objects, inasmuch as this slowed down the reading. We do not know 68

exactly what was being read. p. 61

information and the

But the (to us) bizarre combination of the scholar’s task of digesting

“entertainment” of a performative reading to a group of friends over dinner

deserves re ection. Though in some respects an extreme circumstance, the scene helps to clarify the variety of ways in which reading may have constituted “entertainment” among the cultural elite. In this context, we recall the many ancient literary texts that are marvels of technical abstruseness but also composed with an elegance that seems to suppose an audience beyond scholars and scholastics: poetic works such as Vergil’s Georgics, or the oddly popular Phaenomena of Aratus, with its many adaptations and translations; and also a host of prose texts, such as medical or agricultural or scienti c treatises, whose contents bespeak a technical handbook, but whose style often manifests a higher rhetoric. (The preface to the elder Pliny’s own Natural History makes an instructive study in this regard.) In any case, for friends to get together as an “entertainment” to listen to di

cult texts, including technical treatises, re ects a sociological aspect of 69

reading unfamiliar to us, and yet entirely within the bounds of normative behavior for the Plinii.

To what end all this seriousness of purpose toward things literary? Implicit is a joy in the peaceful life of the mind, the way that “our thoughts can fashion an inner sanctuary (secretum) even in a crowd, on a journey, or at a dinner party” (to borrow the words of his master: Quintilian Inst. Or. 10.3.30; cf. Pliny Ep. 1.9, secretum μουσεῖον, a common theme). But in the main, Pliny’s explicit answer is wholly conventional: “Blessed are those who do something worth recording or write something worth reading; most blessed those who do both” (6.16.3). Pliny writes those words of his uncle, a life in deed and letters that he strives to emulate. Pliny’s own deeds are modest enough, but those, too, he seeks to enshrine: in a re exive epistolary act, at

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

of entertainment are, then, validating choices for the community, since they fold in with well-established

7.33 he describes in detail—in a published letter—one of his own good deeds and asks Tacitus to include it 70

in the publication of his Histories.

But most of Pliny’s hopes for immortality, or at least of being known to

posterity, are based on literary e orts. He sounds the theme early in Book 1 (1.3), as he urges Caninius Rufus to shut himself up with his studia and get seriously to work: “Mold something, hammer out something that can be yours forever. Everything else of yours will be distributed to one owner or another once you are dead, p. 62

but this will never cease being yours” (1.3.4). Pliny returns to

the theme repeatedly, especially in the

latter books (e.g., 2.10.4, 5.5, 5.8.7, 5.21, 6.16, 7.4.10, 9.14, 9.27). As is often remarked, in the high empire the elite struggled to nd alternate sources of gloria in a time when the signi cant honors were mostly reserved 71

for the emperor, and when the political function of the senate was no longer central.

Pliny, like others,

recommends literary pursuits as a suitable means. The happenstance that the literary record dominates our case, this is the solution that Pliny advocates for his own community, and through both his life and his published letters he tries to construct for himself a position as leader and tastemaker in literary a airs. Pliny’s conventional and somewhat forced solution to the question of how the elite should fashion for themselves a meaningful role in the face of imperial control was insu

cient for Pliny’s friend Tacitus, and

to his writing I now turn.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

Throughout this chapter I have in view books 1–9 of the Epistles, which were the books Pliny deliberately set for circulation. Book 10 was probably a posthumous compilation, and in any case was certainly conceived separately from the publication program of books 1–9. On the separate nine-book manuscript tradition, see Reynolds 1983, 316–22. The civil war known as the “Year of the Four Emperors.” Troops elected him emperor a er Neroʼs death, but deferred to the selection of the Senate; similarly a er Othoʼs suicide. On Verginius Rufus, see Syme 1991, 7.512–20. On the elder Plinyʼs unambitious but honorable military career and procuratorship, see Syme 1991, 7.496–511. On his role in the amicitia principis (Ep. 3.5), a sort of informal cabinet of advisors to the emperor, see Juvenal, Sat. 4; Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 222; Crook 1955, esp. 21–30. CIL V 5262f, CIL XI 5272 give the cursus: tribunus militum 82, quaestor 90, tribunus plebis 92, praetor 93, praefectus aerarii militaris 94–96, praefectus aerarii Saturni 98–100, cos. su . 100 (Panegyr. 60.4, 92.3), augur 103 (Ep. 4,8), legatus Augusti c. 109. Aside from the consulship, the dates (following H. Krasser, DNP) should be taken as close approximations rather than fully settled. On Plinyʼs early career, see Syme 1991, 7.551–67; on the career in toto, Syme 1958, 75–85. Verginius Rufus, Vestricius Spurinna, Iulius Frontinus; not Lucinius Sura, but even he is close enough that Pliny addresses him two long letters in the published corpus (Epp. 4.30, 7.27); nor L. Julius Ursus, but he, too, was probably an acquaintance (see Syme 1991, 7.507 on Ursusʼs relation to the elder Pliny). To be consul ter, Pliny tells us, amounted to the summum fastigium privati hominis (Ep. 2.2). For Plinyʼs presence in the consilium, 4.22, 6.22, 6.31, and Sherwin-Whiteʼs comments ad locc. In Trajanʼs time, the consilium was still a mostly informal group of amici summoned as advisors. On the institution in general, Crook 1955, esp. chapters 4 and 8, together with Sherwin-White 1957 and Amarelli 1983; on the numbers of advisors, Crook 1955, 59 n. 3. Duncan-Jones 1982, 27–32; these are, of course, only the benefactions we happen to know about. On Plinyʼs wealth generally, Duncan-Jones 1982; with some cautions in de Neeve 1992. Pliny did not mention Statius, perhaps because he was of a di erent friendship circle, but he had read him: Guillemin 1929, 125–27. 2 (1) C. Minicius Fundanus, cos. su . 107. PIR M 612. Pliny writes of him and his daughter at Ep. 5.16; he is the addressee in Epp. 1.9, 4.15, 6.6, 7.12. Plutarch makes him a character in one dialogue (de cohibenda ira 452F, etc.) and mentions him in 2 de tranquillitate animi (464E). (2) Q. Sosius Senecio, cos. ord. 99 II ord. 107. PIR S 560. Son-in-law of Plinyʼs consular friend and supporter Julius Frontinus (4.8.3, 5.1.5). Addressee of Epp. 1.13 and 4.4. Plutarch dedicates to him Theseus (1.1), Dio (1.1), Demosthenes (1.1, 31.7), as well as the essays Progress in virtue (1 = 75B) and Quaest. conv. (1.1 = 612C, 2.1 = 629C, etc.). The first pair of Lives is lost, but is thought to have contained a dedication of the whole to Senecio: see Du 1999, 2. Further on Plutarchʼs Freundeskreis in K. Ziegler RE 21.2 s.v. “Plutarchos,” 665–96 (Fundanus, 691; Senecio, 688– 89). Some examples: Octavius Rufus (1.7, 2.10, epic poet, probably cos. su . 80), Sentius Augurinus (4.27, senator, later

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

evidence makes us think this focus on studia the usual path, but that may not really have been so. In any

11.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

12.

proconsul, writer of light verse), Calpurnius Piso (patrician, possibly cos. 111, writer of erudite elegiacs), Passenus Paulus (6.15, a “distinguished Roman knight,” descendant of Propertius, writer of elegiacs), Titinius Capito (8.12, equestrian, ab epistulis to Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, writer of biography), Fuscus Salinator (6.11, 6.26, 7.9, patrician, son of a consul, to be cos. 118, presented as a leading light in letters among the youth for his oratory), Ummidius Quadratus (6.11, also to be cos. 118 and a young leading light). Fantham 1996, 201. The question of the compositional strategy that Fantham raises—whether the Epistles were composed as actual correspondence and edited, or composed as literary essays, or some mixture of the two—is immaterial to the argument here. It is clear (from later references to reception of the publication, 9.11, and, I believe, from the very first epistle, 1.1, on which see Ludolph 1997, 99–106; Ho er 1999, 15–27) that Pliny had deliberate principles of design for the literary project, regardless of its relationship to “actual” correspondence. On the question of composition, Zelzer 1964; Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 11–16; Lilja 1970; Bell 1989; Ho er 1999, 9–10. On Plinyʼs “self-consciousness” and fascination with representation and self-representation, see further Leach 1990; Riggsby 1995, 1998; Ludolph 1997; Radicke 1997; Ho er, 1999; and now Marchesi 2008 on the Epistles as “self-reflexively concerned with the construction of their own literary identity” (ix). Ciceroʼs correspondence is obviously “real” in the sense that the letters o en have subject matter that is ephemeral or thematically jumbled, and that the selection and arrangement is due to a posthumous editor; Senecaʼs Epistulae ad Lucilium, in the tradition of Plato and Epicurus, form a set of philosophical essays written to a friend. Sherwin-White 1969, 77: “Pliny was the first Latin writer to have the idea of developing this kind of letter [i.e., letters written in a refined and polished style, litterae curiosius scriptae] into an art form, written with great concentration and according to a set of rules apparently invented by himself. Pliny had a flair for this kind of writing and succeeded in producing a series of miniature masterpieces….” More on the topic at Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 1–11, esp. 2–3; and see now Marchesi 2008, 207–40. Cf. Plutarch, de amicorum multitudine 97AB, who lists some options for how friends form connections: “reading books with the scholarly (φιλολόγοις συναναγιγνώσκοντος), rolling in the dust with wrestlers, following the hunt with sportsmen, getting drunk with drunkards, canvassing with politicians.” On the man, Syme 1991, 7.541–50. Ancient medical writers recognized a class of “passive exercises,” including carriage and litter rides, which sometimes formed a part of the prescribed daily regimen for elite patients. See Aetius of Amida 16.67, Antyllus in Oribasius 6.23; and cf. Soranus Gyn. 1.49.4, 3.28.6. On the range of ancient ideas of “exercise,” Gleason 1995, 87 . Quintilian also mentions composition in verse as a suitable elite writing exercise: Inst. Or. 10.5.15f, 10.7.19. So Petrucci 1995, 141, in describing similar behaviors among the medieval aristocracy in Italy. He describes, for example, an aristocratic lady who “had two couches of rich silk installed in the great garden and had brought there whoever played music, read, or engaged in fencing” (141; further examples at 143). The notion of a balanced life has a deep tradition. Reading aloud and other vocal exercises were recommended by medical writers for digestive disorders, pleurisy, and other ailments (see von Staden 2000, 359–62), and ancient medical writers advocated in general varied activities, including reading and “passive” exercises like litter riding or riding in a wagon, as part of the ideal regime for the elite (above, n. 15). But in Pliny it is the literary, mental activity rather than vocal exercises, at the fore. Audire presumably of a book, though lectures and dramatic performance are also possible. The word lectitare probably implies reading aloud (used, e.g., as equivalent to recitare at 7.17.4), and the pairing of multum audire multum lectitare most likely, as the punctuation in Mynors suggests, indicates hearing a book read (passive) versus speaking a book out loud (active). A serious learning activity, in any case. Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 302 is o course in supposing that disputare + audire + tua sapientia (4.23.1) add up to the implication that Bassus is a student of philosophy; I take multum disputare here as equivalent to the sermones honestissimi in Spurinnaʼs regimen at 3.1.4. That this sort of retirement was not to be approved is clear from 7.3. A traditional theme: cf. Seneca, Ep. 55 (Servilius Vatia). Again, a traditional theme: cf. Seneca de tranq. animi 9.4: “even in the case of studia, where expense is most honorable, the expense is justifiable only so long as there is moderation” (studiorum quoque quae liberalissima impensa est tam diu rationem habet, quam diu modum). The final section of the letter (3.7.14–15) is more usually read with the assumption that Pliny means to imply that Siliusʼs literary e orts succeed in obliterating the stain of his involvement with Nero, but this overlooks the more subtle criticisms, outlined here, that pervade every section of the letter. Plinyʼs criticism, in short, is not limited to Neronian times, and includes the literary activities themselves. At 8.18.12 Pliny writes, “through exempla we are educated in the guiding principles of life.” See Ho er 1999 for more expansive exploration of this point. Funaioli 1914 remains fundamental as a collection of evidence and influential as an analysis. Among recent work, the most useful or interesting overviews are Binder 1995, Dupont 1997, Valette-Cagnac 1997, 111–69; the brief account in

25. 26. 27.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

28.

White 1993, 59–63, 293–94 is remarkably lucid and helpful. (Quinn 1981, though o en cited, is flawed, and Salles 1992, 93– 110 derivative and lacking primary references.) Martial esp. 9.83, 10.70.10; Dial. 9.3–4; Juv. 1.1–14, 7.39–47. See Binder 1997 for further collection and discussion. The story of an all-day recitation in the time of Tiberius is told at Ep. 122.11–13. Epp. 1.5, 1.13, 2.10, 2.19, 3.7, 3.15, 3.18, 4.7, 4.19, 4.27, 5.3, 5.12, 5.17, 5.21, 6.6, 6.15, 6.17, 6.21, 7.17, 8.12, 8.21, 9.1, 9.27, 9.34. Recitation in the sense of a declamatio by a master is also mentioned: 2.3, 2.18, 6.6. I do not here address the types of performative readings that happened in theaters or other fully public spaces before a populus (i.e., an audience, not invited, of anyone who wished to hear), since those circumstances are hardly mentioned in Pliny. Cf. Dupont 1997, 46 n. 5: “A reading that takes place in a public location and before the entire populus is unusual at Rome and in my view to be distinguished from recitatio on the basis of both its social e ect and its performative nature.” I also omit recitations by trained slaves or professionals as entertainment performance, as well as casual readings among friends (such as over dinner). Even use of the triclinium could fall along varying degrees of public/private: in describing a friendʼs house at Ep. 1.3.1, Pliny mentions triclinia illa popularia illa paucorum (“dining rooms for more public use, and those reserved for the few”); cf. the story in Suetonius Vita Julii 48, where a traveling Julius Caesar dines with local o icials in one triclinium of a great house, and their inferiors dine in another. A great house could have several triclinia of di ering sizes: Pliny mentions two triclinia and two cenationes in his Laurentine villa (Ep. 2.17); Vitruvius describes separate dining rooms for each season (Ep. 6.4). Intimacy of some sort is intended, in any case: Plutarch, Quaest. conv. V.5.679 reproves those who build a “showy dining room” with 30 couches or more. Pliny was not alone in pushing to hold recitations in o times: see Juvenal 3.9. The Panegyricus is about 20,000 words. There are sound reasons to believe that on average Romans would lecture at a rate of at least 130 words/minute (cf. Rome 1952, useful for the comparanda from modern Romance languages and for his point that we read ancient languages awkwardly and too slowly; I lecture, unhurriedly, at 137 words/minute, and all Romance languages show average rates of at least this). At that rate, 20,000 words translates to about 150 minutes, that is, 50 minutes × 3. Syme 1958, 94 (following Durry 1959) arrives at a similar estimate; Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 251 estimates at least 1.5 to 2 hours × 3 = 4.5 to 6 hours, complaining that Durry and Syme “underestimate the toughness of the Roman audience”(!). A passage in Seneca (Ep. 122.11) mentions someone complaining of a poet who recited “all day long” (toto die), but in the context this surely means simply “for a very long, too long, a time.” (That same passage also shows that interruptions of a recitation were normative: Ep. 122.12–13.) Similarly, Martial, Epigr. 10.70.10, with comic exaggeration. Dupont 1997, 54 likewise notes an “incompatibility between the o icium of the recitatio and pure pleasure.” Amat enim qui se sic amari putat, a playful nod to his young friend Sentius Augurinus, whose hendecasyllables in praise of Pliny are quoted at 4.27.4: Unus Plinius est mihi priores: /et mavolt versiculos foro relicto/et quaerit quod amet, putatque amari. On these (somewhat problematic) verses, see Dahlmann 1980. Probably a red herring, since it is unlikely that anyone was sharply criticizing a practice widespread among the most distinguished men of his day, men like Verginius Rufus (5.3.5), and Spurinna (3.1), and Arrius Antoninus (4.3); and cf. Arruntius Stella (probably the cos. su . of 102) in Martial 1.7 who writes a columba to surpass Catullusʼs passer. (Ep. 4.14 suggests that as regards composition, it was the scurrilous nature of the poetry rather than the composition of light verse in and of itself that was the subject of this part of the discussion.) On the definition of cubiculum (not “bedroom”), see Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 17, 57–58; Riggsby 1997; Leach 1997, 68–70. The consilium amicorum is a standard feature of senior magistracies, including those of generals, provincial governors, and others, as well as the emperor. See Liebemann 1900. In two of these passages, Plinyʼs house is not explicitly mentioned, but an intimate is said to be interested in both his oratory at the forum and his recitations in a way that opposes public and private: 4.19 (his wife Calpurnia gets reports on the success of his speeches in the forum, but sits behind a curtain to listen to his recitations); 6.6.6 (his young friend Julius Naso: dicenti mihi sollicitus adsistit, adsidet recitanti). Other passages that make reference to Plinyʼs recitations but do not mention the venue run in the same direction: 3.18 (among non multis of his friends, 9); 7.17 (the audience is non populum, but a select group, certos electosque); 4.5 (less detail, but the audience is comprised of doctissimi homines). White 1993, 293 (speaking specifically of poets, but what he says holds true of literary prose as well): “in those cases where we can discern that the recitation involves a single poet reading his work to a general audience, if a setting is specified, it is predominantly a great manʼs mansion,” citing Seneca Suas. 6.27, Tacitus Ann. 3.49.1, Dial. 9.3, Martial Epigr. 4.6.4–5, Pliny Ep. 8.12.2, Juvenal Sat. 1.12, 7.40 (contra, but from an earlier generation, Horace mentions poetic recitations in the forum and at baths: Sat. 1.4.74–75). Setting aside poetry adapted for performance by singers and dancers as a special, separate case, he goes on: “in fact we cannot verify a single case in which a solo performance before an invited audience took place in a temple or public library. Given the indications we have, we must conclude that such performances most o en took place in the town houses of the elite. This domestic ambience is one of the elements which di erentiate the Roman practice of recitation from the Greek practice of epideixis.” White goes on to make clear that he admits, as would I, the

37. 38.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

49. 50.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

39. 40.

likelihood that on occasion a particularly popular reciter might have attracted an audience “too large for a private salon. Their performances may well have been staged in larger public buildings.” At issue here is, rather, normative practice. (Dix and Houston 2006 regard recitations in public libraries as normal practice, citing Dix 1994, 287, cf. 295 n. 29, but the two references from the high empire, to Pliny Ep. 1.13.3 and Juvenal Sat. 7.36f, do not mention public libraries, even by inference; and the interpretation of the sole piece of earlier evidence [aedem in Horace Ep. 2.2.92–105; argument in Horsfall 1976] is only attractive and possible, not decisive, as Brink 1982, 322 also concluded.) On Regulus as a negative model, see further Ho er 1999, 55–91. On the man, Werner Eck DNP s.v. Aquillius II 5, with bibliography. Pliny goes on to say that Regulus had this “book” (librum) “transcribed into countless copies” (eundem in exemplaria mille transcriptum, cf. OLD 16 s.v. mille) for distribution throughout Italy. Handbooks on the ancient book sometimes cite this letter as evidence for 1,000-copy editions. But all the passage tells is that having a large number of copies made was, with su icient resources, physically possible (what no one would doubt in any case); Regulus is engaged in extreme behavior that is explicitly not the usual. Cf. above, n. 36. There seems an implicit criticism in Plinyʼs comment on Silius Italicus, non numquam iudicia hominum recitationibus experiebatur, 3.7.5; and see discussion of Octavius Rufus, Ep. 2.10, below. In Ep. 7.17.11, Pliny cites from two generations earlier the case of poet and consular Pomponius Secundus (cos. ord. 44), who, whenever a close friend (familiarior amicus) recommended that a passage be excised, would take it “to the people” (ad populum provoco) for adjudication. In the context, however, Pomponiusʼs habit is depicted as quirky, and is explicitly contrasted (7.17.12) with Plinyʼs own habits. Implicit in any case is the now familiar bifurcation between reading and criticism before the amici, on the one hand, and before a larger, less intimate group, on the other. On Pomponius see Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 217 (ad 3.5.3). White 1993, 61–62 points out that the custom of allowing the reciter to invite guests (cf. Ep. 6.15, Seneca Suas. 6.27, Tacitus Dial. 9.3) implies that the great man and his servants could e ectively lose some control over who comes. Thus Pliny seems mi ed to have not been invited by his archenemy Regulus to a recitation (1.5). Dupont 1997, 51. On the expectation of crowd noise, cf. 2.10.7, where Pliny imagines for a friend the positive reaction that a recitation of his poetry would bring: imaginor enim qui concursus quae admiratio te, qui clamor quod etiam silentium maneat. Likewise 5.3.9: manu (“applause”), murmure. On the need for the audience to attend to facial expression, cf. the remarkably similar passage in Plutarch, de recta ratione audiendi 45C. The tone is a bit odd, because Pliny is busy setting up an elaborate set of word plays on the astral theme: luculentam (materiam), 2; sublimibus, 2; nunc attollebatur, nunc residebat, 2; excelsa, 2; lumen, 4. However playful, the report is, however, surely sincere in its gist, even if there may also be something of condescension here (so Syme 1958, 577–78: see Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 348). Martial, Epigr. 9.83 (the basis of the joke: we are grateful that reciters have become spectators and thus can no longer bore us), cf. 4.41, 8.76; Tacitus, Dial. 9.3; Juvenal Sat. 1.1–14, 3.9. We know that professional recitations of various sorts were common in this period, from epideictic recitations at schola to readings for entertainment, whether at a theater or a great house (see Funaioli 1914, 442). As mentioned, Pliny speaks little of these sorts of recitations, and they are not in focus here. At 2.3 and 2.18 (and cf. 6.6.3), he mentions lectures by teachers in a schola or auditorium (interestingly, these epideictic speeches are not just for students but are routinely attended by senators: 2.18.2). Recitations for entertainment by professionals or trained slaves are mentioned only in passing (e.g., 1.15.2 comoedos vel lectorem vel lyristen, at Plinyʼs house; 3.1.9 comoedi, at Spurinnaʼs house; 5.3.2 comoedias audio et specto mimos). This is not because Pliny avoids or despises such things (cf. 5.3.2), but because it is not part of the program of the letters. His emphasis is, instead, on recitation among the amici, part of his program to encourage literary pursuits as an essential, validating activity for his circle. His focus, as ours, is on the gentlemenamateurs of the elite and their hangers-on, reciting their own literary works. Pliny probably thinks of this as returning to a core Roman value: there is a long tradition of using the recitation to focus on emendatio, going back to Crates of Mallos (or so says Suetonius, Gramm. 2). See Funaioli 1914, 437f, 441. Note that these behaviors may not be all that unusual, either individually or in aggregate; this is merely what Pliny claims as the special characteristic of his circle. The best starting point on the question of the circulation of written texts remains the now-classic article by Raymond Starr (1987). See now also Iddeng 2006. This works only if the audience is, as in Plinyʼs model of behavior, polite and ready with encouragement. But even in reality there was nothing beyond the potential shame of uninterested audience reaction (the worst is the humorous ga e described at 6.15, an inadvertent insult coming from, it should be noticed, an elder and man of rank), and thus the institution worked as a way to encourage the gi ed and discourage the less talented without loss of dignitas coming into the mix.

51.

52.

53. 54. 55.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

65. 66.

67.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

56.

At a minimum, one can reasonably say this: for the letters in the later books, Pliny will naturally be looking over his shoulder to the possibility of a wider public as he writes letters of potential value for his next epistolary book. Some scholars suppose much more extensive intervention between letters sent to correspondents and the published result, but that assumption is not necessary for the statement here. Acclamation does come for the Epistles, presumably— but that is not mentioned in the published Epistles, since there is no need for advocacy of a fait accompli. On the reciting of Plinyʼs hendecasyllables as itself an e ort at “a small but significant innovation” in pushing nugatory poetry into “a more visible, public, competitive realm,” see Roller 1998 (quotations, 289). C. Marius Marcellus Octavius P. Cluvius Rufus: so Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 101. But Syme 1985, 347 demurs, followed by PIR (O 53). Clearly, however, a “person of some influence” (Symeʼs words: 1985, 341). Note that this is what Pliny argues for, the behavior he espouses, rather than the social reality. White 1993, 59f sketches other possible routes to literary notice, while also noting that the formal recitation was the normal route during this time. E.g., Pliny knows about his exclusion from a recitation by Regulus, even though Regulus is his enemy (1.5). Recitations, it perhaps needs remarking, occur mostly or wholly in Rome, because that is the core of the structure of community. See Dupont 1997, 46; Funaioli 1914, 443 on their absence in villa contexts. The traditional trio of elite obligation were warfare, statecra , and law, which also were considered the traditional routes to prestige, fame, and material benefit. See, e.g., Cicero de orat. 1.209–12 and other passages listed in Mayer 2001, 3. Pliny shows little apparent interest in military a airs. On the import of distringor o icio, see discussion ad loc. in Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 418. 1.2, 1.8, 2.5, 3.10, 3.13, 3.15, 4.14, 4.20, 5.12, 6.33, 7.2, 7.12, 7.20, 8.3, 8.4, 8.7, 8.13, 8.19, 8.21, 9.26, 9.28, 9.35, 9.38. 1.8, 2.5, 3.10, 3.13, 3.15, 4.14, etc. 1.3, 1.9, 3.15, 5.10, 5.15 (cf. 4.3, 4.18), 6.21, 8.4, 9.1, 9.14, 9.31, 9.35. Some aspects of literary e ort were, to be sure, solitary. At 9.36 Pliny strikingly depicts how he goes about his early morning writing at his Tuscan villa. He gets up at about dawn, but keeps the shutters closed, sequestering himself in silence and darkness to help his thoughts. He works out passages in his head, then calls his secretary (notarius), opens the windows, and dictates. Similarly, at 1.6, he explicitly mentions the solitudo of the woods as a good reason to bring wax tablets and do some thinking and taking of notes during the inevitable waiting periods in a hunt. But even in these situations, a notarius seems usually involved (recall the habits of the elder Pliny), and indeed the very reading of a manuscript in dra seems to have entailed someone to do the reading. Such at least seems the implication of Plinyʼs remark at 8.1, where he laments the sickness of his lector Encolpius, “Who then will read and appreciate my books, whom will my ears follow?” Roman elite routinely used each otherʼs houses even when the amicus was not there (e.g., Ep. 1.7, 6.28). A striking example is the case of his educated freedman Zosimus, whom Pliny sends unannounced to a friendʼs villa for health reasons; Pliny writes his friend, “I have decided to send him to your estate at Forum Julii, since I have o en heard you saying that the air is healthy there and the milk best for curing disease of that sort (i.e., the cough that Zosimus su ers from). I therefore ask that you write your people and instruct them to make him at home on the property and in the house and also to pay the expenses for anything he requires(!)” (5.19.7–8). The opposition was a topos, to judge by Martial 5.78, where Martial playfully promises a guest neither “reading a thick volume” (25) nor “girls from shameful Gades” (26–28) but instead delicate tibia music and a girl; cf. Juvenal Sat. 11.162. Martial in general presents reading over a meal as a normal if also risible activity: 3.45, 50 (Ligurinus tediously reading his own poetry over dinner); 7.51.11–14 (a fan reads Martialʼs poems to a friend over a meal); 11.52 (Martial promises not to read his verses to a friend over dinner, by way of enticement); and cf. 3.44. On comic performances at dinner, see the survey in Nervegna 2005, 97–99, 102–9. Plutarch, de cupiditate divitiarum 528b. See Nervegna 2005, 108; dʼArms 1999. The brief description of his comic skills at 5.19.3 (pronuntiat acriter sapienter apte decenter etiam) suggests a recitation rather than acting by a troupe, but the context does not make it certain. For the sorts of things a trained slave might do with his voice even in recitation, see Quintilian Inst. Or. 1.11.2–3, 1.8.1–3 (modulation to reveal character, expression of emotion, gestures). Comedy: Inst. Or. 1.11.1–14; music: 1.10.9–33. Plutarchʼs Quaest. conv. VII.8.3–4 (711E–713B), a long argument among philosophers over the propriety of certain types of dance and music and drama, illuminates how particular elites could be in their choice of “suitable” entertainment. In that set of arguments, the approved view seems to endorse New Comedy (not Old) and music to the lyre, with aulete music more accepted than praised, with disapprobation of tragedy, dance, mime, and the newfangled practice of acting out (as opposed to reading) Plato. From the same work (VII.5, 706D): “It is possible to take a man who is enjoying mimes and tunes and lyrics that are bad art and bad taste, and lead him back to Euripides and Pindar and Menander, in Platoʼs words ʻwashing the brine from the ears with the clear fresh water of reason.ʼ”

68.

69.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196071344 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

70. 71.

Plinyʼs remark that his friendʼs interference has lost more than decem versus does not imply poetry: versus, like Greek stichoi, was o en used as a measure for prose text (so at Ep. 4.11.16; cf. OLD s.v. 4). Given the nature of the elder Plinyʼs writings (the nephewʼs letter begins with a full bibliography of the uncleʼs work: 3.5.3–6), the broader context seems to imply a text with technical or historical content. This shi in attitude toward technical texts seems to be fairly recent, as I am reminded from a perusal of the papers of Benjamin Franklin. When sending his friends scientific works on electricity and the like, Franklin commonly chooses the word entertainment to describe the nature of his o ering. A few examples from his early letters: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin 3:391f (book on electricity; notes on locusts and dragonflies), 5:521 (technical electrical experiments); 9:118 (book containing technical descriptions of insects); some of Franklinʼs work was published in a popular periodical called The Massachusetts Magazine, or Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment. Whether Tacitus did so is unknown, since that part of the Histories is lost. Cf. Plinyʼs own statement at Ep. 3.7.14, and the chapter on “Conception de la gloire” in Guillemin 1929, 13–22, esp. 15. Further on fama and gloria in chapter 4 of this volume.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0004 Published: April 2010

Pages 63–73

Abstract Tacitus and Pliny were fellow orators of distinction with apparently close connections between their communities. Tacitus’s Dialogus purports to show us the inner workings and debates of a tight literary community, set dramatically in AD 75 but re ecting at least in part the community in which Pliny and Tacitus engaged. This chapter explores the ways in which, in the Dialogus, Tacitus explores the question of the connection between literary culture, elite society, and politics, particularly as it relates to the traditional Roman pursuit of gloria.

Keywords: Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Dialogus, literary culture, society, politics, Gloria Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120), like Pliny, was from the north (from northern Italy or southern Gaul), and —again, like Pliny—managed a distinguished and apparently smooth senatorial career (praetor 88, cos.su . 97, procos. Asia 112) despite coming through large parts of the cursus honorum under Domitian. From his earliest works (cf. esp. Agricola 1–3) and throughout his writings, Tacitus displays a deep and abiding interest in the question of how senatorial ambitions to gloria through virtus intersect with the fact of imperial control. The immense complications of his great works would take us far beyond the scope, indeed far beyond the topic, of this book, but I think it nonetheless worth pausing to consider Tacitus, if only in brief and by excursus, with regard to a particular treatise—Dialogus de oratoribus—and in close relation to our analysis of Pliny. Our aim will be to get a clearer understanding of the sense of urgency, at least for the circles that embraced Pliny and Tacitus, that pervaded current debates over what role studia had in elite life. As we will see, Tacitus explores with considerable nuance a set of conversations on the value of literary education and the function it should serve in contemporary elite society. Tacitus was, by Pliny’s account, a close connection. Tacitus is the addressee of 11 published letters, more than anyone else, and is mentioned in four others. A celebrated orator, he pronounced the eulogy at the public funeral of Pliny’s guardian, Verginius Rufus (2.1; laudator eloquentissimus, 2.1.6). Tacitus and Pliny

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

4 Pliny, Tacitus, and the Dialogus de oratoribus 

had worked together in ad 100 as the principal prosecutors in a celebrated public trial (the prosecution for extortion of the proconsul of Africa, Marius Priscus: Epp. 2.11, 12). In his nal books Pliny publishes details 1

claiming a personal and reasonably intimate literary friendship (cf. esp. 7.20, 8.7, 9.23). These connections p. 64

between the two, as fellow

orators of distinction on the one hand, and as fellow writers of note on the

other, make the survival of the Dialogus de oratoribus particularly fascinating for our purposes, since it purports to show us the inner workings and debates of a tight literary community, set dramatically in ad 75 2

(17.3), but re ecting at least in part the contemporary community in which Tacitus and Pliny engaged. 3

Dialogus is an immensely complex work—“dazzling,” says the Cambridge commentator —and we cannot begin to do justice to it here. Let us then focus on a couple of threads that connect most closely to our

Studia, Society, Politics 4

The explicit topics of Dialogus are (1) oratory versus poetry as a proper life pursuit, and the question of the decline of oratory in the present age, both (2) whether it has declined, in what sense, and when, and (3) why it has declined. The dialogue is set at the house of the senator (cf. 11.4) Curiatius Maternus, who is working on his Cato, a historical tragedy (fabula praetexta) that he recited the day before. The recitation has become the subject of much gossip, said by cause of its Republican rhetoric to have o ended “the powerful” (potentium, 2: i.e., the emperor and his circle). Two friends, Aper and Julius Secundus, arrive to counsel Maternus, and Aper and Maternus at once get into a debate on issue #1 (oratory versus poetry). Another friend, Vipstanus Messalla, arrives late, in the mode of an Alcibiades, and further debate is joined, on issues #2 and 3 (decline of oratory). The participants are sharply contrasted: Aper is the aggressive proponent of contemporary oratory; Messalla is the blue-blooded traditionalist (dubbed the “Young Fogey” by Elaine 5

Fantham ); Maternus is the somewhat self-indulgent, individualistic aristocratic poet. The whole is organized as three pairs of set speeches interleaved with brief conversation: rst Aper and Maternus; then p. 65

Aper and

Messalla; nally Messalla and Maternus. As we will see even in the brief treatment here, the

dialogue is characterized by open-ended exploration of the topics, in which arguments are laid forth and di

culties hinted at, but nally left unresolved; indeed, there seems a growing scholarly consensus that all

of the speakers have points of merit to make, and that none of the speakers can be credited with an 6

unequivocally authoritative voice (even if many see Maternus’s nal speech as a capstone). Table 4.1 Structure of the Dialogus 1. Oratory versus poetry a. Aper (§§5–10) b. Maternus (§§11–13) 2. Is there a decline? a. Aper (§§16–23) b. Messalla (§§25–26) 3. Causes of the decline a. Messalla (§§28–35) b. Maternus (§§36–41)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

analysis of Pliny.

First to notice is the deep-seated assumption in Dialogus, as in Pliny, that things literary are central to life and community. To neglect or disdain studia is not an option within the circle depicted. There is a palpable urgency concerning literary activity, which is depicted as a matter of signi cance not simply for the interior group but for the world at large. Moreover, these studia play a central role in the fashioning and fabric of the social group and its relation to broader society. In a striking passage early on, Aper in arguing for the merits of oratory (#1a: 5–10) brings to the fore the intimate relationship between studia and social clientalism as he describes in distinctly Roman terms the bene ts accruing to a gentleman who commands eloquentia: I move on to the matter of the pleasure (voluptatem) of oratorical eloquence, whose delight is at hand not at some one moment but every day and almost every hour. What can be sweeter for a free see his own house always full and crowded with men of the highest rank (concursu splendidissimorum hominum), and to know that he is given attention not because of his money, or lack of children, or any administrative o

ce, but because of himself (i.e., his command of

eloquence)? Yes, the rich and powerful and childless (i.e., those most likely to bestow on him an p. 66

inheritance) come often

to him, though young and poor, to entrust to him their own legal

problems or those of their friends…. Look now at what a throng of togas accompanies you when you go out! What an appearance you make! (6.2–4) Equally striking are the social terms in which Aper puts, negatively, the studia of the poet: Poets, if they really want to work over and craft some worthy composition, are forced to leave behind habitual association (conversatio) with their friends and the delight (iucunditas) of the city, to neglect their other duties, and as they themselves say, to withdraw into the woods and the sacred groves (in nemora et lucos), that is, into solitude. (9.6) Aper’s depiction is, to be sure, tendentious. In good Tacitean manner, the dramatic situation itself (a succession of engaged friends coming in to harangue Maternus as he works on his poetry) implicitly undercuts the argument; and Maternus’s poetry is political, even dangerously so—hardly the work of 7

someone withdrawn to the metaphorical sacred groves. Still, the deep concern with how studia interact with politics and society is telling, as is the way that studia in uence the formation of the circle of amici. These social and political concerns will recur in various permutations throughout the dialogue. Moreover, the link between studia and such concerns is prescriptive: the dialogue in e ect explores ways in which, for the elite, studia are not, and cannot be, divorced from society and the politics of power. We will pass over Maternus’s reply to Aper (#1b: 11–13) for the moment and turn to the next phase of the 8

dialogue, marked by the entry of Vipstanus Messalla (14). Messalla, echoing Quintilian, at once raises the issue that orators need to be versed broadly in letters: I am delighted to see that you, the best men and best orators of our time, exercise your talents not only with legal business and zeal for declamation, but undertake also debates of the sort that nurture both a talent and a delight in general literary culture (eruditionis ac litterarum, hendiadys), debates that are very enjoyable not only for you who participate in them, but also for those to 9

whose ears they come. (14.3) p. 67

Messalla now goes on to contrast this group’s laudable interest in literary culture with what in his view is the salient fault of contemporary oratory, namely a myopic focus on rhetorical training (14.4). Later, after a pair of speeches on the question of whether one can properly speak of a decline in oratory (#2a and b: 16– 26), he will reprise the issue at length in more general terms (#3a: 28–32).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

gentleman (libero et ingenuo animo), born for honorable pleasures (ad voluptates honestas), than to

At that point in the dialogue (#3a), Messalla is delineating the faults of contemporary education. He begins with the very young, describing how in the (good) old days, children were reared by devoted mothers, whereas now they are raised by ignorant slaves and careless parents: Yes, the characteristic vices peculiar to our city (Rome) seem to me to be inculcated almost in the mother’s womb, that is the enthusiasm for acting and passion for gladiators and racing. In a mind occupied and obsessed by such things, what little space is left for the higher pursuits (bonis artibus)? How often will you nd anyone speaking of anything else at home? What other conversations do we hear from young men when we come into the declamation halls? And even the teachers use such topics as their most frequent material in the declamation classes. (29.3–4)

Cicero’s teachers in civil law, in philosophy; how he traveled to Greece for better instruction; how he commanded knowledge of “mathematics, music, grammar, and every aspect of higher learning” (30.4): Cicero understood the subtleties of dialectic, the practical use of ethics, the dynamics and origins of the physical world. The truth, you best of men, is this: that marvelous eloquence of Cicero’s poured forth from a great deal of higher learning (eruditione) and many trained skills (artibus) and knowledge in all areas. (30.5) There are, as we expect, Tacitean crosscurrents. Messalla’s maternal half-brother (as Aper mentions in 10

passing, 15.1; cf. Hist. 4.42.1) is Marcus Aquillius Regulus, the notorious delator whom we have met before. This fact creates a dark irony to Messalla’s focus on the nurturing mother (how does one son turn out an excellent man and the other an infamous delator?) and a general unease—for modern readers, a delicious

ambiguity—concerning the orators, Messalla but also Regulus, whose gloria Aper aggressively asserts (15.1). p. 68

For our purposes, what is signi cant about these passages (and others like them: cf. 34) is the way in which 11

Messalla’s arguments express a strict exclusionary divide along traditional aristocratic lines.

The quality

of even casual conversations at home and among students in the schools is a deep concern for the literarily right-minded. The true orator (as in Quintilian) must have an education that is nely elaborated and reserved for the few. Messalla’s taunt of Aper at the start, when he sarcastically a ects to admire Aper “because he has not yet dissociated himself from the rhetorical exercises of the schools, and prefers to spend his leisure time in the manner of the new rhetores rather than the old oratores” (14.4; for the irony, 15.1) is meant to be a biting condemnation of the narrow path to eloquence, but at the same time is an old, by now rather hackneyed, theme (going back to Plato’s Gorgias). “Young Fogey” Messalla tilts to traditional views of the ways in which the elite must distinguish themselves through letters in order to avoid the horrors of involvement in the popular culture of spectacle (acting, gladiators, racing: 29.3, cf. 30.1) ushered 12

into elite circles by, especially, Nero.

To Messalla, it is not adequate to be trained in the rhetorical schools,

even for years (cf. his further discussion at 32, 35), because oratory is not about its rewards or utility, but about the validation of elite status. From this standpoint (not far from Pliny’s, it must be said), oratory rests comfortably within the larger, exclusive demands of a long and broad education and consequent deep literary attainment.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Messalla goes on, then, to describe by contrast the broad and serious liberal education of Cicero. He tells of

Fama, laus, gloria That in turn brings us back to Maternus, the aristocrat whose poetic e orts motivate the dialogue. Early on, the rst part of Aper’s argument for the primacy of oratory over poetry (#1a: 5–8) is oriented toward the rewards that oratory brings and is structured under three headings: utilitas, voluptas, fama. When he comes at last to discuss fama, he introduces examples laden with irony: Eprius Marcellus and Vibius Crispus are “well-known at the farthest points of the earth”— esse in extremis partibus (8.1). These are in fact sinister men, delatores, Marcellus the most infamous of his age, and even as Aper praises the great gains in wealth and status that eloquentia has brought these two he notes in passing and in ironic understatement p. 69

14

turns out to be a signi cant misstep,

13

egregius, 8.3).

This

or at least this is the point Maternus latches onto in his reply (#1b:

11–13). Maternus immediately seizes the high ground, maintaining that the moral character of the man is fundamental (11.4). As a good man, Maternus must set oratory aside as his literary imperative, because the recent history of the delatores has tainted oratory, making it morally compromised (recall that this is set in ad 75, shortly after Nero, and was composed shortly after Domitian): “the practice of this gain-getting and blood-letting eloquence belongs to recent times and is born from bad morals” (nam lucrosae huius et 15

sanguinantis eloquentiae usus recens et ex malis moribus natus, 12.2).

With regard to oratory, Maternus

arrives early on, then, at a sort of disconnect from either the grossly utilitarian view of an Aper or the traditional, exclusionary self-righteousness of a Messalla. Given the centrality of oratory in Roman elite perceptions, this is an important result. In his nal speech (#3b: 36–41)—the closing speech of the dialogue—Maternus asserts roundly (and eloquently) the amoral nature of oratorical eloquence: “We are talking not about a leisurely or quiet thing, or one that takes joy in uprightness and moderation. Rather, the great and remarkable eloquence of which we speak is the foster-child of license, which fools are wont to call liberty, the companion of sedition, a provocation to an unbridled populace, lacking obedience or discipline, de ant, reckless, arrogant, something that does not spring up in a well ordered state” (40.2). Maternus’s answer to the question rst posed—why are there so few outstanding orators today? (1)—is, in essence, historical: only times of political upheaval can nurture such an amoral skill. It thus makes sense that we nd a Cicero in the death throes of the Republic, but Eprius Marcellus and Marcus Regulus under Nero (and Regulus again under Domitian). In a quiet time like “today” (whether the dramatic date of 75 under Vespasian is intended, or the date of composition, probably early in the Trajanic calm) great oratory is not needed, and thus does not arise. Maternus concludes his speech (41.5) with the observation that if one were to swap eras, orators like p. 70

Messalla, Secundus, and Aper would attain the “highest reputation and glory in eloquence”

(summa illa

laus et gloria in eloquentia), and adds the striking remark that “no one is able at the same time to achieve both great fame and great peace (nemo eodem tempore adsequi potest magnam famam et magnam quietem).” Each must be satis ed with the era in which he lives, and with the possibilities a orded by that era. The conclusion is unsettling. It seems almost as if Maternus is arguing that his gracious aristocratic friend Messalla would have turned out like his infamous elder half-brother Regulus if he had come to prominence 16

(as Regulus did) under Nero, rather than more recently (i.e., under Vespasian).

 Fama, in any case, has been

seriously compromised as a goal. Those who attain it through oratory must rely on political turmoil to have the opportunity; and they often (like Marcellus, Regulus) become morally sullied in the equation. The recourse is to whatever sort of fama exists in times of calm, something that allows for magnam quietem. Yet, as the dialogue ends, this sort of fama has a distinctly hollow ring to it. Can gloria really ow from such an eviscerated form of fama? We might expect, but do not get, a reprise of Maternus’s earlier arguments that a di erent, less morally compromised, fama is at hand through other literary e orts such as poetry. Instead, fama is tightly framed in political terms, terms that leave little room for fama at all in the Trajanic (or Vespasianic) calm for those outside of the imperial family (cf. 41).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

that they are “neither one particularly outstanding in character” (neuter moribus

Moreover, Maternus’s earlier arguments for literary fama (#1b: 11–13) were themselves somewhat compromised. Maternus makes conventional arguments for poetic virtue: that poetry derives from divine oracles and the likes of Orpheus, Linus, Apollo himself (12.4); that Homer is as well revered as Demosthenes, Vergil as Cicero (12.5); that poets like Vergil in the old days, and Secundus Pomponius and Domitius Afer in our days, are characterized by uprightness of living (dignitate vitae) as well as enduring reputation (perpetuitate famae, 13.3). As usual in Tacitus, there are crosscurrents: the examples of Linus and Orpheus seem o -key, given their cautionary endings (Maternus mentions these two in the context of the gloria maior aut augustior honor allotted to early poets by gods and men, 12.4, but Linus was killed by Apollo and Orpheus was torn limb by limb by Thracian women at the instigation of Aphrodite). The example of Domitius Afer is likewise oddball, since he worked as a delator under Tiberius (as if to emphasize the irony, p. 71

13.4; Afer is described and criticized

by Tacitus at Annales 4.54.4, 14.19). But the overarching argument

that threads its way through the speech is the advantage of the quiet life, removed from political a airs (the famam pallentem of the forum, 13.5), that poetry a ords (12.1, 12.3, 13.1, 13.5–6). The circumstances, however, belie the argument. As already discussed, the dramatic frame of the Dialogus puts Maternus’s poetry within the context of a genre that is politically activist and hence dangerous (2.1, 3.1–2). The upshot is that Dialogus in its exploration of these topics seems to re ect deep anxiety over contemporary avenues for fama and gloria. Traditional avenues for establishing reputation, in deliberative oratory and military prowess, are now closely held by the emperor and his family (Dial. 41; cf. Agric. 1–3, Pliny Ep. 3.7.14). Oratory is limited to criminal cases, which have limited possibilities for gaining enduring fame (41.1–3), excepting the dark fama of ephemeral notoriety for delation (13.4; cf. Ann. 1.74.1–2). Oratory, the traditional literary venue for establishing Roman virtue, has been upended. Nonoratorical literary pursuits turn out also to have surprisingly strong links to politics and power, thus to danger. Also, on the other hand, and implicitly: if literary e orts are truly divorced from society, then they will be of limited use in establishing lasting gloria. Aper o ers a devastating (if also tendentious) depiction of Saleius Bassus’s pathetic e orts to gain laus through poetic recitation (9.2–5): Take our friend Saleius, a rst-rate poet, or—if this is more honori c—an illustrious bard: does anyone escort him to his house, or wait on him to pay his respects, or follow in his train? … When he has concocted after long lucubration a single volume in a whole year, working every day and most nights as well, he nds himself obliged to run round into the bargain and beg people to be kind enough to come and form an audience…. And even supposing his reading is a superlative success, in a day or two all the glory (laus) of it passes away, like a plant culled too soon in the blade or the bud, without reaching any real solid fruitage: what he gets out of it is never a friend, never a client, never any lasting gratitude for a service rendered, but only tful applause, empty compliments, and a satisfaction that is eeting. (trans. after Peterson) 17

To this, Maternus counters weakly with the example of the public accolade of Vergil (13.2), a unique case. In that same speech (#1b: 11–13), Maternus mentions the consular poet Pomponius Secundus (13.3), and

years later Tacitus will write of him in the Annales, “The honor of a triumph was decreed for Pomponius, but that constituted a small part of his fama for posterity since for them the gloria of his poetry was prep. 72

eminent” (Ann. 12.28.2). We see little such con dent reliance on literary fama in Dialogus. The ancients need no laudation, Maternus says, since their fama praises them enough (24.3). But there is only a halting sense that literary contemporaries have much chance to gain fama, and Dialogus betrays a keen sense of the many literary works that, even among the ancients, are lost or go unread (esp. 18; cf. 21.1, 35.2).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Tacitus moves immediately from the example of Afer to the delatores Eprius Marcellus and Vibius Crispus,

Tacitus and Pliny Pliny’s Epistles leave the impression, on balance, that however well connected Tacitus and Pliny may have been, they kept di erent company. The two exchanged manuscripts and have many points of contact, as we have seen, but there is no hint that Pliny was able to get Tacitus to engage in his earnest program of recitations, or to participate directly in his circle. Yet we see in Dialogus broadly similar concerns, and indeed similar anxieties, about the purpose and purport of studia in contemporary elite society. The broad community of senatorial elite focused on literary culture seems, then, to share this set of concerns as a common backdrop.

in the imperial age, and how studia, and especially oratory, can most pro tably interact with social and political life. The sum of the parts yields a viewpoint that is skeptical, even deconstructive, as we might expect from the future writer of the Annales. The text speaks as though actively engaged, and one can well imagine the circle around Pliny was a part of the broader community the dialogue seeks to in uence. Yet the text is, deliberately, a springboard to discussion, almost in the manner of an aporetic philosophical dialogue, and in any case not a piece with clear advocacy. (Dialogus does, though, leave open by omission the possibility that historical writing has unexplored merit.) Pliny o ers both similarities and telling contrasts as he struggles to negotiate sensible answers to the 18

essential questions and arguments arising in the community and so vividly explored in Dialogus.

Embracing the conventional view from which Dialogus takes its departure, Pliny regards oratory as the principal, serious target of literary studies—he surely buys into the need to help friends and punish enemies through oratory—but Pliny also as the years pass seems increasingly insecure about the prospects of fame p. 73

19

through oratorical writing alone (5.5.7, 5.8.6),

and he is increasingly intrigued by

the possibilities of

poetry as an avenue toward bene cial fama (e.g., 4.14, 5.3, 7.4). At all times, however, Pliny remains steady in his insistence that studia must stay rooted within the social interactions of the community. As we have seen, even the revision of oratorical libelli requires the repeated and active involvement of the amici, both in person and through correspondence. As for poetry, Pliny explicitly rejects the groves of Maternus for a poetry integrated into a balanced life in secessu among one’s friends (e.g., 3.1, 4.3, 4.23), and with similar requirements for involvement by the amici. It is, I think, no accident that his fama ultimately rested on the success of the Epistles, which, in my reading, themselves actively seek to construct the community of the literarily cultured around Pliny. Ultimately, Pliny nds his laus and indeed his gloria in the exemplary behaviors—and writings about those behaviors—that he uses to guide the community attaching itself to him. His great deed, in e ect, becomes the construction of exactly this community, this sense of shared purpose and validation and values, and the legacy to that construction that endures in his writings. In the chapters that follow, we will skip a couple of generations to look at a series of (loosely) connected reading communities in the age of the Antonines.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4.

On the closer connection depicted in the latter books of the Epistles, Sherwin-White 1966/1985, 100; di erently, Ho er 1999, 4 n. 4. The “true” intimacy is o en doubted: e.g., Syme 1958, 112–13. The date of composition for Dial. is a complicated question (Brink 1994), but a consensus has now formed about the rough range of 97–103 (under Nerva or, as Brink would have it, early in Trajanʼs reign). See also Williams 1978, 26–48 for how the scene in Dial. hovers between the dramatic date and the date of composition (early Trajanic in his estimation). Mayer 2001, 26, cf. 2. In quoting or translating from the Latin, I follow Mayerʼs text. Historical writing is, perhaps curiously, not mentioned in Dialogus. But the “poetry” discussed in the dialogue is fabula

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

In Dialogus we see a debate joined over the question of how best to use lettered education and literary talents

5. 6. 7.

8.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196072524 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

9.

praetexta (Cato), a sort of dramatic history, and the dangers discussed in Dial. of “the powerful” interpreting such depictions as critical to the current regime (2) are equally operative for historical works. Poetry seems to operate largely as an analogue for “serious nonoratorical writing” in the dialogue; or at least many of the arguments advanced pertain as much to history as to poetry. Fantham 1996, 198. The bibliography is vast, but central contributions of the last generation include Williams 1978; Barnes 1986; Luce 1993; Bartsch 1994, 98–125; Fantham 1996, 191–95; Mayer 2001, introduction (esp. 47); Dominik 2007. A traditional metaphor. Mayer 2001 ad loc. quotes parallels in Horace (Epist. 2.2.77) and Juvenal (7.58), to which cf. Quintilian 10.3.22. Pliny quotes the phrase in nemora et lucos verbatim in a letter written to Tacitus himself (9.10.2), in a genteel nod to the merits of Dialogus. The scholarly consensus, accepting the evidence assembled in Güngerich 1951, is that when writing the Dialogus Tacitus knew Quintilianʼs work. The final phrase probably implies that we are to imagine an anonymous audience beyond the named speakers, as commonly in such scenes, a point to which we will return in later chapters. This conclusion may not seem inevitable (Mayer 2001, 135 takes this as implicating “we the readers of the D.”), but subsequent chapters will accumulatively bear out the broad conclusion that an anonymous larger crowd is a common assumption in such scenes for a reader in the high empire. As Plinyʼs most outstanding antimodel: above, chapter 3. Of Regulus: “the most evil creature on two feet,” as described by Domitian, reported at Pliny Ep. 1.5.14; “a bad man unskilled in speaking,” Herennius Senecio, reported at Pliny Ep. 4.7.5. Though it canʼt be proven beyond doubt, Messalla is widely thought to be from the family of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (cos. 31 bc), a famous orator (prominent in Dial.: 12.6, 17.6, 18.2, 20.1, 21.9) and aristocrat of the first century bc, patron of Ovid and Tibullus. See Bartsch 1994, 36–62. Vibius Crispus is a sinister figure in Tacitusʼs Histories: 2.10, 4.41–42; and at Hist. 2.95.3, Eprius Marcellus forms the climax to a list of the most vicious and depraved men of the era. Here and in what follows I follow in large part Mayer 2001, 34–35. Mayer 2001, 34 (cf. 124–25) a er Wagenvoort takes the sentence to be Maternusʼs repudiation of the whole of Roman oratory and not just that of his own day, arguing that recens is “recent” in opposition to the Golden Age (mentioned just a er, an illud in reply to huius here). But the use of lucrosae (as Mayer himself points out) “looks back to Aperʼs reference to the wealth of Eprius and Vibius (8.2)” (Mayer 2001, 124), as does sanguinantis and indeed ex malis moribus (cf. neuter moribus egregius, 8.3), and thus it seems natural for the reader, at least in the first instance, to take this as a reference to contemporary history. The half-brothers appear to have been about nine years apart. Messalla was born in 46/47 and had only reached the post of military tribune by ad 69, whereas Regulus, who would become quaestor in the year following, was already infamous for his delation of three consulars on capital charges for a net gain of seven million sesterces. Fantham 1996, 195. By the later books, Pliny had read Dialogus—his use of the phrase in nemora et lucos at Ep. 9.10.2 is generally taken as a nod to Dial. 9.6—but the argument here is that Pliny is responding to a common concern in the contemporary community rather than to Tacitus in particular. For a close study of other possible links between Dial. and Plinyʼs Epistles, see Murgia 1985. Discussed in Mayer 2001, 10–11.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0005 Published: April 2010

Pages 74–97

Abstract Galen of Pergamum was court physician to Marcus Aurelius and the leading doctor of his time. He also was a proli c writer, who wrote with interesting clarity about his expectations for readers. This chapter explores Galen’s use of his medical treatises to advocate for and construct a particular type of elite reading community oriented toward medical and philosophical understanding. The ways in which Galen’s writings circulated, and what it tells us about ancient notions of publication, are also in focus.

Keywords: Galen of Pergamum, Doctor, medicine, reading community, publication Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction Galen of Pergamum (129–c. 216 AD) is commonly remembered as court physician to Marcus Aurelius and 1

the leading medical man of his time, one who exerted vast in uence on later ages. This portrayal does not, however, give an adequate sense of Galen’s view of himself (which is, importantly, just about all that we 2

3

have). The title of one of Galen’s works tells a part of the story: The Best Physician is Also a Philosopher. Galen was insistent that command of the theoretical essentials was requisite for full command of the medical art. Yet this, too, proves insu

cient, even as a starting point. Galen aggressively, repeatedly, even

tediously, promoted the central importance of medical understanding among intellectual endeavors. His writings are full of detail intended for the handicraft of medicine, but even his technical treatises are usually p. 75

framed within a larger agenda, to which Galen returns again

and again. Like Pliny, Galen was a

proselytizer for a certain view of the intellectual and (with a view more limited than Pliny’s) of a certain kind of high intellectual society. A polymath himself, Galen constructs the ideal intellectual as someone who commands the details of philosophy, natural science, philology, geometry, logic, and music—all however subordinated to the ultimate goal of mastering a profound understanding of medicine. The ideal intellectual, in short, looks suspiciously like Galen himself, or at least Galen’s view of himself; and Galen’s presentation of the ideal intellectual society reads as if an exhortation to follow his somewhat idiosyncratic model.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

5 Doctors and Intellectuals: Galen’s Reading Community 

Galenʼs Construction of an Intellectual Elite By way of concrete example, let us work through the proem to Galen’s de methodo medendi (1.1.1–6 = 10.2–5 Kühn). De meth. med. is a major work in 14 bookrolls, roughly 400–500 pages in the octavo format typical of today’s scholarly book. The work is structured such that an introductory methodological discussion (books 1–2) is followed by discussion of (a) diseases common to uniform and nonuniform parts of the body (books 3–6), (b) diseases peculiar to the uniform parts (e.g., blood, tissue, cartilage, tendons, skin, etc.: books 7– 4

10), (c) diseases peculiar to the nonuniform parts (e.g., lung, heart, liver, skeleton: books 11–14).  De meth. med. is without question a (very) technical treatise. Yet it is clear from the start that Galen has a bone to you and others of our companions (ἑταῖροι) have many times asked me to write out for you my method of therapeutics, I—wanting in particular to please you but also very much wanting to be of service to those who come after us, insofar as I am able—nonetheless have hesitated” (1.1.1). Galen has kept putting o

the

writing of this work for several reasons, he tells us, “but the chief among these is the danger of wasting my time, since pretty much no one today cares about the Truth (ἀλήθεια); rather, they eagerly chase after money and political power and insatiable enjoyment of pleasures, and to such an extent that they think you’re crazy if you spend your time on any serious pursuit of knowledge (σοφία).” These same people think subjects like theology and philosophy rubbish, and think that “medicine, geometry, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, and all such arts” should be taken only so far, that is, not past the classroom. (Note how medicine has suddenly intruded among the traditional elements of elite education.) Even some of Galen’s admirers think that he p. 76

cares too much for “the

5

Truth.” They press him to spend more time in salutation to great men in the

morning and dining with the powerful in the evening (1.1.2). That, Galen says that they say, is the way to get ahead. 6

Galen has now laid the ground for a more general rant against the decadence of today’s society, and he pulls out the stops. People today can’t judge a skilled physician because they spend their whole day in indolent leisure. From salutation in the morning (an implicitly decadent Roman custom), the “tribe” (ἔθνος) then splits up: some to watch legal proceedings, but most to watch dancers and charioteers, and not a few to indulge in pleasures of the body like dicing, lovemaking, bathing, drinking, carousing. In the evening, they all gather together again for a symposium. After drinking their ll, they don’t follow the ancient custom of contesting their skill in music or in educated conversation (λόγοι: i.e., speeches and arguments of the sort familiar from Plato). Rather, they compete in how much wine they can drink. Indeed, many seem drunk and still stink of wine even in the morning (1.1.3). That is why, when they fall ill, they are incapable of calling in the best doctors. After railing against doctors whose skills lie in attery rather than in medicine, Galen concludes: “doors (of the wealthy) lie open for such a doctor, who quickly becomes rich and powerful, and gets as his pupils a bunch of superannuated catamites” (1.1.4). If this has begun to sound like sour grapes, that’s because it is. Galen now moves in to jab at a rival, Thessalus, who not only curried favor with wealthy Romans but also promised to teach the medical art in six months—thus making it unnecessary for doctors to know “geometry, astronomy, dialectic, music, or any other of the noble subjects (τῶν καλῶν)” and consequently bringing into the medical profession ri ra

like “cobblers, carpenters, dyers, and

bronzeworkers” (1.1.5). This, then, was the real reason that Galen hesitated to write down his method of therapeutics (1.1.6). He now moves on to many more pages of vituperation against Thessalus (throughout the remainder of Book 1, but esp. chapters 2–3). The proem to de meth. med. is of interest in many respects, but perhaps most as a vivid introduction to the bitter passion with which Galen attempts to establish and defend his position in intellectual society. Galen’s jockeying for position is, as we see here, not merely for his place among his contemporaries but within the course of intellectual history. Galen’s readers will have known that Thessalus of Tralleis was of a previous p. 77

era, and thus a direct rival only in the sense that during his time in Rome (c. ad 60,

a hundred years

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

pick, and that this bone is not exclusive to physicians. The treatise opens with an address to Hiero. “Since

7

before Galen’s own stay) he, too, was regarded as the leading medical man of his day. Thessalus was, however, a founding gure for the “Methodical school,” a sort of medicine still practiced in Galen’s time and, with its emphasis on quick acquisition of the practical skills of medicine, a direct a ront—and 8

competitor—to Galen’s exclusionist views. Thessalus is, then, emblematic of what Galen cannot abide; by antithetical reference to Thessalus Galen de nes both himself and an ideal for his followers. The ideal is unabashedly elitist—note the exclusive focus on men of leisure, the prominence of elite education, including music, and the scornful allusion to craftsmen—but with a twist. For this elite is not only well educated, well-to-do, and philosophically informed, but also passionately interested in medicine. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the proem to de meth. med. is how the target audience seems to shift, with confusing instability, from the pupils and followers of Galen—that is (we presume), doctors and 9

writings. In de ning the intellectual community, Galen deliberately seeks to blur the line between doctor and intellectual. As Galen depicts it, in de meth. med. but also quite generally, the elite was chock full of people with deep interest in medicine. Galen can explicitly address his writings both to doctors and “to all those who live as intelligent beings (ὅσοι ζῶσιν ὡς λογικὰ ζῷα)” (de alimentorum facultatibus 6.584K). Even men who are not fully educated come along to hear, eagerly if ignorantly, the lectures of medical men (de libris propriis 19.8–9). The intellectuals and wannabes who gather daily at the Temple of Peace in central Rome can spend their time debating medical issues (in particular, Galen’s merits: de libr. prop. 19.21; cf. de pulsuum di erentiis 8.495). An anatomical demonstration draws such intense interest that “one of the large auditoria” in Rome must be rented out (de libr. prop. 19.21). Exactly how this medical fervor among intellectuals maps to a reality we can hardly say. There was at least something to it, to be sure. Galen’s contemporary Aulus Gellius, for instance, lls his Noctes Atticae with medical tidbits, claims to spend his spare time dipping into medical tomes (18.10.8), and in the same context asserts that every educated man (omnibus … hominibus liberis p. 78

liberaliterque

10

institutis) should be ashamed not to command the basic facts of medicine.

Within this context—of Galen’s construction of intellectual society—we should pause to consider the prominence in Galen’s works of the gure of Flavius Boethus. During his rst stay at Rome (162–66), that is, long before his appointment as court physician, Galen had already come to have truck with many of the 11

Roman elite,

including at least ve men of consular rank: Sergius Paulus (cos. su . under Antoninus Pius,

procos.? c. 166, cos. ord. 168, praef. urbi c. 168), Cn. Claudius Severus (cos. su . 167?, cos. ord. 173), M. Vettulenus Sex. f. Civica Barbarus (cos. ord. 157), C. Au dius Victorinus (cos. su . 155, procos. Africae, cos. ord. 12

183, praef. urbi), and Flavius Boethus (cos. su . before 163).

Yet Boethus is clearly special. Galen mentions

him by name no less than 32 times in the surviving works, and produced nine works—totaling 43 bookrolls —at Boethus’s request, including several works on anatomy, commentaries on Hippocrates, and a 13

comparison of Hippocratic doctrine with Plato’s.

These works were written explicitly for Boethus’s

edi cation during his time as governor of Syria Palaestina (c. 166–68) and one was a two-bookroll course in anatomy made just for him—distributed to no one else, this work was lost when Galen’s only other copy 14

perished in a re (de anat. admin. 2.216K).

Boethus, Galen tells us, was “a lover of noble things and of

learning” (φιλοκαλός τε καὶ φιλομαθής, de praecogn. 5.9 = 14.627K), studied Aristotelean philosophy with two of p. 79

the leading Peripatetics of the day (Eudemus and Alexander of Damascus, de praecogn.

2.24, 5.9 = 14.612,

625K), and, in particular, had “as keen a passion for anatomical theory as anyone who ever lived” (de anat. admin. 2.215K; cf. de praecogn. 2.25, 5.9–10, 5.19–20 = 14.612, 627, 630K). Galen thus during their contact in Rome (164–65) made “many anatomical demonstrations for Boethus” (de anat. admin. 2.218K). In de anat. admin. Galen describes Boethus’s entourage: “He was constantly accompanied by Eudemus the Peripatetic, by Alexander of Damascus, now well known as public professor of Peripatetic doctrine in Athens, and often by other important o

cials, such as the consular Sergius Paulus, now a Prefect of Rome and a man as

distinguished in philosophy as in a airs” (2.218K). Politically potent, as his rank and companions show, Boethus serves as an important cultural paradigm: not content with wealth and power, his intellectual

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

doctors-in-training—to the elite who are choosing the doctors. This instability is common in Galen’s

interests lead rst to serious study of philosophy (note the famous Peripatetics who surround him) and then —naturally and triumphantly, from Galen’s viewpoint—deep thirst for knowledge of medicine. Boethus was not alone. Eudemus the Peripatetic, following Galen’s amazing predictions of the progress of his malarial fever, proclaimed Galen’s abilities to “all those prominent in rank and learning at Rome” (ἀξιώματί τε καὶ παιδείᾳ προὔχοντες). One of these was Boethus, and Boethus consequently invites Galen to make an anatomical demonstration—dissection of a live animal—to reveal how breath and speech are produced (de praecogn. 2.25–27 = 14.612–3K, 5.7–21 = 629–30K). To that demonstration come not only “doctors and philosophers” (5.7), a category more broad than it may seem since it includes gures like the distinguished 15

orators Adrian of Tyre and Demetrius of Alexandria,

but also some of the consular friends mentioned

Herodes Atticus, uncle to emperor Lucius Verus), and Severus (like his father, Claudius Severus Arabianus, 16

both a leading Peripatetic and intimate of Marcus Aurelius; later, Aurelius’s son-in-law).

Wealth and

in uence follow high birth naturally, to be sure, but so also education and by virtue of that education deep intellectual and scienti c interests. To Galen, the presence of consulars at the dissection of a pig or monkey 17

is the embodiment of what is right and appropriate. p. 80

We begin to understand more clearly why it is that medicine cannot be handed over to the doctors, at least not doctors in the pragmatical sense that a Thessalus had advocated. It is not so much that, with only six months of training, these doctors may propose wrong treatments. Three years, even twice three years, would not make a di erence for someone who starts as a cobbler, and with the view that medicine is 18

essentially a practical art.

The expert medical man, in Galen’s view, needed to embrace all knowledge to be

truly expert; as Vivian Nutton pointedly paraphrases, “the best physician was, whether or not he knew it, 19

also a philosopher.”

More important, the educated, cultured man must be both philosophically and 20

medically knowledgeable, because in Galen’s view these qualities are essentially and radically linked.

In a

passage in de praecogn. (1.13–16 = 14.604–5K, cf. 1.1–5 = 14.599K) markedly similar to the proem of de meth. med., Galen decries the fact that the unprincipled rich—those who favor pleasure over virtue—fail to see the beauty in the arts and value them only for their practical merit. He cites in sequence geometry and arithmetic (used only to calculate expenditures); astronomy and divination (used to forecast inheritances); music (used only for auditory pleasure); philosophy (neglected utterly, though the key to all these). Such people see only the utilitarian aspect “even in medicine” (the climax). The lack of interest and knowledge, generally of the arts, and in particular of the all-embracing medical art, is equated with a lack of interest in virtue—the soul being part of the body—and by extension with the general decadence that grips society as a whole. Flavius Boethus and his elite friends are paradigms, then, of what is needed to counteract the ills of the time. What is needed, in Galen’s exclusionist view, is an elite culture that celebrates and emulates intellectuals of the right stripe. With the philosopher-emperor M. Aurelius on the throne, this sort of stance becomes an easy and widespread one. Yet even Aurelius, despite his evident acquaintance with things 21

medical,

might have been suprised to learn of the construction of an elite model that embraced close

acquaintance with vivisection.

p. 81

Galenʼs Invited Readers Proli c seems hardly strong enough as a descriptor for Galen’s output. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae data bank tabulates over two and a half million words of surviving Greek in 109 works—but Galen wrote a great deal more than that. Gerhard Fichtner has catalogued about 250 other works surviving in Arabic, Syriac, or 22

Latin translation (often in excerpt or digest) or known through mention in the surviving works.

Galen’s

attitude toward that corpus is unusual. He has a clear and constant sense of each work constituting part of a whole, of a body of teachings. His surviving works are full of self-referential comments such as the following:

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

earlier: Paulus (“as distinguished in philosophy as in a airs”), Barbarus (close friend of celebrated sophist

“The recipe for a thinning diet has been given elsewhere in a single volume.” “I will give the details of this diet in a subsequent treatise.” “A catalogue of breathing exercises has been given in my treatise On the Voice.” “I particularly wish those studying this work to read the book, entitled Thrasybulus, in which I examine what art hygiene belongs to, and likewise the one about the best condition of the body and the one about good health. These are short books, and anyone who reads them before coming to this argument will easily follow what is now being said. And, as already mentioned, my book on The Elements According to 23

Hippocrates is required reading for the present discussion….”

such cross-references would be very long indeed. Galen’s ingrained habit of self-reference reaches its climax in two extraordinary works added in his later years, to which we will return below: de libris propriis (On My Own Books), a comprehensive catalogue of all his works with excursive commentary on the circumstances of their creation, written at the very end of his career; and de ordine librorum suorum (On the Order of My Books), a separate, somewhat earlier work that details the order in which the principal treatises p. 82

are most pro tably read. Clearly, Galen

imagines his writings as a body of material that current and

future students will make the centerpiece of a concerted course of study, in the mode of students of the Hippocratic corpus—or, perhaps better, the students of Aristotle and Plato. As already illustrated, Galen also expects that his works, like the works of these other great men, will attract not simply doctors and medical students, but intellectuals and men of leisure. Not all works invite the same audience, of course. At de libr. propr. 19.11K (and similarly at de ord. libr. suor. 19.49–50K), Galen explains that he wrote a number of works in response to speci c needs of students, in the manner of lecture transcripts, works that, he says, he never intended for distribution. These he designates with the title “for beginners” (τοῖς εἰσαγομένοις), such as, for example, Medical Sects for Beginners, Bones for Beginners, Pulses for Beginners. In one part of de sanitate tuenda, Galen defends some elementary statements with the remark that “in this part I am speaking not to the doctors but to all the rest, those 24

commonly called the philiatroi (φιλιάτροι, men with strong but amateur interest in medicine),

who are

obviously in the rst stages of learning, so as to train their way of thinking” (4.5 = 6.269K). “Students” and philiatroi together ll a broad net that easily encompasses the educated aristocrats we see at anatomical gatherings. Later in de san. tuenda, for instance, Galen clari es his purpose: “I am laying out general advice for all those reading this who are unskilled in medicine but not unpracticed in thinking” (6.14 = 6.449K). The pedagogical urge is strong in Galen, who commonly stops to reexplain the fundamentals even in advanced treatises. At times Galen seems to invite a more specialist audience. A common theme is to castigate those who have not read Hippocrates or have read him with insu

cient attention; for example, at de crisibus 9.620K he says, 25

“I will be speaking here [only] to those who have read carefully the Prognostikon of Hippocrates.”

A routine

comment among more technical works (e.g., de di erentiis morborum 6.880K) is that there is no point in reading Galen’s analysis if you’re not going to practice. Galen’s commentaries on the works of Hippocrates seem directed at teachers reading Hippocrates with students, an attitude made explicit at in Hippocratis p. 83

librum de fracturis commentarii 18b.335K. But even in these cases, it is often hard to split apart the doctors and doctors-in-training from the intellectual elite. Recall the depth of involvement of Flavius Boethus. At de optimo medico cognoscendo 3.14 Galen writes, “I do not know of a single auditor of this treatise who does not 26

know how we treated and cured that man who was vulnerable to the application of any eye-salve,”

which

assumes extraordinary knowledge and engagement among the invited readers and which might be taken to imply a specialist audience—except that this treatise (How to Choose the Best Doctor) is explicitly directed at

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

These examples, from de sanitate tuenda, are merely illustrative, chosen at random. A comprehensive list of

elite trying to choose a physician, and not at the physicians themselves. Again, we nd it di

cult to mark

the line past which the nonspecialist audience was no longer expected to tread. Galen’s readers were, however, not just anyone. Informing the imagined audience is a clear sense of delimitation, a sense of the invited reader belonging to a notional group. Exclusivity is certainly the focus, whether a passage points in exact terms to the coterie of his students and friends or more generally to the highly educated. Yet Galen goes beyond simple exclusionism, toward the construction of a reader with explicit characteristics that he, as master, dictates. A couple of these traits are speci c. He requires of his reader a reverential attitude toward the Hippocratic corpus—we have seen that Galen can demand knowledge of one or another treatise of Hippocrates before allowing his reader to proceed—and likewise directives that cut to the very core of the reader’s ways of reading. Over and over in the course of his writings, Galen urges the reader to a well-de ned cluster of habitudes. Here are a few illustrative examples: “Let him read the argument that precedes this one carefully (ἐπιμελῶς)” (de usu partium 3.544K, as commonly). “It is necessary to recall the argument that precedes and to read the whole of the treatise” (de causis pulsuum 9.108K; cf. in Hipp. acut. comment. 15.437K). “Let him read the passage in question twice and thrice and pay attention” (in Hippocratis de articulis librum commentarii 18a.558K). “It is necessary to read this passage three and four times in great leisure and carefully thinking through the things said” (de placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 3.4.5). “If you don’t remember what Hippocrates says [on this topic], read it again” (in Hippocratis prognosticum commentarii 18b.179K). p. 84

“I have not written this book of mine for people whose way is like this: being constantly occupied, they cannot devote any time to reading or to anything else” (de opt. med. 1.13). “This work will, I hope, be of assistance to the man of natural intelligence who also had that early training which gives him the ability, preferably, to repeat immediately what he hears, or at least to write it down” (de peccat. dign. 5.65K). “For those who have read the aforegoing carefully and who are naturally intelligent, it is very easy to put together what follows. But for those who are not, it is better to write out for himself (ἰδίᾳ) the therapeutic details” (de meth. med. 10.944K). “It behooves you to read [this technical account of blood vessels] not, as you read the history of Herodotus, for the sake of pleasure (ἕνεκα τέρψεως), but to set into your memory each of the things you have read” (de anat. admin. 2.393K). Galen invites, then, a reader who is a careful reader, who pays close attention to the details of the work as it unfolds. The reader is intelligent by nature and sharp-witted by training, and sets store by his memory. Even when Galen seems to allow into his text other possibilities, he shows his hand: who among his readers would place himself in the category of those who are not “naturally intelligent”? The invited reader is able to recall as well as understand the arguments as they are set out, and he is able to memorize the factual details; that is, he is able to command the essentials of both the theoretical and practical sides of medicine. But the invited reader is not only careful, retentive, and well trained in analysis and recall: he is also hard working, willing to read and read and read again in order to pull out from the text what is necessary for understanding. Galen’s sense of mission and his demand for engagement in that mission is palpable. Not

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

engagement with matters philosophical. Su using Galen’s work, however, is another, more general set of

invited are dilettantes, the unintelligent or undisciplined, or mere pleasure-seekers(!)—nor does he invite doctors seeking only the functional, pragmatical side of medicine. Moreover, the invited reader instantiates the program. Galen imagines and directs a reader with the qualities necessary for his ambitious construction of an intellectualized elite. To us, Galen’s directives to his readers may look like an e ort to instill scholarly habits, but, as we have seen, Galen seeks rather to construct a more general elite paradigm. Note that I use 27

the term invited reader purposely: I am not here describing Galen’s ideal reader (in Umberto Eco’s sense

or

any other). Rather, this extraordinary set of requirements seems to be basic for acceptance into the group that the author wants to imagine reading along.

Creation and “Publication” of Written Texts Galen’s focus on an exclusive set of actively engaged readers, in some sense his “followers” or at least explicitly under his notional direction, is bound up with what for us will seem a strange phenomenon, namely, the curious modes of production and distribution for his texts. Much of our evidence for this derives from Galen’s statements in de libris propriis, introduced above, and the front of that treatise, in particular, will merit a close look. Galen begins by describing a scene he claims to have witnessed recently (i.e., toward the end of his career) in the vicus sandaliarius, the bookseller district in Rome, in which a dispute arose over the authenticity of one 28

of his books.

Someone was thinking to buy a bookroll bearing the title, “Galen the doctor.” A bystander,

one of the “men of letters” (φιλολόγοι), struck by the odd form of title (that is, the fact that it did not include a name for the work), asked to see the bookroll. After reading two lines, he tore o

the title tag and—

correctly—denounced the work as “not Galen’s style.” This philologist, Galen tells us, had received oldfashioned training under the tutelage of grammarians and rhetors; by contrast, people today “are devotees of medicine or philosophy, though unable even to read in a fully educated manner (οὐδ᾿ ἀναγνῶναι καλῶς δυνάμενοι), and frequent the lectures of those teaching the greatest and most beautiful of all human subjects, the theory that informs philosophy and medicine” (19.8–9K). Two items strike us at once. First, by Galen’s report, he is so well known that not only do people try to sell spurious books under his name, but also a 29

highly educated man will know his style well enough to be able to recognize it at a glance.

Second, those

trying to study philosophy and medicine are initially de ned not as readers—they do not have the education to be fully competent readers—but as people who attend the teachings of a master. A master like Galen, that is. The implied lecture or conversation of master and followers both de nes the community conceptually and acts as a fundamental and informing event for the written works themselves. This last may seem overstated until we read on. The reason that so many of his books circulate under the names of others, Galen tells us, is “that they were given without inscription to friends or pupils, having been written with no thought for publication, but simply at the request of those individuals, who had desired a written record of lectures they had attended. When in the course of time some of these individuals p. 86

died, their successors … began

to pass the writings o

30

as their own” (10). 31

on demand for a student or friend, recurs again and again in de libr. propr.

This theme, of writing a book

All works carrying the title “for

Beginners” were “dictated (ὑπαγορευθέντων) to young men at the beginning of their studies or in some cases presented to friends at their request” (11–12). Similarly, Galen’s early commentaries on the writings of Hippocrates are categorized as works “written for friends” though originally “purely an exercise for myself”—in which note Galen’s identi cation between himself and his circle. Galen “had no expectation that these works would reach a wider audience” (33–35). The Dissection of the Womb was created for “a certain midwife” (16); the Diagnosis of the Diseases of the Eyes for “a young man who treated eyes” (16); The Motion of Chest and Lungs for “a fellow student” during Galen’s time in Smyrna (17); and so forth. The nine works in 43 bookrolls written for Flavius Boethus we have already discussed. Exaggeratedly but signi cantly, Galen states in the proem to his second book on Hippocrates Epidemics III, “I have not written

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 85

a single book (of this commentary type?) except by request of one or another of my friends or companions (τινας ἢ φίλους ἢ ἑταίρους), particularly when they are setting out on a long journey and think that it would be helpful to have a reminder/commentary (ὑπόμνημα) on the things I’ve said and demonstrated” (in Hipp. Epid. III comment. 17A.576K, cf. de meth. med. 7.1 = 10.458K). The individual for whom a work was created informed both the detail and the level of the writing, in the manner of face-to-face instruction (de ord. libr. suor. 49– 32

50).

A lot of Galen’s work—a surprising lot—turn out to be dictations of what were in e ect Galen’s

lectures. The notional context, that is, was one of the master-follower relation, the Galenic coterie. Many of these books-on-demand were unique copies, and the routes of distribution odd, at least to us. Of the works dictated “for Beginners,” Galen writes that “none of these were in my possession until I came to add the titles and encourage distribution. Advice to an Epileptic Child, given to a friend, was “widely circulated” and much later a copy was given back to Galen (31). For several of his philosophical works, he tells us, “even those which had left my possession, either by my own gift to friends or by theft on the part of p. 87

domestic servants, have subsequently returned to me” (41). A large number of works were written “not 33

for distribution,”

but most of them circulated anyway. De libr. propr. gives the strong sense that Galen’s

complaints on that score lie, however, in the wideness of the circulation, not in the fact of friends sharing. Illuminating in this regard is the interesting proviso that Galen attaches to a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, also written at a friend’s request: “[I gave it to him] with the rm instruction that he should only show it to students who had already read the Categories with a teacher, or at least made a start with other 34

commentaries” (42–43).

For these more private, individualized books, Galen’s anxieties about circulation

seem rooted in the transfer beyond the exclusive circles circumscribed by a master. The habits of circulation get yet curiouser. Among the works written at the behest of Flavius Boethus were the rst six bookrolls of The Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato and the rst bookroll of The Uses of the Parts of the Body. Galen explains: “Boethus left Rome before me, with these works in his possession. His destination was Syria Palaestina, where he was to be governor; and where, too, he died. Therefore (διὰ τοῦτο) I completed both these works after a considerable passage of time” (16). That is, only when the unique set of bookrolls returns to Galen is he able to get on with the task of nishing the works. On several occasions, Galen mentions the total loss of several of his works, apparently unique copies, in the re that consumed the Temple of Peace and the storehouses in that area of Rome in AD 192 (de libr. propr. 19, 41; de compositione medicamentorum per genera 1.1 = 13.362–63K, in Hipp. epid. VI comment., CMG 5.10.2.2, p. 495). The passage at de comp. med. per gen. 1.1 is particularly interesting. Galen tells us that he has already written the treatise once. The rst two bookrolls had been “published” (δυοῖν … ἐκδοθέντων) and “stored along with other books in 35

the storehouse (ἀποθήκῃ) along the Sacred Way.” p. 88

“Since none of my friends (φίλοι) in Rome proved

When the storehouses burned, the books were destroyed. to have a copy,” Galen was urged by his followers

(ἑταῖροι) to write the treatise a second time. We see how restricted the circulation of even a deliberate “publication” might be; this publication might have had copies other than the bookroll in the storehouse, but neither Galen nor his friends and followers could locate one. That we need to work ourselves far away from modern notions of “publication” is clear. Galen nowhere signals that the habits we have surveyed were unusual ones. In a now classic 1987 article, Raymond Starr described publication in antiquity as a series of “concentric rings” of connections through which a new work was made public: rst to close friends, gradually to friends of friends at an increasing remove, and 36

nally to a public unconnected to the author.

The Starr model is helpful and illuminating, but like any such

schema only roughly approximates the untidy details of actual human a airs. In Galen’s world, at least, other aspects of the transaction of book circulation seem at times as prominent as the gradual movement among circles of friendship. Galen’s works divide (albeit not always clearly) between those, like de meth. med., de opt. med., ars medica, de praecogn., which are from the rst directed toward a wider audience, and works like those just discussed (the works “written for friends”), which are directed to an individual, and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Rome for a second time [169 AD] and received copies from other people” (12–13, cf. 11); only then did Galen

which are essentially transcripts of the master—designed, in e ect, as a substitute for the presence and teaching of Galen himself, as intellectual bene t and enlightenment for the friend and his circle. Most striking about this latter group of works is the physicality of the notion of the “work”: in the manner of an artifact like sculpture or ceramic, the bookroll is created at the request of a friend and passed along to him as a unique copy. There is little recognizable idea of “publication.” Such habits were not simply Galen’s, but 37

common, both among the medical community (cf., e.g., de libr. propr. 11) and generally.

At least by Galen’s

account it was only his increasing fame that caused such works to be considered candidates for circulation. Beyond the works “written for friends,” there are others which are even more strictly occasional, and which will help in our reconstruction of the nature of the community involved or imagined in Galen’s texts. At de libr. propr. 13–15, Galen describes a scene in which he was speaking in public on

the medical books of the

ancients. “The topic set before me was Erasistratus’ work on The Bringing Up of Blood. A stylus was stuck into the bookroll in the customary manner (κατὰ τὸ ἔθος),” and Galen was asked to speak to the passage at which the stylus randomly pointed. The scene is hotly competitive, in a manner characteristic of sophistic display: the man who places the book in front of him, a follower of Martialius, does so by way of challenge; Galen in commenting on Erasistratus imports criticisms of Martialius, explicitly to goad the challenger; the crowd admires. An appreciative friend then asks Galen “to dictate what I had said to a person he would send to me who was trained in a form of shorthand writing”; the friend expressly needs the bookroll so that, if he returns home, he can use it against Martialius during patient examinations, itself a highly contested 38

arena.

The bookroll is subsequently copied and circulated far beyond Galen’s expectations: “to my

amazement the bookroll, written in the context of the rivalry of a particular moment…. was now in the 39

possession of a large number of people.”

From that moment, Galen determines no longer to engage in the

arguments with other doctors that characterized the elite sick bed; as well as to “refrain from lecturing before large crowds as I had previously done, and to perform no public demonstrations.” Nonetheless, in a later, similar scene described at de libr. propr. 21–22, Galen is called upon to make a demonstration proving his anatomical theories. When he refuses, his enemies mock him in public: “every day they would go to the Temple of Peace—which even before the re was the general meeting-place for all those engaged in a life of letters (τοῖς τὰς λογικὰς τέχνας μεταχειριζομένοις)—and mock me continually.” Galen thereupon agrees to perform a public demonstration, to last several days and to take place in “one of the large auditoria” in Rome, as mentioned earlier. The demonstration is organized like this: “I placed the works of all the anatomists before me and invited everyone present to choose whatever part he wished to be dissected. My claim was that I would show the extent of the divergence of the facts—which had been accurately described in my own works—from the accounts of my predecessors. Someone chose the chest. I took up the books of the most 40

ancient of the medical authorities [in order to refute them].” p. 90

“some very

But then the procedure itself is contested, as

reputable doctors who were sitting in the front row told me not to waste my time,” and

demanded that Galen compare his own ndings only with those of Lycus of Macedon, “the greatest expert in anatomy.” Galen does this, and then records these demonstrations and arguments in a bookroll he names Lycus’ Ignorance in Anatomy. Galen was not alone in stirring a lively response in the intellectual community. In de anat. admin. 7.16 = 2.642K, for instance, Galen tells us of doctors who falsely claimed to be able to show that arteries were empty of blood. One of them was always promising to demonstrate this by vivisecting an animal before an audience, but never did so. “When some eager youths brought animals to him and challenged him to make a demonstration, he declared that he could not do it without a fee. At once they produced a thousand drachmae (!) for him to take away should he succeed.” As already canvassed, Galen depicts a deep interest and excitement in these matters among the (ideal) elite, remarkably and perhaps deliberately akin to the excitement among the elite for matters intellectual that one sees in Plato. The sociocultural consequences of such details are profound. In Galen’s representation, the doctor qua intellectual had a life punctuated by competition and contest: vying with other doctors for elite patients and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 89

patrons; enduring the notoriety of public challenge and even mockery; performing public displays to gain status and retain a following; insisting on a closing of ranks to make his own circle the more special. This sense of contest, of striving to maintain reputation and followers, does not, however, happen in a vacuum. Informing it is a strict sense of coterie, of an intellectual community undergoing constant negotiation and rede nition as its members struggle to de ne the borders of who is in and who is out—and who is on top. As Mattern (2008: 26–27) puts it: [Galen’s friends and companions] attend his lectures and anatomical demonstrations; praise him and support him publicly; attack, heckle, and humiliate his enemies, also publicly. They visit patients with him, and they solicit, read, and publicize his books. Although Galen knows that his speci cally addressed to, or written for, a wider public that might include people of substantially di erent social background. It is likely that he imagined his wider public as composed of people like the “friends and companions” who are the immediate audience for all of his books. Galen’s writings re ect this imagined reading community, and the imagined community symbiotically drives the content and style of the text. Several of the more distasteful aspects of Galen’s work seem the direct result of this symbiosis. I have in mind here the unrestrained polemics that infect many a work (recall the attack on Thessalus in the opening book of de meth. med.); Galen’s constant preening and selfp. 91

glori cation, particularly of his

41

intellect and learning;

the long-winded attention to establishing

elementary details, in the manner of the thorough pedagogue; the condescending instruction on how to read or think. Even the simple fact of the enormous number of works in the corpus—350 works, often redundant and, as we have seen, often directed to a particular person and his circle—is deeply re ective of the contest for status within the reading community that Galen both participates in and seeks to de ne.

Readers and Texts We are now in a position to examine in more direct fashion some ways in which readers and texts interact. Along the way, we have already spoken a good deal to various interactions. We have just seen, for example, how in certain performance contexts, the bookroll plays a central role. Even an anatomical demonstration becomes a reading event, precisely because of the centrality that the traditional text holds in the disposition 42

of the authority that Galen seeks for himself.

In a di erent vein, we were able to infer reading events that

devolve from texts written for a friend like Boethus, because those texts place Galen’s work at the center of occasional interactions that Galen’s powerful friend has within his own circle. That very centrality, in turn, both signals Galen’s own status within the elite community and makes more understandable his compliance in creating such individualized texts. Yet we can go further. For here and there Galen supplies us with precious detail on the very circumstance of reading, and to that I now turn. Reading alone will hold our attention only brie y, for the simple reason that this unremarkable event occasions little comment in Galen’s writings. In a couple of passages, Galen indicates that he shares the attitude that reading by oneself was best for trying to think through the arguments of a text. The best example comes up in his commentary on the Hippocratic de victu acutorum: “This becomes clear, if one 43

reads the passage twice or thrice all by himself (αὐτὸς ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ)

and paying attention …” (in Hipp. acut.

comment. 15.437K). This passage joins that large group (already discussed) of instructions on the need for careful reading, in which Galen commonly directs the reader to read a passage multiple times—and in these p. 92

44

cases also, at least seemingly, implying reading by oneself.

The idea of contemplation

also seems

behind the contrast between group conversation and solitary reading depicted at de san. tuenda 6.333K: in a passage reminiscent of Spurinna’s regimen (chapter 3), Galen describes the routine of the old man and doctor Antiochus, who daily walks to town, eats a lunch of “Attic honey,” and then spends his early

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

treatises will circulate beyond this group, and keeps this in mind as he writes, none of his works is

afternoon either in conversation or reading to himself (καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ἀναγινώσκων), followed by exercise, bathing, and supper. The few indications in Galen are, in short, in accord with the evidence forcefully marshaled by Burnyeat from Ptolemy and elsewhere for the notion that intellectual Greeks under the empire 45

can share our view that solitary reading was best for intense concentration.

Sociologically more implicating, and more in focus in this chapter, is the interaction between text and groups. Galen himself is well aware of some practical causes for the importance of group interactions involving ancient texts. In excusing his repetition of basic information on the properties of wine, Galen remarks, “Since it is the case that, due to scarcity and unavailability, we often have to wait a long time to read many of the books in which the detail of remedies is given in full, probably now anyone would pardon always to bear in mind the relative scarcity of most texts. Essential to the reading community is the practical matter of access to the data as well as the opportunity for interaction and disputation among peers. Rareness of resource required sharing of books, in one sense or another, if knowledge was to be maintained. Galen’s common injunction to know the source texts thoroughly, to read Hippocrates and Aristotle and other essential texts “again and again” so as both to understand them thoroughly and to set them in memory, takes on new meaning in a world where access to technical works could be di

cult. At de libr.

propr. 34 Galen explains how, during his years in Rome, he set about writing his own commentaries on the Hippocratic works: “Word-by-word commentaries had already been written by many of my predecessors, and I knew their work pretty well.” But he did not bother to correct the errors in these commentaries, since “I did not have the commentaries with me in Rome, as all the books in my possession remained in Asia.” If Galen remembered an error in one of these commentaries that was so egregious that it might seriously p. 93

mislead someone,

then he had pointed that out; but otherwise, he simply did not mention the work of

these unavailable commentaries. Galen, that is, does not himself have access to these books, even though he is in Rome, and assumes that most of his readers also will not. We come to understand more vividly the elitism that underlies Galen’s repeated insistence on careful reading of the best treatises—the intellectual enterprise was open, in e ect, only to those with special resources and connections. A related detail comes into play in one of Galen’s remarks on collating copies to resolve textual corruption. In his commentary on the Epidemiae (in Hipp. epid. VI Comment. 17b.194–95K), Galen writes, “Dioskourides has added [this reading] in the margin of a book, having discovered in only two copies (ἀντίγραφοι) that the reading holds thus…. But I have found the reading not in two, but in every copy I’ve seen, having looked deliberately at all the copies in the public libraries (τὰ κατὰ τὰς δημοσίας βιβλιοθήκας) and all those in the libraries of my friends (τὰ παρὰ τοῖς φίλοις).” You needed, in short, to have not only access to public libraries but also the right sort of friends in order to have good availability for the rare books that you might need as a man of learning. Of course the practical necessity of sharing knowledge need not mean more than physical access to libraries public and private, and some loaning of books among friends. But in fact, the interactions seem to have, at least often, gone quite beyond that. A telling example arises in a remarkable section of de propriorum animi cuiuslibet a ectuum dignotione et curatione (On the Passions and Errors of the Soul). One of the young men among Galen’s intimates (5.37K: τις τῶν συνηθεστάτων ἐμοὶ νεανίσκων) asks Galen whether it is by nature or nurture that Galen is able to control his passion on matters great and small. This young man, it will turn out, is extremely wealthy (49–50), like Galen himself (48) and others in that circle. Unlike Galen, though, he is not able to exercise self-control over his desire for yet more wealth. “Some libertines,” Galen notes (47–48), “spend not only two or three times what we spend, but even ve or ten times as much.” He and his friend have similar, controlled appetites. The trouble lies elsewhere: “unlike me, you are distressed—even as your wealth increases year by year—to be spending even one tenth of your income.” Galen, as he tells us later, spends just enough to preserve his wealth, with no net increase or decrease. In a fascinating passage, Galen goes on to criticize particulars of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

us for our manner of teaching, if it does not display exact brevity” (de san. tuenda 5.7 = 6.347–48K). We need

the ways in which his friend does not, but, by implication, should be expending his extra money. I quote in full: I see that you cannot bring yourself (τολμῶντα) to spend your wealth on noble pursuits (τὰ καλὰ, the stu

of the elite: cf. de meth. med. 1.1.5), neither on the purchase and preparation of books, nor on

the training of scribes, whether in shorthand ability or in ne and accurate writing—nor even on p. 94

lectors who read well (μήτ᾿ εἰς βιβλίων ὠνὴν καὶ κατασκευὴν καὶ τῶν γραφόντων

ἄσκησιν ἤτοι γ᾿ εἰς τάχος διὰ

σημείων ἢ εἰς κάλλος ἀκρίβειαν, ὥσπερ γε οὐδὲ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων ὀρθῶς). Too, I never see you sharing anything the way you see me constantly sharing my clothing with members of my household, or assisting people with food or medical care. You have even seen me discharging other people’s

A wealthy gentleman, in Galen’s view, is expected not to hoard but to share with his circle: to hand down 46

clothing to domestics,

to help others with food and medical care, even to assist friends with debts. Galen

says or implies that he spends his own excess capital in these ways. But topping the list are the expenses 47

important to intellectual sharing: buying books and having them made, training scribes, training lectors.

Why a wealthy man should do this is clear from the context: in order to share these resources. That is, as a matter of course, sharing intellectual resources includes not only books, but also an in-house capability for making copies, and, importantly, good lectors so as to be able to share the books viva voce among the circle of friends. Galen’s ideal community, for which he serves as model, contains then not only a setting in which rich men and intellectuals can commune (and ideally are one and the same), but also a culture of sharing wherein group activities surrounding the maintenance and dissemination of knowledge become peculiarly important. The sharing of books, knowledge, and intellectual discourse, is what—in ideal terms—forms the core of the elite community. How this ideal informs actual behaviors can be seen perhaps most clearly from another passage, which provides an illuminating example of how two friends—again, very wealthy friends—interact over a book. In 48

de theriaca ad Pisonem 14.211K

Galen describes a scene in which he comes in upon a friend in the act of

reading for pleasure. Again, I quote in full: I found you with lots of diverse books lying alongside. For, after nishing the public a airs of business, you particularly liked to spend time with the ancient wise men (φιλοσόφοι). On that occasion you were reading with particular pleasure (οὐκ ἀηδῶς ἀνεγίνωσκες τότε) the work on Antidote and as soon as I approached you gave me a welcoming look and greeted me graciously; and then you returned to reading the book, having me as your audience (ἀκροατὴν). I listened and that book, by a certain Andromachus, was not badly put together…. p. 95

The way that this comfortable scene unfolds is signi cant. Galen comes in upon a friend surrounded by bookrolls and reading a medical work by himself. This friend embodies Galen’s ideal, inasmuch as he, 49

clearly no medical man himself, turns to this technical reading to refresh his mind at day’s end.

The friend

greets Galen, and then returns to his reading, with Galen now as auditor. Particularly striking is the ease with which the friend goes from reading to himself to reading to another this technical work. True, Galen is an expert in the matter, but the scene nonetheless provides arresting evidence of the di erences between Galen’s culture of reading and our own. If I were reading, say, one of Galen’s works, and a learned friend dropped by, we would hardly expect that I would then read aloud in extenso with him as audience. There is, note, no conceptual reason not to. Several of my friends might well be interested in Galen. And I can imagine reading an excerpt, as illustration to some remark or other. But not at length. Our reading culture is not such that this is a normative way for friends to interact with texts. Finally, let us examine one other passage of special interest for our purposes. I give the relevant text, eliding two brief technical expositions.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

debts. (de an. a . dign. et cur. 5.48)

But you, so that you do not get confused, take up the book of Archigenes and read it to them, rst the part having this title (ἐπίγραμμα) for the chapter heading (κεφαλαίου), On the Size of the Heart Beat … Next, rolling the book up a bit (μικρὸν ἐπειλίξας τὸ βιβλίον), read again the section On Intensity [of the heart beat]…. Now roll the book up a little [more] and read the beginning of the section On Fullness [of blood in the arteries]. Then, halting the argument (λόγος) for a moment, that is, halting your reading of the book, say to them that I am saying nothing new, but what Archigenes has said too. (de puls. di . 8.591–92K) Here, Galen gives detailed direction to his interlocutor (that “you” who is the imagined reader) how to make clear to the young turks of his day that much of his terminology and theory of the pulse is nothing radical or papyrus crinkle, so vivid is the depiction. Note the vigor with which the bookroll is deployed: the disputant rolls and unrolls to this or that passage and reads out the relevant text triumphantly, pausing in his exposition to point out the signi cance of the excerpts. The disputant uses the bookroll as active witness to an argument he is constructing. Now this use of the book is not so unfamiliar to us: we see this commonly in p. 96

the

classroom and occasionally in other academic settings. But there is nothing in the Galenic scene that

implies a magisterial context. Rather, this is a mode of reading event that fully accommodates to the (ideal) model of philosophical inquiry, as we see in Plutarch (e.g., de recta ratione audiendi, esp. 43F) and elsewhere, including Lucian (chapter 8). The scene, simple as it is, stands as yet another reminder of the vigorous, even furious, intellectual terms in which certain elite communities vied with one another–communities containing men of high standing not only in learning but in social, political, and economic terms as well.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

new, but already in Archigenes (a famous medical man of the previous generation). We can almost hear the

Note on Citations The Galenic corpus is di

cult to access for several reasons: scholars use a variety of forms for the Latinate

titles of the works, which can be confusingly similar; the only attempt at a complete edition is Kühn 1821– 33, which is substandard yet only in part superseded; many of the works survive only in translation or adaptation in Latin, Arabic, or Syriac. Fortunately, Fichtner 2004 now o ers a convenient catalogue of all work titles, along with core bibliography and other essential data. Following is a list of treatises here cited and their abbreviations and Fichtner numbers; for the text, I use the editions listed in the TLG Canon (Berkowitz and Squitier 1990) except as noted below: ars med. (ars medica, Fichtner #7); de alim. facult. (de a ectuum dignotione et curatione, Fichtner #29); de anat. admin. (de anatomicis administrationibus, Fichtner #11); de antid. (de antidotis libri II, Fichtner #83); de caus. puls. (de causis pulsuum libri IV, Fichtner #64); de comp. med. per gen. (de compositione medicamentorum per genera libri VII, Fichtner #82); de cris. (de crisibus libri III, Fichtner #67); de di er. morb. (de di erentiis morborum, Fichtner #42); de dign. puls. (de dignoscendis pulsibus libri IV, Fichtner #63), de exp. med. (de experientia medica, Fichtner #235, Walzer 1944); de libr. propr. (de libris propriis, Fichtner #114); de meth. med. (de methodo medendi libri XIV, Fichtner #69); de opt. med. (de optimo medico cognoscendo, Fichtner #232, Iskandar, 1988); de ord. libr. suor. (de ordine librorum suorum ad Eugenianum, Fichtner #115); de peccat. dign. (de animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione et curatione, Fichtner #30); de plac. Hipp. et Plat. (de placitis Hippocraticis et Platonis libri IX, Fichtner #33); de praecogn. (de praecognitione ad Epigenem, Fichtner #88); de puls. di er. (de pulsuum di erentiis libri IV, Fichtner #62); de san. tuenda (de sanitate tuenda libri VI, Fichtner #37); de sem. (de semine libri II, Fichtner #22); de ther. ad Pis. (de theriaca ad Pisonem liber, Fichtner #84); de usu part. (de usu partium libri I–XI, Fichtner #17); de venae sect. adv. Erasistratum (de venae sectione adversus Erasistratum, Fichtner #71); de ven. art. dissect. (de venarum arteriarumque dissectione, Fichtner #13), de vict. Hipp. in morb. acut. (de victus ratione in morbis acutis ex Hippocratis sententia, Fichtner #118, Lyons, 1969); in Hipp. acut. comment. (in Hippocratis librum de acutorum victu commentarii IV, Fichtner #93); in Hipp. artic. comment. (in Hippocratis de articulis librum commentarii IV, p. 97

Fichtner #105); in Hipp. Epid. III comment. (in Hippocratis epidemiarum librum

tertium commentariii III,

Fichtner #98), in Hipp. epid. VI comment. (in Hippocratis epidemiarum librum sextum commentarii III–IV, Fichtner #100, Pfa

1956); in Hipp. fract. comment. (in Hippocratis librum de fracturis commentarii III, Fichtner

#110); in Hipp. progn. comment. (in Hippocratis prognosticum commentarii III, Fichtner #109); quod opt. med. (quod optimus medicus sit quoque philosophus, Fichtner #3).

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

3

An influence “comparable only to that of Aristotle” claims Nutton in OCD . On the date of Galenʼs death, see Nutton 1995. On Galen and the society about him, see Schlange-Schöningen 2003; from a new historical perspective, Mattern 2008. The chapter here was composed independently of Mattern 2008, but many of the conclusions (see especially her chapter 1) are remarkably (and comfortingly) similar, if also written from a di erent angle and to di erent purpose: e.g., on the indistinct lines among student, physician, educated friend; the image and function of the imagined reader; the relation between medicine and philosophy; and the interplay between written works and vigorous oral debate within the community. Galenʼs appearance as a character in Athenaeusʼs Deipnosophistae (i. 1e, 26c, iii. 115c) tells us only that he was well known for the voluminousness and verbosity of his writings. Other (slim) evidence of Galenʼs general repute among contemporaries is discussed in Nutton 1984. Quod optimus medicus sit quoque philosophus. Galen claims that Marcus Aurelius called him “first among physicians and alone among philosophers” (τῶν μὲν ἰατρῶν πρῶτον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ φιλοσόφων μόνον, de praecognitione ad Epigenem 14.660K). Reference here and elsewhere to Galenʼs Greek works is generally by the volume and page of Kühnʼs edition (Kühn 1821–33, designated by su ix “K”). For guidance on the citation of Galenʼs text, see the note appended to this chapter. Hankinson 1991, xxxiii.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

alimentorum facultatibus libri III, Fichtner #38); de an. a . dign. et cur. (de propriorum animi cuiuslibet

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

11.

A playful double entendre: cf. in the correspondence of Fronto (ad M. Caes. et invicem iii.13 van den Hout) the repeated punning on verum by Marcus Aurelius—M. Aurelius Verus Caesar, nicknamed Verissimus by Hadrian. A common theme. Cf. de praecogn. 14.599K and the examples gathered ad loc. in Nutton 1979. Thessalus first came to notice under Nero: de meth. med. 10.7; Pliny NH 29.8–9. Pliny also mentions that Thessalusʼs tombstone declared him ἰατρονίκης, “First among doctors.” See RE 11.168–82, “Thessalos” (6). Galenʼs hostility to Thessalus as representative of the so-called Methodical school of medicine is a common theme in the corpus: for a list of passages, Nutton 1979, 223–24; on the rise of the school, Nutton 2004, 187–201. Cf. Nutton 1990, esp. 256 with references there cited; and now Mattern 2008. Further on the medical interests of Gellius in Holford-Strevens 2003, 301–5. Evidence for medical interests among intellectuals of the Second Sophistic is collected in Bowersock 1969, 29, 66–68; to which add Baldwin 1973, 38–40, for connections between Galen and Lucian; more generally, Nutton 2000, 943–44 with references. Plutarchʼs de san. tuenda (Advice on Health), of the previous generation, echoes Galenʼs passionate insistence on the close link between medicine and philosophy (see esp. 122DE); see further Boulogne 1996. Perhaps through his connection with Eudemus the philosopher, judging from de praecogn. 2.25 = 14.612K. But Galen was himself a very wealthy man with all that entails: see de propriorum animi cuiuslibet a ectuum dignotione et curatione 5.47– 48, and other bits gathered in Nutton 1979, 183 and Nutton 2004, 389 n. 4; for an overview, Schlange-Schöningen 2003, 31–60. An Arabic fragment tells us that Galen refused to accept fees from both students and patients: Meyerhof 1929, 84. Paulus: de praecogn. 14.612–13, 629K; de anatomicis administrationibus 2.218. Severus: de praecogn. 14.613, 629, 647, 653–54, 656K. Barbarus: de praecogn. 14.613, 629K. Victorinus: in Hippocratis librum de acutorum victu commentarii 3.59 (CMG V 9.1, p. 265.22 = 15.723K), de victus ratione in morbis acutis ex Hippocratis sententia 1.1 (CMG Suppl. Or. II, p. 77). Boethus: e.g., de praecogn. 14.612, 635–47K passim, de anat. admin. 2.215–18K, de libr. propr. 19.13, 16, 20K. Other probable consular acquaintances include: L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 175); T. Pomponius Proculus Vitrasius Pollio (cos. c. 153, procos. c. 164); M. Nonius Macrinus (procos. 170): see Nutton 1969, 45–46 and Nutton 1979, 164–65. Most of these are lost; a list in RE 6. 2535, “Flavius” (51). Not the same as the surviving nine books of de anat. admin., as 2.216K makes clear. Adrian: Philostratus vit. soph. 585–90, and evidence connecting him with Boethusʼs circle collected at Nutton 1979, 190; Demetrius: Jones 1967 and Nutton 1979, 191. On the slim distinction between philosophers and orators in the Second Sophistic, Bowersock 1969, 11 . Galenʼs account in de praecogn. chapter 2 is compressed; from chapter 5 in that same work, it becomes clear that the attendance of the consulars was in a second stage of the demonstration, following an outrage by Alexander of Damascus. An interest among the political elite in the pursuit of science and philosophy is no stranger to periods of history other than our own. In the American tradition, one need only look back to the era of founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Je erson. At the end of de praecogn. [14.9 = 14.672K] Galen cites sympathetically a tale from Isocrates, who, when questioned by a student about the three-year term of his instruction in oratory, said, “Child, I should like for you to be able to learn in one day all you seek; but I would then have to condemn my own ability, since it has taken me so many years of practice.” 3 OCD , “Galen.” Cf. de dign. puls. 1.1 (8.766K); de ven. art. dissect. 7 (2.803K), de aliment. fac. 2.11 (6.584K), de anat. admin. 2.3. (2.291K). Leopold 1908, 233–35, esp. 234. Berkowitz and Squitier 1990; Fichtner 2004. Not included in these totals are works known or thought to be masquerading as Galenʼs (“pseudo-Galen”). Some of the lost works are no doubt also spurious, but Galenʼs corpus is unique in that authenticity of his works is for the most part guaranteed by inclusion in catalogues created by Galen himself (de libr. propr. and de ord. libr. suor.), or by explicit mention in the surviving works guaranteed by those catalogues. De san. tuenda 1.14 = 6.74K, 1.14 = 6.75K, 2.11 = 6.147K, 1.4 = 6.12–13K. Paired with ἀνὴρ φιλοφάρμακος at de comp. med. per gen. 13.636K. Cf. Horstmansho 1995, 89. Galen also uses the more general term φιλόλογος, on which see the illustrative use and context (of public demonstration and debate) at de animi cuiuslibet peccatorum dignotione et curatione 5.92K; further examination of the term in Nutton 1979, 193. Galen occasionally speaks in similar vein of writers other than Hippocrates: e.g., de semine, 1.3.3 (4.516K) (Aristotleʼs On the Generation of Animals), de venae sectione adversus Erasistratum 11.222K (Erasistratus). Iskandar 1988, his translation from the Arabic. Eco 1979. On the vicus sandaliarius cf. Gellius NA 18.4.1; CIL VI 448, 761; de praecogn. 14.620K (p. 88 Nutton, e corr.), 14.625K; and discussion in White 2009. A striking detail, since Galenʼs style seems to us unremarkable (aside from prolixity)—but we have very little other medical writing from this time with which to compare. Quotations here and below use or adapt the translation in Singer 1997.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073096 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

36. 37.

Plutarch also does this: de tranquilitate animi, 464F–465A. Cf. in Hippocratis librum de fracturis commentarii 18b.321K: “When I read some book with someone in person, I aim the measure of the exegesis accurately, looking to the state of the one learning. But when I am writing to everyone, I am not able to target either the best or worst prepared.” Explicitly mentioned: the works “for Beginners” (“the works were written not for distribution but for those who had requested them,” de libr. propr. 10); the speech without title mentioned at 13–14; de experientia medica, 17; the early Hippocratic commentaries, 33–34; a “large number of [logical and philosophical] works” lost in the fire that consumed the Temple of Peace, 41; commentaries on Aristotle, 42; three short works on health, de ord. libr. suor. 19.56K. Galen retained copies only for those few works written for friends that were “properly completed,” de libr. propr. 13. Textual problems in this passage are serious, but the sense seems clear enough. The passage here is usually taken to refer to a book storehouse associated with the library of the Temple of Peace. Houston 2003, following the lead of Hanson 1998, 52, argued that this was a private storehouse and in fact the same one used by Galen to store cinnamon and other possessions, which Galen mentions as a victim of the same fire of 192 at de antid. 1.13. This conclusion has now been validated in rather spectacular fashion by discovery of a new treatise of Galen, “On the Avoidance of Grief,” which came to light in 2005 and whose editio princeps was published in April 2008. For the new treatise, see Boudon-Millot 2007; for discussion of what the treatise has to say on books and storerooms and libraries, Tucci 2008. Starr 1987. The relation among notes, lectures, and “books” can be complex: an illustrative example is Quintilian 1.pr.7, where a transcription of a two-day lecture circulates under Quintilianʼs name along with notes from a more extensive course of lectures; Roberts and Skeat 1983, 30 cite legal texts that discuss whether an authorʼs manuscript or notes could be considered a “book” for purposes of wills or bequests, which “illustrates how easy it was for a parchment notebook to acquire, almost imperceptibly, the status of a book.” Doctors and others quarreling over the sick bed is a familiar motif: cf., e.g., de praecogn. 14.660, de di . puls. 1.1 = 8.495K. For a contemporary parody that bespeaks the cliché, see Lucian Philops. 5. The problem of texts circulating from copies taken by shorthand or note taking is known from elsewhere: Quintilian 1.pr.7 (his lectures), 7.2.24 (his speeches); Suetonius Iul. 55.3 (speech of Julius Caesar); Asconius on Cicero Mil. 36 = 42.2–4 Clark (stenographic version of Ciceroʼs Milo). Examples from White 2009, 279. This by the way demonstrates the ability, too o en doubted, that an experienced reader could get quickly to a specific location within a bookroll. More on this point in chapter 10 (Conclusion). “His carefully fostered image of impeccability and massive learning both impresses and repels,” Nutton 2000, 958. An authority that Galen succeeds in gaining: his books were used as the basis of anatomical demonstrations by others, de libr. propr. 10. LSJ s.v. ἐπί A.I.2c. Above, p. 83f. Burnyeat 1997. The evidence is thin—only a couple of examples aside from those mentioned here—but explicit. I leave open the question of whether “solitary” could include a lector reading to someone who was otherwise, and for all practical purposes in a slaveholding era, alone; or silent reading within the group (e.g., Gellius NA 1.21.4; on the markedness of certain types of solitary reading cf. below, p. 114 ). The title of a lost work mentioned at de libr. propr. 45– 46, περὶ τῶν ἀναγιγνωσκόντων λάθρα, sometimes translated as though solitary or silent reading, is of uncertain import. To share a used cloak with a comes is a traditional aspect of Roman clientalism: Horace, Ep. 1.19.37, Persius 1.54. Cf. Seneca, de tranq. an. 9.4: expenditures for studia are liberalissima, i.e., belong to the wealthy, gentlemanly class. On the authenticity of the Theriaca, see Swain 1996, 430–32 (appendix D); Nutton 1995; Nutton 1997. The idea that reading even di icult literature was a relaxation for right-thinking elites has, again, a long tradition. Cf., e.g., Quintilian Inst. Or. 10.1.28 (where he recommends poetry and history and, especially Sallust, “than which nothing can be more pleasing to the leisured ear of the scholar”).

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

6 Aulus Gellius: The Life of the Litteratus  William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0006 Published: April 2010

Pages 98–136

Abstract Aulus Gellius wrote his Attic Nights for a sophisticated audience of the philologically learned. That text is here examined, again from a constructivist perspective, not only for what it tells us about the norms that Gellius assumes but also for the particular community that Gellius seeks to construct, one in which commentators and other docti have special privilege as the interpreters and judges of literary texts. Topics of special importance in this chapter include the following: lucubration (vigilation) as a mode of reading behavior; the importance of memory in reading interactions; reading in group contexts, especially over dinner; and claims of access to and control over literary texts.

Keywords: Aulus Gellius, Attic nights, constructivist, Philology, commentators, Lucubration, reading, memory Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction We know Gellius’s dates with fair approximation. He was born between AD 125 and 128; he survived at least 1

through the late 170s. This in any case is enough to establish that Gellius was Galen’s more or less exact contemporary. We see little overlap in their circles at Rome, despite Gellius’s evident connections with Greeks and Greek speakers. Galen, like just about everyone who was anyone in Rome, knew Gellius’s ashy 2

teacher Favorinus, but otherwise there is little hint of connection. Gellius, however, clearly moves within a circle that in some sense overlaps with Fronto’s (chapter 7). Gellius knows Fronto but is not at all close, as he presents himself; yet most of the main magisterial and political gures in Gellius (not a long list, but 3

long enough) also surface in Fronto’s correspondence, as well as a long list of similar antiquarian passions. We have, then, an apparent situation in which social and intellectual connections overlap materially for Gellius and Fronto; yet only slightly for Gellius and Galen. The next chapter will lend space to work the 4

Frontonian angles. For our purposes, a question of central importance will be to see how the literary constructions of these three authors do and do not map to the same reading culture.

p. 99

Gellius’s Noctes Atticae (NA), like all literary ctions, is a world carefully shaped and controlled. The fact of a preface to the NA itself bears witness to the author’s e orts to in uence how the text was read. Moreover, the preface, like most prefaces (as true of Catullus or of either Pliny as of Gellius) serves to objectify the 5

bookrolls introduced; as it were, to put the text in these bookrolls in quotation marks. The written text of the NA represents, then, not straightforwardly the reports or annotations of the author, but rather the reports or annotations that the “I” of the preface is presenting to the reader. The di erence is subtle but important, for it is this characteristic of prefaces—that the “I” of the preface rounds o

the following text

as if a completed object—that, I think, leads the reader naturally to infer the probability of careful authorial design, to look for deliberated perfection in the crafting of the object.

6

feature —is subsumed in irony. The name Noctes Atticae, we are told, “does not attempt to compete with the clever titles (festivitates) which writers in Greek and Latin have devised for works of this kind” (praef. 4). The tituli exquisitissimi (5) of these other writers are now listed (6–9), yet a curious list it is. The list starts with metaphorical but commonplace titles (Musae, Silvae, etc.), then quickly moves on to less common titles, most of which are however almost ludicrously utilitarian (Lectio Sua, Antiquae Lectiones, even Historia Naturalis). Not a strikingly clever title among them. And just in case we don’t get it, he pours it on at section 10: “Truly—for such is my limitation (or “capability”: ut captus noster est)—I gave the title Atticae Noctes from the place and time of my nightly winter’s studies, without attention or thought and really almost like 7

an unsophisticate (incuriose et inmeditate ac prope etiam subrustice).” He goes on, in high literary style and tongue rmly in cheek: “In the caliber even of the title I thus fall short in comparison with earlier writers just as much as I do in the care and elegance of the writing” (tantum ceteris omnibus in ipsius quoque inscriptionis laude cedentes, quantum cessimus in cura et elegantia scriptionis). In conclusion to this section, and now without irony, the predecessors (“and especially the Greeks among them”) come in for withering criticism for their indiscriminate sweeping together of masses of dull material (sine cura discriminis solam copiam sectati converrebant, 11), having forgotten the Heraclitan admonition that “a great deal of learning p. 100

does not impart true understanding” (πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει, 12). Gellius, by contrast, has

worked hard

to cull from his vast reading selected items that by this quick and easy shortcut (compendio) will spark the desire for independent learning (honestae eruditionis cupidinem) or, at least, save men who are too busy from a shameful and boorish ignorance of facts and matters of language (a turpi certe agrestique rerum atque 8

verborum imperitia, 12). This last is, I think, more wry than is usually credited.

The care and elegance of diction and arrangement bespeak education; the abiding irony and allusiveness bespeak sophistication. Despite his impish claim, there is nothing done subrustice here. Gellius manages to 9

draw attention to how good his title is, even while making the traditional generic identi cation, in a gently mocking and sure-footedly urbane way. He mentions no authors for the 30 titles he names; the audience is expected—or challenged—to know that. Heraclitus is “that famous man from Ephesus” (the sententia is identi ed as illud Ephesii viri summe nobilis verbum, and note the word order). The Greek saying is not translated, nor will be the extensive quote from Aristophanes toward the end of the preface (21). He writes from the rst, that is, for a highly educated and bilingual audience, one expected not only to have considerable knowledge and wide-ranging intellectual interests, but also to be alert to the stylish expression and subtle humor that informs the entertainment of this enterprise. Speci c goals he mentions for his readers include attaining, by getting to know his lucubratiunculas (14), a more vigorous intellect, improved memory, more resourceful eloquence, more correct speech, but also a more re ned pleasure in times of leisure and play (delectatio in otio atque in ludo liberalior, 16). The challenge to his invited readers becomes most clear when at the end Gellius in mock language of religious initiation banishes from the readership of his commentarii the “profane and uninitiated crowd, who have turned away from literary amusements” (20). The quali cations of the initiates—the invited readers—are laid out, in contrapositive terms, just before (19):

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Early in the preface, the de nition of the work as heir to a tradition of writings—a wholly conventional

For those who have never found pleasure nor busied themselves in reading, inquiring, writing and taking notes, who have never spent wakeful nights in such employments, who have never improved themselves by discussion and debate with rival followers of the same Muse, but are absorbed in the turmoil of business a airs—for such men it will be by far the best plan to hold wholly aloof from these Nights and seek for themselves other diversion. There is an old saying, “The daw know naught of the lyre, the hog naught of marjoram ointment.” (trans. J. C. Rolfe) p. 101

With this Gellius draws his line in the sand, playfully but with purpose. His agenda is expectedly elitist, but, unlike Pliny, he is not interested in reforming the elite at large. Rather, the program is a high intellectual one, exclusionary, reserved for those of su

cient education and literary passion and taste to participate.

priorities of the elite-at-large as a part of establishing his own importance. Gellius unabashedly insists upon his own little world, a comfortable, exclusionary space that smacks of the “scholarly” (even though, given the pedantry of Gellius’s pursuits, we scholars may cringe at the label). Scholarship is, to be sure, a model to follow, but only for the few, the initiates, those already proven serious about putting in the long winter nights of work. In contrast to Galen’s approach, there is no accommodation to the novice: Gellius invites into his private world only those already educated and dedicated and able as recipients of the arcane treasures that Gellius gleans from literary commentators past and present.

Typical People and Places Characteristic of the Attic Nights is a typicizing strategy. In a sea of myriad details of history, natural history, and especially literature and language, Gellius anchors the reader by steady repetition of situations. These quickly become generic, patterned, typical, mere backdrops to the accrual of oddball details intended to entertain and instruct the intellectually curious. The reader quickly learns that when a grammaticus challenges one of the amici on a philological point, the amicus will humiliate the man with a display of 10

unmatchable learning;

that when a master begins to speak, however casually, a polished lecture will

ensue, full of summary and quotation from wise writers of the past. We are trained not to be surprised, for example, that Favorinus, in visiting a senatorial friend to congratulate him on a new son, replies to the mother-in-law’s chance comment with 19 chapters(!) of learned disquisition on the bene ts of breastfeeding (12.1.5–23), including pertinent quotations from memory of Homer and Vergil. Most settings are unspeci ed: sometimes the house of a friend, or friend of a friend, and frequently anonymous; but more often, the location is altogether vague. A goodly handful of stories go back to the early days in Athens, but mostly the setting seems to be Rome. Only occasionally does the location explicitly lie elsewhere: Naples (9.15, Puteoli; 18.5, with Julianus), Antium (17.10.1, with Favorinus), Ostia (18.1.1, with p. 102

Favorinus), Brundisium (9.4,

16.6, 19.1), Lebadia in Boeotia (12.5, with Taurus). Named places in Athens

or Rome make a short and mostly repetitive list. In Athens or environs: the villa of Herodes Atticus (“Cephisia”: 1.2, 18.10); Taurus’s home or perhaps his school (in diatriba 1.26; cubiculum, 2.2; at dinner, 17.8; apud Taurum, 17.20). In Rome: Fronto’s house (2.26, 13.29, 19.8, 19.10); the booksellers’ district (5.4, 13.31, 18.4); on a few occasions, one of the imperial fora or libraries (area Palatina, 4.1, 19.13, 20.1; forum Traianum, 11.17, 13.25; bibliotheca domus Tiberianae, 13.20; fanum Carmentis, 18.7). But even for named places, the scene is skeletal: excepting Cephisia (more on which below), details of the physical environment are extremely rare. Among the many dozens of vignettes Gellius presents, only a few have more than the barest mention of locale and most are simply unde ned. When we try to visualize scenes in Gellius, there are only a few places that truly live in our minds, even if “we” are contemporary Romans. Similarly for the people in Gellius’s world. Most go unnamed. In 20 bookrolls and almost 400 surviving 11

chapters,

with scene after scene of intellectual groups and discussions, only 18 acquaintances and a half-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

The gist is quite di erent even from Galen, who seeks to in uence the philosophical and educational

12

dozen other contemporaries are mentioned by name.

By comparison, Gellius mentions many dozens by

name who lived in Cicero’s time; the indices to Gellius overall list about 1,000 names of nonmythological people and places. Of the 18 acquaintances, a small handful are mentioned over and over again. Most frequent are his teachers: Favorinus (33 references), L. Calvenus Taurus (15), Sulpicius Apollinaris (12), and to lesser extent Antonius Julianus (7) and T. Castricius (4). For these, Gellius presents himself as a follower 13

and companion—sectator, familiaris.

Also recurring are the two most famous orators of the day, both

consulars: Herodes Atticus (4 references) and Fronto (5). Herodes and Fronto are, however, not intimates of p. 103

Gellius. Gellius visits Herodes’ villa at Cephisia, but he is no more than one of the crowd; similarly, Gellius had access to Fronto’s house, but he is an onlooker, or a companion of more signi cant friends (at 2.26, he accompanies Favorinus; at 19.10, Julius Celsinus; at 19.13, Sulpicius Apollinaris). The rest of named philosophers Peregrinus Proteus and Macedo, the poets Julius Paulus and Annianus, the grammarians Fidus Optatus, Aelius Melissus, and Domitius; and among those powerful in the forum, Sextus Erucius Clarus cos. 14

117, 146, pref. urb., M. Postumius Festus cos. 160, Julius Celsinus cos. des.(?),

the senator Servilianus, and

the jurist Sextus Caecilius Africanus. A broader context for Gellius depends largely, then, on scenes that are unde ned, or that are de ned by interactions with a very few, recurring gures. There will be opportunity to pick over some of these scenes further below. But we need rst to focus on how circumscribed the depiction is. Even for the favorite Favorinus, the view is attened. We hear nothing of famous aspects of Favorinus, such as his sexual ambiguity (a hermaphrodite, says Philostratus; the modern consensus is cryptorchidism), or his quarrel 15

with the emperor Hadrian, nor do we get much sense of the amboyance recorded in other sources.

Aside

from the circle of his teachers, Gellius makes almost no mention of other intellectual luminaries of the 16

day.

We cannot expect this—Gellius is not writing history or biography—but we can note it as a signi cant

authorial choice. We also see scene after scene in which the interlocutor is anonymous. As Baldwin notes, Gellius generally keeps the spotlight on only one focal gure at a time (Baldwin uses the terms “hero” and “idol”), and this will mean that Favorinus and Taurus and Apollinaris most often encounter an unnamed, 17

learned, but usually not quite learned enough, rival.

Even when Gellius and other sectatores accompany

Favorinus as he waits for a consular friend outside Trajan’s forum—a great opportunity for name dropping, p. 104

one might think—no name is given (13.25). At 2.2, parallel stories are presented to exemplify

the tension

between respect for elders and respect for magistrates; in the contemporary scene, the governor—Taurus’s interlocutor—goes nameless, whereas full names are given for consul and father in the corresponding story from the late Republic. In Gellius’s construction of contemporary context, the interlocutor is generally unnamed; the ever-present crowd is unde ned; the scenes are repetitive and paradigmatic. “Archetypal” (Baldwin 1975: 40) is too loaded a term, but the authorial strategy in any case cultivates a telescoping of viewpoint, away from the distractions of the contemporary scene, and toward interactions with the master, himself largely typicized. When one tries to summon a sense of Gellius’s immediate circle, that is, the circle beyond the magistri, there is an abiding sense of obscurity. Gellius does not have much personality, nor do many of his intimates, at least by his depiction. Among the minor gures, only four—Julius Paulus, Julius Celsinus, Annianus, and Macedo—are introduced with hints that Gellius was more than a passing acquaintance or bystander: Paulus invited Gellius to dinner “often” (saepe nos ad sese vocabat, 19.7.1); Celsinus was invited to one of these dinners (19.7), and also accompanied Gellius to visit Fronto (19.10); Annianus and Macedo are more shadowy, but explicitly familiares (Annianus invites to his villa me et quosdam item alios familiaris, 20.8.1; the otherwise unknown Macedo is philosophus, vir bonus, familiaris meus, 13.8.4). The dinner described at 19.7, in particular, stirs the imagination, since it gives a rare glimpse into the society in which Gellius was an active participant. The host was Julius Paulus; the invited guests (at least the only ones mentioned) were Gellius and Julius Celsinus. First, some preliminaries. Julius Paulus and Julius

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

acquaintances are scattershot, a short list of intellectuals and another short list of the rich and powerful: the

Celsinus, as indicated, are among Gellius’s particular cronies—the only two named individuals for whom we have that clear sense. At 5.4, in an unusual detail, Gellius mentions that he had been hanging out (consideramus, pluperfect) with Julius Paulus in a bookshop in the Sigillaria; at 19.10, Celsinus takes Gellius along to visit Fronto, and the two will play word games as they walk home from the dinner at 19.7. Now Paulus, the host, is described as a poet (poeta), perhaps in part to distinguish him from the jurist of the same name, but he is particularly memorable for his antiquarian philological learning. Gellius repeatedly labels him “the most learned man we can recall” (1.22.9, homo in nostra memoria doctissimus; 5.4.1, vir memoria nostra doctissimus). At 16.10.9 , this poetam nostrae memoriae doctissimum, passing by a crowd of men deliberating on an obscure use of proletarius in Ennius, is asked and is able to enlighten them, at length and o

the cu , on the history and technicalities of meaning of the word, citing Sallust and the Twelve Tables.

p. 105

learned in the a airs

and literature of the past”) who invites Gellius and Celsinus to the dinner described

at 19.7. Julius Celsinus, from a powerful Numidian family and either himself or a relative a consul18

designate,

is likewise an a cionado of the old poets. We will see him again at 19.10, where he invites Gellius

along to visit Fronto and is able during a dispute that erupts over the use of praeterpropter to recall—a telling detail—that the word occurs in the Iphigenia of Ennius. This, then, is Gellius’s dinner companion. The trio, we see, closely share interests and talents as well as activities. When Gellius describes the dinner at Paulus’s small estate in the Vatican district (19.7.1–2), the two details he mentions both stand out. First, the dinner itself is eccentric, showily modest: the host o ers only generous proportions of vegetables and fruits (olusculis pomisque: the diminutive shows the narrator’s smile). Second, the entertainment is recherché: the over-dinner reading of the Alcestis of Laevius, an obscure 19

250-year-old lyric enjoying a short-lived revival among Antonine antiquarians.

How perfect the coterie of

antiquarians nds all this is shown by what happens next. As Celsinus and Gellius walk back down to the city, they play the philological game (oblectabamus, 12) of recalling which lines in Laevius had strange words or words used in a striking manner; once the lines are summoned, they then help each other commit the examples to memory for future use (2). Since Gellius records some of these examples, we can gain an idea of the ( ctive) conversation: [In the lines just quoted] we noticed that obesus is used, rather in its proper than in its common signi cation, to mean slender and lean…. We also observed that he spoke of an extinct race as oblittera instead of oblitterata, and that he characterized enemies who broke treaties as foedifragi not foederifragi; that he called the blushing Aurora pudoricolor, or “shame-colored” and Memnon nocticolor, or “night-colored”; also that he used forte for “hesitatingly,” and said silenta loca, or “silent places,” from the verb sileo; further, that he used pulverulenta for “dusty” and pestilenta for “pestilent,” the genitive case instead of the ablative with careo; magno impete, or “mighty onset,” instead of impetu; that he used fortescere for fortem eri, “become brave”; dolentia for dolor, “sorrow,” avens for libens, “desirous”; that he spoke of curae intolerantes, “unendurable cares,” instead of intolerandae; manciolae tenellae, “tender hands” instead of manus; and quis tam siliceo for “who is so inty a heart?” (19.7.3–10, trans. after J. C. Rolfe) His nos inter viam verborum Laevianorum adnotatiunculis oblectabamus: “with such notelets on the Laevian vocabulary did we amuse ourselves as we made our way” (12). p. 106

This, in short, was an earnest, a ected group, sharing a passion for the day’s faddish interest in antiquarian philology. How much of this is life, how much art, how much life imitating art, is hard to say. The scene certainly seems to evoke by allusion one of the early letters of Pliny (1.15), in which Pliny rebukes a friend for passing up an invitation to his own modest meal, with “luxuries” (lauta) like olives and beets and onions (also snails and eggs), and as dinner entertainment a choice of the reading of a comic play, or a reading of something else, or the singing of lyric poetry (audisses comoedos vel lectorem vel lyristen). Pliny’s explicit

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

This, then, is the vir bonus et rerum litterarumque veterum inpense doctus (“a man noble and immensely

contrast is with the meal his friend chose, which boasted oysters, sea urchins, and Spanish dancing girls. Pliny chides his friend for his preference with a tricolon that is partly tongue-in-cheek but revealing nonetheless. Quantum nos lusissemus risissemus studuissemus: “[if you had come to my meal] how much playing, laughing, and learning we would have had!” Gellius and his friends seem to have a similar idea (or ideal) of what is fun, with however even more strict dedication to excellence in letters. In a later chapter (20.18), the poet Annianus invites Gellius and other intimates (familiares) to his Faliscan estate for a harvest-time bash (agitare erat solitus vindemiam hilare atque amoeniter), in which, perhaps predictably, oysters are the focus of the feast. Yet even there Gellius reports a table conversation in which Annianus expounds antiquarian details on oysters and sea urchins and other such, quoting Lucilius and citing Plutarch’s commentary on Hesiod. His own circle, we are to understand, cannot get away from their

Vignettes that attach to named contemporaries aside from Herodes, Fronto, and the magistri are rare. We won’t be able to get much closer to Gellius than what is sketched just above. There is little more that Gellius says about his immediate circle. The balance of Gellius’s remarks on minor gures are incidental, or namedropping. Gellius suggests elbow-rubbing with the politically powerful in such a way as to con rm his general disassociation from such circles: Gellius meets only passingly as sectator of Sulpicius Apollinaris or Favorinus the consulars Sextus Erucius Clarus and M. Postumius Festus, and the jurist Sextus Caecilius Africanus. By Gellius’s depiction, his pal Julius Celsinus provides the only obvious immediate point of entry into higher circles aside from his admired teachers. This is important, since the depiction (whatever its historicity) marks Gellius as an outsider and onlooker, and thus we the readers naturally also assume this viewpoint into the elite society. With regard to the major gures—not only Herodes and Fronto, but also his teachers, T. Castricius, Antonius Julianus, L. Calvenus Taurus, Sulpicius Apollinaris, and Favorinus—Gellius is decidedly passive, p. 107

peripheral. With Herodes and Fronto, he is a hanger-on and spectator, not an active

participant; as for

his teachers, Gellius favors story lines in which he plays the role of the silent follower, one of the crowd of 20

sectatores. He tags along to dinner or on vacation (secessus) or to visit someone sick,

21

the historicity) Gellius never plays the host. He never makes mention of his home.

but (again, whatever

Once, Taurus comes

(along with sectatores) to visit Gellius when he is sick (18.10)—but that is at the villa of Herodes Atticus in Cephisia. Although the narrative “I” (ego or nos) commonly intrudes as commentator to these scenes, we are trained not to expect Gellius as a player in face-to-face discussions with his betters. Depiction of his active participation with the magistri is very limited: only three times and brie y is he a principal interlocutor in a discussion with his teacher (twice with Taurus, 17.8 and 17.20, and once with Sulpicius Apollinaris, 12.13); a few times he asks a question (9.1, of Antonius Julianus; 1.26 and 19.6, of Taurus; 20.6, of Sulpicius Apollinaris; 3.1 and 14.2, of Favorinus); once Favorinus registers a reaction when Gellius is reading aloud a Plautine comedy (3.3). With Taurus, Gellius paints himself special, one of the insiders (see esp. 2.2, 12.5), and the use of noster for Apollinaris and Favorinus as well as Taurus also asserts a special 22

attachment.

But most of the stories are introduced impersonally (“it was once said,” legebatur or

equivalent; “Favorinus used to say”), without indication of Gellius’s presence, or remotely (“I recall there once being said,” memini dicere sim.; “in my presence [the following happened],” nobis praesentibus sim.), without indication of Gellius’s active participation. In general, Gellius presents himself, if at all, as one of the unmarked crowd that follows the great magister as a matter of course. Antonius Julianus in 15.1 delivers a particularly good scholastica declamatio; and “we, his particular friends” (nos familiares) rush to him and in a public show of appreciation all accompany him back to his home. Note how comfortably Gellius melts into the group of—usually anonymous—followers. Interestingly, it is not the case that Gellius is never the principal actor in the NA. Though still not common, Gellius does at times record himself in an assertive role, even as lead discussant, when dealing with one of the host of anonymi (e.g., 6.17, 13.31, 15.9, 16.6). And it is not uncommon that Gellius shows o p. 108

the context of the magistri, but o

his learning in the course of the text. He does this occasionally even in

the record, as it were. As coda to various

stories of the great teachers

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

philological ardor even when living it up.

he adds additional textual parallels or even corrections (2.22, 4.1, 12.13; cf. 5.21, 6.17). But in reports of faceto-face encounters with the magistri, the authorial strategy tends urgently toward minimizing prominence 23

and participation without, however, complete self-e acement.

An illuminating comparison is the younger Pliny. In some respects, despite generic di erences, Gellius’s project and Pliny’s have distinct overlap. Both present short sequences (whether epistula or capitulum), usually with a single theme, often including a vignette. Both explicitly and by paradigm promote the importance of intellectual endeavor for the elite, the life of studia. But there are important contrasts as well. The many contemporaries in Pliny form a rich social tapestry as backdrop to the stories he tells; intellectual endeavor, in Pliny, is rooted in his ideal of social behavior. Moreover, Pliny, as we have seen, uses his artful and social interaction all work together with literary endeavor to give elite society special meaning. For Gellius, though, the balanced life is hardly mentioned. Right at the front of NA, at 1.2, Gellius seems at rst to be introducing something along these lines. In a passage richly redolent of Pliny’s descriptions of his 24

villas,

Gellius writes of Herodes Atticus: “At that time, while we were at Herodes’ villa, a place named

Cephisia, in the summer’s heat and the burning autumnal sun, we kept o

the inconvenience of the hot

weather by enjoying the shade of mighty groves, the long, soft walkways, the cooling layout of the buildings, the clear and abundant baths, and the charming villa as a whole resounding on all sides with resplendent fountains and songful birds” (2). But the presence of this sort of description is striking precisely because it hardly ever recurs (the lone example is a one-phrase reprise of the Cephisia description, “abounding in sparkling waters and groves,” at 18.10). After this apparent nod to Pliny, Gellius goes on to craft his own set of reader expectations, which focus relentlessly on intellectual endeavor as it plays out in two arenas: in the learned discussion surrounding the magistri, and in private study and writing subsequent and preliminary to learned discussion. Two things are striking about all this. First, Gellius’s typicizing strategy facilitates more strict attention to the intellectual matter of the NA. Both narratologically and ideologically, it seems important to Gellius that we focus on philological and other details without too much ctive distraction. Second, and contrariwise, p. 109

the setting is typically social, and it is fundamental

that this text-centered community negotiates what is

correct and what is incorrect, who is right and who is wrong, within the context of their closed society. The magistri lead and largely control the judgments of the community, but the negotiation plays out under the eyes of Gellius and his shadowy crowd. Perhaps surprisingly, the goal seems not necessarily to become one of the almost superhuman leaders, but rather to join those in the crowd who celebrate the life of learning and participate in the exclusionary community for which the magistri play as the principal actors. Gellius’s self-presentation implies someone content to participate as a (learned) spectator, who nds validation in the ability to understand and judge the abstruse enterprise. Which leads to a third point. The enterprise itself is not simply abstruse, but usually at least one remove from direct literary pursuit. We do not see in Gellius recitations by poets of their own work, and rarely see recitation of the poetry of others except as proofs of a philological point, nor do we see much oratorical 25

display apart from the commentators’ role.

Despite the common title philosophus for Favorinus, Taurus,

and others, we seldom see anything that smacks of direct philosophical inquiry. The magistri are in practice commentators—on matters literary, linguistic, rhetorical, philosophical, ethical. They are also, and even especially, commentators on the other commentators on these matters. To be learned is not simply to know one’s Vergil, but to know that for a given line in the Georgics (2.247), most write amaro at the end, but Hyginus in his Commentaries cites an ancient manuscript in which amaror is written; and one should also know what (e.g.) Favorinus says about whether Hyginus is right. (The example is taken from 1.21.) This is not to deny the rhetorical air and articulateness with which the magistri approach their learned remarks. But as presented in Gellius, the elite fascination and entertainment is not so much in, say, the writing of poetry or oratory, nor even in its reading; but rather in knowing the literature, and indeed the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

collection of letters to advocate a balanced, perfected life: bodily exercise, the aesthetic of physical environs,

commentators on the literature, so as to be able to comment learnedly upon the literature and its commentators. All this is by nature a very bookish enterprise, and it will be the dull reader who does not note the self-glori cation that Gellius slyly introduces into his own work by making miscellaneous learned commentary the highest aim.

p. 110

Commentators and Authority: The Centrality of Literary Texts We begin to see, then, that this is not just any literate society, even in second-century terms. Gellius both describes and promotes a speci c, discriminating society that privileges the activities of learned it is natural that an unnamed learned friend (amicus noster), when presented with an unusual reading in a Tironian manuscript (sic) of Cicero’s in Verrem, not only has a strong opinion about that reading, but also is able to adduce in support of that opinion Gaius Gracchus’s speech de P. Popilio circum Conciliabula, parallel constructions in Greek, the Annales of Claudius Quadrigarius and of Valerius Antias, the Casina of Plautus, the Gemelli of Laberius, and a minor speech of Cicero himself—oratory, history, comedy, mime. And, of course, the friend o ers this evidence o

the cu . Equally extreme—and just as commonplace in Gellius’s

world—is the sort of esotericism found at 2.22, where Favorinus, over dinner, presents “with supreme elegance of diction and with style and grace throughout” a disquisition on 26 Greek and Latin terms for wind, full of etymological speculation and literary allusion. It may be justly doubted that the society “truly” existed—idealized details strain credulity at every turn—but the ction is nonetheless important as, at the least, an ideal that Gellius expects to be able to live in the minds of his readers. Within this society, the literary text is central. At every turn, social interactions are transmuted into literary events. Already mentioned in passing, for example, is chapter 19.10, where Gellius accompanies his friend Julius Celsinus to visit Fronto. We are presented with a fascinating tableau. Fronto, su ering from gout, reclines on a little Greek sick-bed (in scimpodio Graeciensi), “surrounded on all sides by men renowned for intellectual capacity, birth, or wealth” (circumundique sedentibus multis doctrina aut genere aut fortuna nobilibus viris). Fronto is busy, discussing building plans with some architects. A friend (unnamed: unus ex amicis Frontonis) interjects a remark that, as it happens, contains the unusual expression praeterpropter, “more or less.” Fronto stops all conversation at once, to ask the meaning of this expression. The friend defers to a celebrated grammarian sitting nearby. The grammarian (unnamed) haughtily dismisses the question—honore quaestionis minime dignum—since the word is plebeian, the idiom of a worker. Fronto objects: How can praeterpropter be so lowly a word when Cato and Varro and other early writers use it? Gellius’s friend Julius Celsinus interposes the information that the word is used in the Iphigenia of Ennius, and asks that the book be produced. It is, and the chorus containing the word is read. The defeated grammarian, sweating and blushing, beats a hasty exit to the loud laughter of many; whereupon a general exodus ensues. p. 111

Note how swiftly the social scene shifts, by catalysis from some chance remark, into a high literary event. The movement from social converse to bookishness to actual reading is seamless. When we unpack the event, we see the following elements. The marked social group is composed generally of powerful men, but as a matter of course includes the intellectually powerful. A topic, introduced serendipitously, immediately leads to an intellectual challenge: what exactly does the word mean? The challenge is hurriedly passed along to a specialist—present because the social group is constructed in that way—who is then able to assert his expert knowledge: the word is not literary, thus not worth attention. But the expert falls prey to the superior knowledge of the master and his friend. As nal arbiter, the literary texts themselves are ushered in: rst, by reference (Fronto: doesn’t the word occur in Cato and Varro?) and then literally (Celsinus: bring out the text of Ennius to be read). The bookroll itself delivers the decisive evidence. The episode now over, the group breaks up—which signals indirectly that the literary event, fortuitous as it was in its arising, was the reason

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

commentators. In this society, one thinks nothing of even absurdly esoteric discussions. At 1.7, for example,

why the social group was constituted, and an expected, regular result of the gathering. In Gellius’s world, elite society seems to exist for literary events of exactly this type: this is what the crowd of distinguished men is waiting for as they watch Fronto deal with his architects. The literal deployment of a book at the center of the literary event recurs. In a similar passage at the opening of the NA, a bookroll of Epictetus is produced in order to bring on the comeuppance of a philosophical poseur (1.2); in another episode at Fronto’s, a bookroll of Caesar’s de Analogia is read out to resolve a philological point under dispute (19.8); in a public context, a youth is able to win a dispute that erupts over Latin spartum (Spanish broom) and the Iliadic use of σπάρτα by reading from a bookroll of Varro’s Antiquitates rerum humanarum that he happens to be carrying (17.3); at a bookseller’s shop, Gellius is able to defeat a boastful storm-tossed boat is able to produce a bookroll of Epictetus to show that his behavior was in accordance with Stoic doctrine on fear (19.1). Books are also commonly in hand as launching points for discussion (e.g., 2.23, 3.1, 15.9, 16.10, 17.5). Utterly routine is the less literal use of a book, as when a passage is cited from memory, verbatim or summatim, in order to raise a question or resolve an issue. As Gellius portrays elite society, bookish remarks are the common currency of interaction. One hears and sees almost nothing of p. 112

26

money or business, gossip or family, politics or the forum.

Like

the anonymous crowd of onlookers,

these sorts of details are carefully set outside the focal contours of the social portrait. The result is a text27

centeredness that is extreme.

The group, as has already been made clear, is not the elite-at-large, but a self-selected collection of the ambitiously bookish. But how does the learned group—this particular reading community—constitute itself? For this question, a deeply interesting set of chapters are those that present scenes, like the one in 28

19.10 just above, in which a poseur is defeated.

These scenes illustrate in some detail the ways in which the

community negotiates value and de nes its exclusivity. The scenes also o er, by model, directives for behavior. Among many striking examples, let us look summarily at a few passages that focus on the community’s treatment of the gure of the know-it-all: 1.2 After dinner at the villa of Herodes Atticus, a know-it-all youth prattles unseasonably, absurdly, and at immoderate length (multa et inmodica … intempestive atque insubide) on matters philosophical. He alone understands thoroughly the Stoic tenets (an indirect a ront to the learned Herodes). Herodes shames the brash fellow by having a passage from Epictetus read, in which just such a youth is condemned. 4.1 While awaiting the imperial salutatio, a know-it-all grammaticus speaks at length on the gender of penus, turning at one point to Favorinus “as if he didn’t recognize him” (an insult to Favorinus). Favorinus shows up his ignorance, rst of philosophical fundamentals, and then of the topic itself. 9.15 Having dragged Julianus to hear one of his declamations, a youth introduces himself with arrogance ill-suiting his years, and challenges his auditors to set him a topic. A sectator of Julianus, “already o ended that, with Julianus as audience, the fellow dared such presumption,” makes trial of him by setting a particularly di

cult topic. The youth talks without re ection and at much too

much length, to the loud applause of the many. Pressed afterward by the man’s friends for an opinion, Julianus wittily replies that sine controversia (“undoubtedly” or “lacking any opponent”) the man is certainly disertus. (Note that the public shame attaches only for those clever enough to understand the dig.) p. 113

13.20 In the Library of the Domus Tiberiana, a know-it-all interrupts the group’s bookish perusals with a lecture on the family of Cato. Then Sulpicius Apollinaris “very quietly and mildly, as was his custom when reproving someone” soundly puts the youth in his place, o ering a much more detailed and accurate summary of the family’s history.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

grammaticus by producing the copy of Varro’s Saturae that he has with him (13.31); a fearful philosopher on a

13.31 In a bookseller’s shop, a foolish and boastful man (homo inepte gloriosus), trying to sell himself as a grammaticus to attract paying pupils, brags that he alone can properly interpret the Saturae of Varro. Gellius produces a copy of the text and slyly asks him to read aloud a di

cult

passage, which the boaster does with such incompetence that the crowd laughs him o . (More on this scene below.) 17.3 In conversation in a public spot, a learned youth in Gellius’s group makes a comment on spartum that is challenged by a couple of the half-educated (male litterati) men who hang around the squares (“what the Greeks call the ἀγοραίοι”). In argument, they cite Homer and laugh at his reply, and “they would have only laughed more at him” had he not happened to have with him the

The spark to these incidents is someone who pretends to knowledge that he does not possess. Note that it is 29

not so much ignorance itself that is despised, at least within certain bounds.

When there is no pretense,

ignorance can be corrected more respectfully (cf., e.g., the social dynamics at 13.20, 18.10, 19.8). Rather, what is unacceptable in this community is when someone with faulty knowledge tries to step outside the anonymous crowd and assert himself as if a master. The misstep also, importantly, tends to coincide with rudeness to the master or other ill-mannered behaviors like speaking at immoderate length or in ways inappropriate to one’s age. Socially, as well as intellectually, that is, the person does not belong: he does not understand his proper place, which is in the anonymous crowd. This can lead to simple shaming before the group (e.g., 1.2), or exclusion altogether, often via the brutal mechanism of laughing at the person. The public disgrace makes clear that what is happening here is the negotiation of social relations and status, akin to (and alternative to) the competitive arena of oratory. Correction of error and castigation come on the authority of the master himself (e.g., most of the above and 19.10), on the authority of a master’s text (e.g., 5.21, 6.17, 13.31, 15.9, 17.3), or directly on the witness of an archaic text (as we’ve seen: 1.2, 17.3, 19.8, 19.10). Rule-based systems are explicitly subordinated to magisterial and textual authorities (e.g., 5.21, 15.19; for 13.31, see below). p. 114

The reading community is, then, exclusionary in some special ways. The raison d’être of the group seems to be to play a particular sort of learned game, in which the participants make comments on language and literature with reference to antiquarian texts and their commentators before an appraising but largely unparticipating crowd. The masters both participate in and act as nal authority for these interactions, which are frequently in the mode of challenges to knowledge; when the master is not present, the texts themselves are the arbiters. For the participants, self-validation is that common to all successful performers. For the community as a whole, self-validation comes from inclusion among those able to understand and appreciate the esoteric material. The movement from intellectual endeavor to social activity is swift, as swift as the movement from social to literary event. That the textual material be abstruse is an important criterion. Those uninterested in these texts, or uninterested in the game played with these texts, or not educated in the particulars necessary to understand or appreciate the interactions, are excluded from the group. Implicit is a “crowd” that works hard at gaining the knowledge necessary to have even marginal understanding of the esotericism that here plays out.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

25th book of Varro’s antiquitates rerum humanarum, whose authority defeats them.

Reading Alone: Lucubrations and Vigilations To us, the scholar’s acquisition of knowledge is constructed as a solitary activity. The world of Gellius maps di erently—we have already had a glimpse of how intermeshed scholarly reading and scholarly society can be, and we will see more below—but for Gellius, too, the scholar alone with his studies is clearly a de ning image. We would like to be able to stand by his shoulder and observe how he works, but Gellius does not o er that level of detail. It is impossible to know, for instance, whether he is alone in an absolute sense, or in the sense, common in antiquity, of having nearby no one worth noticing. Alone, that is, can easily encompass having one or more slaves at hand to help with such things as fetching the rolls, trimming the personally unrolls and reads the bookrolls (ipse quidem volvendis transeundisque multis admodum voluminibus … exercitus defessusque sum, praef. 12), but cultural assumptions in such statements make misinterpretation easy and notorious. Quintilian (Inst. Or. 10.3.18–27, cf. 1.1.28) gives strictures against use of a slave for dictation, lest it interfere with the self-absorption necessary for serious writing, but the passage implies its 30

p. 115

common use.

Gellius gives no hint one way or the other. Nor is

the physical scene accessible: as already

noted, Gellius never so much as mentions his home. Yet it is clear enough that Gellius is conceptually, if not actually, alone as he attacks certain parts of his work. The emphasis in NA on long nights of study—the conceit of the title—is both convincing and conventional. As we have already seen, Gellius from the start de nes the invited readers of his Nights as those willing to read and write by lamplight late into the night (“those who nd pleasure and keep themselves busy in reading, inquiring, writing and taking notes, who spend wakeful nights (vigilias vigilarunt) in such work,” paraphrasing praef. 19; cf. hibernarum vigiliarum, praef. 10, lucubratiunculas, praef. 14). At 1.7.4, he mentions a learned friend, whom he characterizes as someone for whom “almost all antiquarian literature had been the object of study and deep re ection over wakeful nights” (pleraque omnia veterum litterarum quaesita, meditata evigilataque erant). The imposter at 13.31.10—the one who cannot read properly—pretends that his problem is that “my eyes are weak and pretty well ruined from the constant work at the lamplight” (oculos meos aegros adsiduisque lucubrationibus prope iam perditos). At 9.4.5, Gellius records how he found some bundles (fasces) of obscure Greek marvel texts for sale, and immediately read and excerpted them over the course of the next two nights. Sociologically, reading alone does di erent duty from reading in the context of the group. This is no modern importation. At 14.6, a familiaris presents to Gellius “a fat bookroll over owing with every sort of knowledge” (librum grandi volumine doctrinae omnigenus praescatentem) as a helpmeet in writing his Nights. Gellius eagerly takes the book and shuts himself deep within the house (recondo me penitus) in order to read it sine arbitris—“without any onlookers,” that is, without the distracting presence of the peer group. This passage echoes one already mentioned in Quintilian (Inst. Or. 10.3.22), in which he advises against using an amanuensis when writing, since thereby one loses the sense of being removed from others (secretum in dictando perit); the best place for writing, he goes on to say, is one free from onlookers—liberum arbitris 31

locum—and as quiet as possible.

(In the passage immediately preceding, Quintilian has made clear that the 32

problem is one of self-consciousness before the judgment of another. ) Quintilian suggests nocturnal work as a natural way of achieving the necessary solitude and quietude, concluding (27), “lucubration is the best p. 116

form of

seclusion,” lucubratio … optimum secreti genus (est). Gellius’s own emphasis on lucubration in the

preface is, then, not simply an issue of privacy or concentration, but a re ex of the need to protect oneself from onlookers, that is, from the competitive pressures of the supporting society. Implicit in this is the fact that literate events like reading and writing commonly occur within deeply social contexts, as we will explore in a moment. It can be necessary at times to secrete oneself, but that seems associated with special needs. Interestingly and importantly, removal from the group appears the less usual, marked circumstance 33

for reading—in some respects the inverse of our own reading culture.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

light, sharpening the pen, even the reading itself. In the preface, Gellius certainly seems to imply that he

Let us pause for a moment to explore a few further cultural rami cations to the idea of secluding oneself to read by candlelight. “Burning the midnight oil” remains a contemporary expression, and in second-century Rome the topos of lucubration had been long established as a mark of serious intellectual endeavor, including especially writing poetry, oratorical study, and “scholarly” pursuits—as we see from examples in 34

Lucretius, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Quintilian, Tacitus, and Juvenal.

The lucubration theme is

a way of signaling that the work is important and demanding, and involves immense and concentrated e ort. That e ort, unusually, requires removal from others and labor well into the night. But lucubration also typically signals work culled from leisure time, work done during times like the evening so as not to interfere with the negotium of the day. At issue is the very valuation of otium: what should elite Romans spend their leisure hours doing? Strong moralistic overtones come easily into play. Counterpoised in the varying degrees of idleness or debauchery. For those who are not professionals, the possession and accrual of learning is in itself proof of a life in keeping with a certain strain of the Roman ideal, since it demonstrates beyond doubt that elite leisure time has been spent in the right-thinking ways. Reading alone in a closed cubiculum (cf. Quintilian Inst. Or. 10.3.25) is not the only way to do this—we have already seen striking instances of the ways in which society can meld with scholarship—but the scholar working alone over his lamp remains a vital paradigm for Gellius’s Nights. p. 117

We can go a bit further. James Ker, in his 2004 study of lucubratio in Latin prose authors, pinpoints the familiar story of Lucretia (Livy 1.57) as a de ning moralistic drama, containing as it does an explicit contrast between what bad wives and good wives do when left to their own devices at night: the bad wives fritter away their time at a luxurious banquet, whereas the virtuous Roman wife, Lucretia, keeps busy 35

spinning with her maidservants by lamplight (inter lucubrantes ancillas).

Ker describes the opposition as

that between “luxurious-licentious-consumptive” and “frugal-chaste-productive,” and sketches the deep resonance of the idea of lucubratio, literary but in origin also rustic and agricultural (what the good farmer does at night), with the moralistic tradition of the simple hardworking Roman of the Republic. When a Seneca shuts himself away to write for posterity, he takes care to position his nighttime studies as the essence of hard and sel ess work for the common good, a literary otium that is, in e ect, an extension of or even a di erent kind of negotium (“I shut myself in and lock the doors, so that I can be of use to more people. Never do I devote the daytime to otium, and I give over part of each night to my studies…. I have secluded myself not only from men but from a airs, including my own; for I am busy with the negotium of posterity”—posterorum negotium ago, Ep. 8.1). A similar anxiety to position the scholar’s nighttime otium as one worthy of a dutiful Roman comes out in the preface to Pliny’s Naturalis Historia. Pliny is explicit that the work is done in nocturnal hours so as not to interfere with the o cia of the empire: my days, he says to the 36

future emperor Titus, are devoted to you (NH praef. 18; cf. praef. 24).

Even Gellius, who hardly mentions

his negotium, nonetheless feels compelled to stress in the preface that “I made myself busy and weary by rolling and unrolling many a bookroll in every break from negotium (negotiorum intervalla) in which I could steal some otium (furari otium potui)” (praef. 12; cf. 23). For archaizing conservatives of Gellius’s era, lucubration has taken on deep associations with hard work and duty, and it is no coincidence that these same elite chose to overlook the elegancies of Augustan and Silver Age literature to concentrate on the hardy texts of the Republic. What at rst seems a simple case of a scholar needing to be alone to concentrate on reading and writing turns out to be far more: a cultural construction of otium that carries with it essentialist notions of what Romanness should comprise.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Roman cultural schematic is the other natural way to spend one’s evening, that is, in entertainments with

p. 118

Reading and Memoria 37

Memorizing is an important goal for Gellius and his community.

A principal aim of the NA is to collect

items “worth relating” (memoratu dignum, praef. 2) and to keep them in a sort of literary storehouse (quasi quoddam litterarum penus) both “as an aid to memory” (ad subsidium memoriae, praef. 2) and as inspiration to help the memories of others grow more rm (praef. 16). Gellius models the behavior. A few examples: at 6.17, Gellius claims to quote from memory Plautus, Sallust, Vergil, Ennius; at 10.29, Ennius again; at 15.8, Favonius (an entire speech learned by heart); at 17.2, Q. Claudius Quadrigarius (24 chapters from the Annales); at 19.8, Caesar (a gobbet from the de Analogia); at 17.20, Plato (Pausanias’s speech from the Demosthenes at 10.19.3, Favorinus’s quotation of Erasistratus at 16.3, Fronto’s brief quotation of lines of Plautus and Ennius at 19.8, Antonius Julianus’s chanting or singing of the early Latin poets Valerius Aedituus, Porcius Licinus, and Quintus Catulus at 19.9.10 . A characteristic a ectation in this learned community is to state that this or that obscure word or usage occurs in this or that antiquarian writer; that in turn implies, or at least claims, a prodigious memory. So, too, do parlor game questions like “Which of the early poets used the verb verant, in the sense of ‘they speak the truth’?” (18.2.12; cf. 19.7.3–11). It is true that most of the quoted and referenced bits are snippets, which can be learned from compendia such as the 38

NA itself.

39

The goal, however, clearly is something else: wide-ranging reading, deft excerpting,

and

memorizing from archaic and other texts central for the early cultural history of Rome. On a practical basis, one needed to have the relevant passages to hand in order to participate as one of the learned elite. But the importance of memoria goes much further than that. For a Roman, memoratu digna has special resonance. Memoria is not simply “memory,” but “what is worth remembering from the past”: individuals and families, of course, but also historical and cultural traditions, including those linguistic, literary, and 40

ethical.

The treatment of earlier Roman literature as an object to be memorized and studied rather than as

actuated entertainment is part of that process of negotiating what is worthy of memoria within the society as a whole. The intensive focus on memorizing has also, of course, an impact on how one goes about the activity of p. 119

reading. That memorization is not an

aspect or re ex of “oral culture” or the like, but is fundamentally

tied to the text is underlined by a tale told in 19.1 about a Stoic philosopher who shows himself fearful in a storm at sea. When Gellius politely questions the man about the con ict between belief and emotion, the Stoic tells him: “Since you are eager to hear, listen (audi) then to what the founders of the Stoic sect thought about that brief but necessary and natural fear that I experienced; or rather, read (lege). For if you read it, you will both more readily believe, and you will remember it better” (nam et facilius credideris, si legas, et memineris magis, 19.1.13). The Stoic then takes from his little bag a bookroll containing the fth book of the Dissertationes of Epictetus. One or more of the following seems implied: (1) you need the physical bookroll to be able to see it with your eyes, so that the visual stimulus of the letters can help you remember; (2) you need the physical bookroll so that you can read at your own pace, and as necessary read again, to help you remember; (3) you need the physical bookroll so that you can remove yourself and concentrate on the text. We would like to know in more detail how reading and memorizing intersect, and an important passage at the front of 17.2 helps us along that path. There, Gellius comments in some detail on how he ideally and perhaps at times actually goes about his reading: After I/we read (legebamus) the book of an early writer, I/we tried (conabamur) afterwards—so as to invigorate the memory—to call to mind and review the passages in that book that were worthy of note, both admirable and censurable. This exercise was really useful for ensuring my/our (nobis) recollection of elegant words and expressions. For example, I record (notavi) the following words I have been able (potui) to memorize from the rst book of the Annales of Quintus Claudius, a book I/we read (legimus) over the past two days. (17.2.1–2)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Symposium). The masters do likewise. Explicitly from memory are, for example, Taurus’s quotation from

He now transcribes gobs of prose, fully 24 sections (3–26), remarking with false modesty (27), “These then are the few things (pauca) concerning that book that memory brought to me (mihi) subsequent to the reading (post lectionem), and that I (ego) have noted down for myself.” We can grant that scene and claim are idealized and in uential at the same time, a paradigm meant to in uence the way that the reading community constructs itself. Reading and memorizing are by habit intertwined. As a routine exercise, the 41

reader is supposed to try to recall verbatim the things “worthy of note,” which can include entire passages. p. 120

By implication, the reading activity is at least

at times organized to facilitate the act of memorizing—

perhaps by pauses allowing one to recollect and test the memory, or by reading repeatedly. Now one would suppose that memorizing was largely a solitary activity, and probably it was. But, Paulus’s home, they “heard Laevius’ Alcestis read aloud” over dinner, then on the way back down to Rome played the game of quoting memorized phrases and verses to one another. What is the reader expected to assume here? Is the idealization so strong that we are expected to accept that Gellius and Celsinus can memorize so much on the y from a single, uninterrupted reading of the play (by Gellius’s account, they discuss 19 di erent exempla on their trip home)? Or is there more to be assumed in the social context of the reading itself? At 19.8.7, Gellius says that when Caesar’s de Analogia was brought out and the opening sentence read to the group, he committed it to memory, apparently on the spot but without further detail as to how the individual memorizing intersected with the group reading event. In the passage at 17.2 quoted just above, “we” read and “we” try afterward to recall the worthy passages; but Gellius o ers as evidence 24 sections that “I” memorized and “I” recorded from the book that “we” read the other day. At rst, one 42

might be tempted to take “we” as that epistolary “we”—the so-called nos modestiae   —so common in Gellius. But the rst-person singular is deployed in exactly those two places where the activity is clearly individual: the fact of having committed the passages to memory (quae meminisse potui), the physical act of writing out the passages (notavi). Could the “we” here, who read and work on recalling passages, be a group of readers? We won’t be able to answer that directly, because the passage is nally too ambiguous, but we should remain alert to the possibility as we turn to examine the extensive evidence in Gellius for group reading behaviors. In the event, we will nd that there is, in fact, a social context to reading that, however strange to us, could encourage routine memorizing: not only the vying with peers that sharpens the wits, but practical elements such as pauses for mental re ection, repetition of a phrase or sentence or entire passage as part of the group’s scrutiny of the text, or repeated rereadings in the context of the group.

Reading in the Anonymous Group I have already remarked that in Gellius, reading and other text-centered events commonly occur within deeply social contexts, much more so than in our own culture. We have already seen some examples of this, p. 121

but a

systematic presentation of evidence will serve both to esh out that statement and to delineate

some speci c, characteristic behaviors. First, though, it needs to be remarked that there are a great many cases in which the nature of the reading event is impossible to determine. The passage just examined (17.2), in which it was unclear whether and when the reading and memorizing was an individual or group activity, helps make this point. The confusion—does the rst person plural refer to the anonymous group, or is it a conventional equivalent for “I”?—is deep-seated in the NA. Examples like the following can be multiplied many times over: I/we found (animadvertimus) it stated in books which I/we read (legimus) dealing with the life of P. Scipio Africanus, that Scipio … was accused before the people by the tribune of the plebs … and that Scipio, although under accusation, neither ceased to shave his beard and to wear white raiment nor appeared in the usual garb of those under accusation. Since it is certain that at that time Scipio was less than forty years old, I/we marveled (mirabamur) at the statement about shaving his beard.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

interestingly, the presentation in Gellius tends in a di erent direction. In 19.7, at the dinner with Celsinus at

I/we have learned (comperimus), however, that in those times the other nobles shaved their beards at that time of life…. (3.4; trans. after J. C. Rolfe) Rolfe in his translation assumes the nos modestiae, and translates “I” throughout. Evidentially, this is dicey. Our own cultural assumptions lead us to assume “I” for this sort of behavior—reading and noticing an 43

anomaly, and then ferreting out the historical evidence to explain it.

But what of an ancient reader? What

are the probabilities in this and its many companion passages that the rst person plural is dictated not by conventional modestia but by the context of a group reading experience? By way of rst attempt at a response, a telling example. At the opening to chapter 2.23, Gellius writes, “I Apollodorus, Alexis, and other such comic writers. And while I am reading them (legimus), they are really terribly pleasing, and even seem elegant and charming in composition—so much so that you would think that nothing could be better. But if you collect and match up the Greek from which the Latin derives, and with thought and care you assemble individual passages to read, the Latin together with the Greek, one alternating with the other, the Latin starts to look exceedingly lifeless and lowly.” Now to this point, it is hard for a modern reader (i.e., one who recognizes the use of nos modestiae) not to think of Gellius reading alone. To collect together passages for comparison is, after all, a sort of scholarly project. But in the very p. 122

next sentence, a di erent scenario suddenly asserts itself: “And just recently this exact experience happened to me (nobis). I was reading (legebamus) the Necklace of Caecilius, and it was a great delight both for me (mihi) and those who were with me (et qui aderant).” Gellius will go on to say, of course, that they then read the Menander original for comparison and found it vastly better than Caecilius, but what arrests attention here is the sudden insertion of mihi et qui aderant. In a scene in which we had imagined Gellius alone, it now appears that he is in the company of others. For this last sentence the clear meaning is, “We were reading Caecilius, a great delight for me and the group that was there with me.” It turns out that the 44

comparing of Greek and Latin texts is, rather, a group activity.

As we’ll see, exactly this happens also at

9.9, where the critical comparing of Theocritus and Vergil’s Eclogues plays out aput mensam, that is, as a 45

group activity among the invited guests at dinner.

There is no doubt, by the way, that Gellius does in fact use the “modest” rst person plural conventional in 46

epistolary and similar contexts.

But what is fascinating in contexts like the one just cited is the question of

how the reader is to know whether an “I” or a “we” is to be assumed. Does the reader assume “I” because of the epistolary convention, or a “we” because of an underlying scene in which group reading is conventional? Or is it the case that the anonymous group is so weakly present that the contrast between “we” and “I” is itself a weak one, of little linguistic presence? In high literary Greek, one can speak of οἱ περὶ Γαληνόν, and mean indi erently either the man himself or the man together with his entourage. So here, too, perhaps “we read” can mean, in our terms, indi erently “I read” or “we read” in the cases in which the situation is unmarked. At 1.21, there is a scene in which Gellius is studying a certain note in Hyginus’s Commentaries on Vergil, and suddenly mentions what happened “when I had read Hyginus’ note to Favorinus” (4)—in other words, he stops his studies in order to read the passage aloud. One has the sense of an easy movement from reading by oneself, but while sitting together with others, to interaction with the group. There are in any case quite a few examples in which the group activity is clear, and these will allow us to isolate some distinctive behaviors. Since, as already suggested, the magister is an informing gure in p. 123

Gellius, let us begin

with some scenes from his school days. A passage at the front of 11.13 is remarkable

enough to quote in full: At the home of Titus Castricius, a teacher of the discipline of rhetoric and a man of weighty and solid judgment, a speech of Gaius Gracchus, In P. Popilium, was being read aloud (legebatur). At the beginning of that speech, the words were arranged with more precision and musicality than is

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

regularly read (lectitamus) comedies taken over and translated from Greeks like Menander, Posidippus,

usual for the early orators. These are the words, composed just as I have indicated: quae uos cupide per hosce annos adpetistis atque uoluistis, ea, si temere repudiaritis, abesse non potest, quin aut olim cupide adpetisse aut nunc temere repudiasse dicamini. The ow and sound of the well-rounded and smooth sentence delighted us extremely, to an unusual degree, and all the more since we saw that a composition of this sort had been pleasing to Gracchus, a distinguished and austere man. But when those same words were read over and over again at our request (eadem ipsa uerba saepius petentibus nobis lectitarentur), Castricius admonished us to consider what was the force and value of the thought, and not to allow our ears, charmed by the music of the well-cadenced speech, to ood our minds as well with empty pleasure. (11.13.1–5)

sensibility for the rhythm and sounds of oratory. Gracchus’s sentence is striking for its repetition of words 47

and sounds, the balanced

and chiastic phrasing of the clauses (long, short, short, long), and for the overall

rhythm. Yet it hardly rises to the level that it seems reasonable—to us—that students ask it to be read again and again (saepius lectitarentur). Importantly, our students wouldn’t ask that anything be read again and again; nor do modern instructors need to worry that students will so closely attend the musicality of a 48

sentence that the meaning will be lost.

The very experience of hearing the words when read aloud to the

group—what one listens to, what one listens for—is strikingly di erent. This is not news: Norden’s Die antike Kunstprosa eloquently described ancient attitudes toward literary prose a century ago. But as we try to think through the mechanics of group reading events, it is important to recall that the ancient reader had been trained to experience reading, and especially reading aloud, in ways that are utterly unfamiliar to modern perceptions. The di erences are not, however, solely interior. Sociologically, even the brief scene here implies a situation in which someone (one of the students, perhaps) reads the text performatively; the students ooh and aah and demand an encore; the text is read again; more clamor and discussion; after p. 124

several

iterations the teacher nally intervenes. The rest of the chapter is taken up with Castricius’s

demonstration, at length, of logical and stylistic problems with Gracchus’s expression in this sentence. The way in which a small section of text is held up by the group to intense scrutiny, repeatedly, interactively, and 49

at length, is hard to parallel in modern society.

A similar scene plays out at 17.20, also at the home of one of Gellius’s teachers, in this case, the Greek Calvenus Taurus. Here, Plato’s Symposium is being read (legebatur). After a small passage (180E: seven lines) is read aloud to the students, philosopher and master Taurus turns to Gellius and admonishes the “young rhetorician”—rhetorisce, playfully said—both to notice the extraordinary melody of Plato’s prose and yet not to let the charms of the wording divert him from the important subject matter (4–6). The thematic parallel with 11.13 is matched by parallel sociological circumstances. The text is both physically and notionally at the center of the event; a short section is read; a pause for magisterial comment and group interaction. The same social parameters seem to be behind 1.4, where the teacher Antonius Julianus works over a short passage—again, with focus on the need for logical as well as stylistic re nement—from Cicero’s pro Cn. Plancio, for the bene t of a select group of adulescentes who are studying with him. Note that in all these cases, the text is read not merely for information or entertainment. Nor are the listeners passively attending the lector. Rather, one has the sense that the text is examined in order to nd passages worthy of interrogation. The phrase “model passages” may spring to mind, but that is not quite right: the passages serve not simply as positive or negative exempla, but act rather as vehicles for group discussion and magisterial instruction of an improving kind. The reading event, that is, is nested within the larger social dynamic of the group. That this habit of turning over a passage in a group is not mere schoolroom behavior is readily established. We have already seen examples (e.g., 2.23, 13.31, 19.8), and others are in the wings. But let us begin with a reading event depicted in extraordinary detail, this time involving Favorinus. At 3.1, Gellius and others

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

The passage serves as vivid reminder that the educated audience of antiquity was trained to a very di erent

(“we”) were with Favorinus on a temperate late winter day, taking a stroll in the courtyard of the Titian 50

baths.

As they were walking, the Catilina of Sallust was being read aloud (legebatur); Favorinus had noticed

the book in the hand of a friend (amicus) and ordered it to be read ([librum] in manu amici conspectum legi iusserat). Once a short passage on avarice (Cat. 11.3: 4 lines) is reached, Favorinus then looks at Gellius and p. 125

asks him a pointed question on the content (“How exactly does avarice make a man’s body

e eminate?”).

Gellius gains time for himself (cunctabundus) by answering, “I too have been on the verge of posing this question for some time now, and, if you hadn’t beat me to it, I would have asked you this very thing.” Immediately, one of the sectatores of Favorinus, an old hand in things literary (in litteris veterator), butts in to remark what he had heard the grammarian Valerius Probus say on the topic. Favorinus dismisses the remark, and now turns attention to an unnamed man of considerable learning (homo quispiam sane doctus) four lines of Sallust be read aloud again (Favorinus legi denuo verba eadem Sallustii iubet), and once the lines had been reread he nishes his argument with the learned companion. As the scene unfolds, we get a gradual sense of the hangers-on involved in this ambulation around the baths: in addition to Gellius, friends (amici), followers (sectatores), and at least one doctus of rank more or less equal to the great teacher. None aside from Gellius are named: here as everywhere in Gellius, the great teacher brings along with him the anonymous crowd. Several aspects of the scene in 3.1 merit our close attention. First is Favorinus’s reaction to nding an interesting book in the hands of a friend: he orders that the book be read aloud (by the friend?) to himself and his entourage. The ease of movement from discovery of the book to a group reading event is arresting— and reminiscent, in its di erent way, of the ease with which Galen becomes part of a group reading event when he comes in upon a friend deep in a medical text (above, page 94). Equally striking is the ease with which the reading event moves from discussion, back to the passage in the text, and onward to more discussion—in the end, two pages of discussion over four lines of text. The purposes for which the text is used are also worth remark. As indicated, the text is read until a passage of interest is discovered. Once discovered, the reading is suspended while the passage and its implications are scrutinized. In this case both Sallust’s meaning and the more general topic are addressed at once. The text is interrogated to see what it will yield on a di

cult point of philosophical inquiry; yet the text is presumed to hold not the truth, but

rather a thought-provoking, noble re ection on the topic. The discussion characteristically combines urgent philological investigation into the exact meaning of the antiquarian text with optimism that the text can be improved by more re ned thinking: the engagement is simultaneously with “Sallust” and with one’s contemporaries. The combination of directed inquiry and open-ended discussion is what makes the texts p. 126

51

enduringly vital to the community.

Finally, there is the

interesting negotiation of the intellectual

challenge that Favorinus mounts to the text. The text cannot be interrogated unless it has an advocate to speak for it: who, then, will interpret and defend the text? Favorinus’s attention rst falls on Gellius, who is not ready and de ects it; a sectator tries to step in, but is quickly dismissed by the master; a learned companion is then found willing to engage. One has the clear sense of a pecking order among the entourage, and of a continual vying to maintain or better one’s place. Personal competition for status, as is natural, forms one of the principal bounds within the community. Since the community de nes itself in bookish terms, that competition plays out in relation to texts and to the masters of texts. Reading a text aloud with a view to learned discussion and disputation is, as said, a recurring event in Gellius’s world. Sometimes the text is well known—a signi cant detail given the audience of docti. We have already seen this in the case of 3.1: one can comfortably assume that Sallust’s Catilina was a much-studied work in this archaizing period, and in any case the remarks on what Valerius Probus had said on the passage show that the text is well worn. Similarly, at 17.5, in an unde ned setting, a passage from Cicero’s de Amicitia is read in the company of learned men (in coetu hominum doctorum), which leads “a certain sophist, skilled in oratory, a man of some note among that group of acute and subtle teachers called the τεχνικοί” to raise a ne problem of logic in Cicero’s argument. In the scene that follows, the interest is clearly not so

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

who was with them on the walk. After the learned gentleman opines, Favorinus then orders that the same

much in the text, as in the remarks and disputation that attach to the text. Implied is not simple reading but reading over and over: the sort of deep knowledge of a text that leads to ever more subtle re ections on the text and its implications, and thereby makes the text memoratu digna. Not all the texts in such scenes are so familiar as Sallust and Cicero, however, at least not to us. At 1.6, a speech of Metellus Numidicus (censor, 102 BC) is read to a crowd of learned men (multis et eruditis viris audientibus legebatur), who then severally and at apparent length dispute an infamous passage on the usefulness of wives, an argument capped by the comments of Gellius’s teacher Titus Castricius. At 13.29, the 13th book of the Annales of Claudius Quadrigarius is being read to Fronto and his hangers-on, including Gellius (M. Frontoni, nobis ei ac plerisque aliis adsidentibus). After a certain passage is reached containing the phrase cum mortalibus multis, one of the group, a man of particular learning (cuidam haut sane indocto), complains that the use of mortalibus multis assumes advocacy of the text, arguing (with tendentious eloquence) for the appropriateness of the phrase, to the admiring ears of the crowd. Again, a member of the group does not hesitate to interrupt the reading p. 127

with a comment; nor does Fronto hesitate to stop the reading

cold in order to argue the point at length.

Other scenes at Fronto’s house at 19.8 and 19.10, already canvassed, work the other way around—in 19.8 a philological dispute over the propriety of harenae leads to the fetching and reading of a passage in Caesar’s de Analogia, which then becomes the basis of further philological quibbling; in 19.10, the dispute over the propriety of praeterpropter leads to the fetching and reading of a passage in Ennius’s Iphigenia—but in these cases, too, the text clearly acts as a vital participant in the vigorous intellectual competition that informs the community. Interruption of the text for comment and discussion can happen in public contexts too. A striking instance is at 16.10, where, on a holiday, one of the books of Ennius was being read—performed, we would say—in the Forum at Rome before a substantial audience (in consessu conplurium). The reading was, apparently, interrupted by the pressing question of what exactly Ennius means by the word proletarius. Gellius noticed in the audience (in eo circulo) a legal expert, a friend of his, and asked him to explain the word. The friend demurred, and then “we” caught sight of the poet Julius Paulus, who was able to give an erudite explanation on the spot. One doesn’t have to believe in the strict historicity of this scene in order to be struck by what is able to pass for verisimilitude. Clearly the habit of interruption, of using a text interactively, is entrenched. Even in performance, a text can be subordinated to the larger social dynamics that assume, in Gellius’s view, an eager, indeed urgent, investigation into the philological and other intellectual points of contention that drive the setting of social boundaries and hierarchy within the group.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

for hominibus multis in a work of history was stylistically inept, the usage being inordinately poetical. Fronto

Reading and Dinner Entertainment By way of coda to the discussion of group reading behaviors in the NA, let us quickly survey the familiar case of reading as dinner entertainment. Reading is sometimes described as after-dinner entertainment (I, too, have made this mistake), but the evidence in NA suggests that, for Gellius’s social group, reading most normally happened during the meal. The reading matter will also interest us, although examples in earlier chapters have prepared us to expect the challenges that the “entertainment” of reading might present. Thus at 3.19, “once the guests were lying down and the food had been placed before them”—that is, at the start of the meal—“a slave sitting alongside the table customarily read something either from Greek literature or particular instance of the general case—“a book by Gavius Bassus was read, de Origine Verborum et p. 128

Vocabulorum.” After a particularly silly passage on the etymology of parcus is read (parcus < par arcus, “like a strong box”), Favorinus pipes up with a “correction” (parcus < parum, parvum!). Noticeable are (1) the nature of the entertainment text and (2) the comfortable, and by now deeply familiar, interruption and commentary on the text. We are reminded of the elder Pliny, who also routinely had his familiares join him in listening to di

cult readings over a meal (Pliny Ep. 3.5.11–12). The habit seems to be common among

Gellius’s group, at least if we take apud mensam to mean over the meal. At 2.22.1, where the reading habits at Favorinus’s table are reprised, the phrase certainly must mean that (apud mensam Favorini in convivio familiari legi solitum erat aut vetus carmen melici poetae aut historia partim Graecae linguae, alias Latinae, clearly the same scene as that more explicitly described at 3.19). At 19.7.2, over the dinner of Julius Paulus 52

already discussed in detail, the Alcestis of Laevius is likewise read apud mensam.

At 9.9.4, the Bucolica of

Theocritus and Vergil are read aput mensam. This last is particularly interesting. The scene is lightly sketched, but it is the group “we” who participate in this side-by-side reading aloud of Vergil and Theocritus and notice a particular passage (Idyll v.88f ~ Eclogue ii.64f) where “Vergil omitted something which in the Greek is wonderfully sweet, but which however neither ought nor could have been translated” (4–6). That is, the sort of quiet, concentrated comparing of texts that we associate with scholarly work is 53

what, here at least, is happening over dinner.

After dinner is, explicitly, the normal time for conversation: 1.2.4, in convivio sermonibus, qui post epulas haberi solent …; 19.9.3, ubi eduliis nis et poculis mox sermonibusque tempus fuit …; cf. 15.2.3, simulatque modus epulis factus et utiles delectabilesque sermones coeperant…. Other entertainment can be introduced instead of conversation (19.9: at the time for conversation, Julianus calls for Greek singers, which leads to further singing and recitation of poetry; cf. 18.2, a literary game), or a reading event may ow from the conversation (e.g., 1.2). But clearly in Gellius’s world the implied norm is the relatively passive activity of listening to a lector over the meal (though hardly so passive as for us!), with more formal conversation, disputation, and verbal games to follow afterward. None of this, of course, is meant to suggest that reading always occurred, even in Gellius’s society, or that the end of a meal was always well de ned, or that readings and p. 129

conversations didn’t blur together in the natural course of events. At 2.22, for instance,

questions on the

poetry being read lead Favorinus to talk at length about the vocabulary for winds, so much so that Favorinus concludes with an apology for his long speech, which is “neither well-bred nor suitable” at a large dinner party (in convivio frequenti, 26). But the schema sketched here seems, on best evidence, to recover the social norms that Gellius wants the reader to assume.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

our own”—that is, this was the general habit at Favorinus’s table—“and on the day when I was present”—a

Reading and Understanding The NA also o ers precious evidence for the way in which reading should be done. Gellius and his compeers were alert to the manner of performance in public settings. At 16.6, Gellius sco s at a man who reads a passage from the Aeneid before a crowd “barbarously and without knowledge,” barbare insciteque, and then invites questions; Gellius is amazed at the con dence of this ignorant fellow (indocti hominis), an ignorance apparent merely from the way in which he reads the lines. We see the opposite side of the coin at 18.5, where a learned man (non indoctum hominem) draws a mighty clamor, ingentes clamores, from a crowd for reading the Annals of Ennius in a “knowledgeable and sonorous voice,” voce scita et canora. Striking in both “Knowing” what, exactly? Direct illumination will come from another remarkable passage, already encountered, which acts as a veritable primer on what legere, in the sense of “read aloud,” means to Gellius and his group. At 13.31, a boastful grammaticus in a bookshop claims to be the only true interpreter of Varro’s 54

Menippean Satires. Gellius happens to have a bookroll of the Satires on his person,

and goes up to the man

with the book in hand: “I ask you to read (pointing, apparently) these few verses and tell me the meaning of the proverb contained in them.” The grammaticus replies, “No, you read to me the words you don’t understand, so that I can explain them to you.” Gellius’s reply is most interesting: “How in the world can I read words that I don’t follow? Surely what I read will be badly punctuated and muddled (indistincta … et 55

p. 130

confusa),

and will even get in the way of your ability to concentrate.” The group now steps in. Several of

those present express their agreement with Gellius’s point and reiterate the request (viz. that the grammaticus read aloud and explicate). Gellius hands over the bookroll, explicitly an old volume of proven textual accuracy and clearly written (librum veterem dei spectatae luculente scriptum). Gellius now reports the incompetence of the reading of the grammaticus with mock horror: “But what should I say? I do not dare to ask that you believe me. Untaught boys picking up the book in a school could not have been more laughable in their reading; so did he both mangle the meaning (sententias intercidebat: i.e., by breaking up the phrases incorrectly) and mispronounce the words (verba corrupte pronuntiabat).” As the group laughs, the grammaticus gives back the bookroll with excuses about his eyes (too much lucubration), and beats his retreat. The scene in 13.31 is delightfully explicit about what is expected of a professional or gentleman-amateur reader. At the technical level, one must be able to pronounce the words accurately, of course, but also to command the phrasing and modulation necessary to bring out the meaning. When Gellius says he can’t “read” what he doesn’t follow, since it will be indistincta et confusa, he is not talking vaguely about something “indistinct,” but is speaking about the need to nd the right points of breath pause in the sentence (cf. distinguo, “to punctuate” a text). Similarly, when the grammaticus fouls up his reading, 56

sententias intercidebat refers to “cutting short” the clauses of the sentence,

that is, to mistaking the

phrasing and thus confusing the meaning. Since bookrolls are written in scriptio continua and usually receive scribal punctuation only at the end of the period, it is the reader’s task to construct the meaning: by proper word division, by phrasing of clauses and clausulae, and by a modulation of the voice that conveys his 57

understanding of the text.

To do so requires much more than technical training for a di

cult text like the

Menippean Satires. The group in this scene strongly endorses the view that understanding the text is a necessary preliminary to the sort of reading here practiced—that is, reading aloud to the group with a view to questions and discussion. To read “with a knowledgeable voice” (voce scita) encompasses, then, not simply “well-trained” but also “understanding the text” and thus “knowing how to make clear the sense 58

when reading to others.”

For antiquarian texts—central in this elite society—philology is therefore not

merely for the learned, but essential to the very act of reading. Or so Gellius constructs it.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

examples is (in)scitus, hardly an obvious adjective from our point of view. And what does it intend here?

p. 131

Access and Control of the Texts At 5.21, Gellius records the story of an unnamed friend (meus amicus, 1; amicus noster, 9) who is attacked for using pluria instead of plura, and who after some back and forth then silences his interlocutor (a bold little nitpicker, reprehensor audaculus verborum) by saying: Quite a few letters of Sinnius Capito have been deposited in a single bookroll in, I think, the Temple of Peace (Sinni Capitonis … epistulae sunt uno in libro multae positae, opinor, in templo Pacis). The rst letter was written to Pacuvius Labeo, and carries the heading (titulus), “pluria, not plura, ought to Latin. (trans. after J. C. Rolfe) An important part of the intellectual—and social—game is exposed here: not only must one be able to cite obscure and antiquarian texts by way of authority (Sinnius Capito was a marginally important collector of 59

linguistic and historical minutiae in the late Republic ), but one must also have access to these texts. In this case, the friend can rattle o

not only author and name of the book (Letters of Sinnius Capito), the number of

the epistle ( rst), the exact heading of the epistle (Pluria non plura etc.), the person to whom the epistle was written (Pacuvius Labeo), but also the place, and likely the only place, where one can nd it (Temple of 60

Peace). The a ected insertion of “I think” (opinor   ) expresses the deliciously casual way in which this learned community, by Gellius’s account, could command such details impromptu. The implication seems to be, “this obscure antiquarian bookroll can, if I recall correctly, be found only in the Temple of Peace, where it was deposited, and to which I am one of the few to have access.” The speaker is thereby able to assert both his own superior knowledge and a kind of control over the designated text. The parlor game is, in a word, exclusionary. The issue of the circulation of private writings has come up before. Galen, recall, categorized many of his works as “works written for friends,” meaning particular friends or students, including some works which were originally written “for myself,” all of which were later made generally available. Gellius refers to p. 132

analogous antiquarian examples: in 16.8, Gellius

determines the need to consult a volume of L. Aelius

Stilo (an early grammarian and Varro’s teacher), which he also nds in the library in the Temple of Peace. But on opening the bookroll he nds that “Aelius seems to have composed that book more for the sake of reminding himself than for the purpose of instructing others” (fecisse uidetur eum librum Aelius sui magis admonendi, quam aliorum docendi gratia). Similarly, at 17.7.5 (and cf. 17.13.10), the commentaries of Publius Nigidius Figulus, a contemporary of Cicero, strike Gellius as written “more as an aid to his own memory than for the instruction of readers” (ad subsidum magis memoriae suae quam ad legentium disciplinam). There is, then, a depth of tradition behind the practice of making “public” certain texts that seem not to have been composed with a view to circulation (although they may well have been composed with self-consciousness, or with a view to limited circulation among students or protégées). This (to us, strange) idea of “publication” seems to have been one thoroughly comfortable in the time of Galen and Gellius. The theme links intimately to how we view the use by individuals of so-called public libraries, a problem still in need of 61

adequate elucidation.

There is, then, a well-rooted tradition of special access to special texts. A de ning aspect of Gellius’s program is the obscurity and implied di

culty of access for many of the texts he mentions. This is in the

nature of the enterprise: the texts must be worthy of the literary snob appeal that is fundamental to Gellius’s type of work. The very act of excerpting carries implications. There is little point to copying out long passages for one’s learned fellows from, say, Vergil, and one nds little of that in Gellius. Rather, the e ort of excerpting and collecting is, as a matter of course, directed toward the obscure, the di

cult to

access, books not to hand (cf. Proem, 2). In setting forth 18 lines of Ennius, Gellius remarks almost apologetically that he adds these “just in case anyone wants to see the verses at once” (si quis iam statim

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

be spoken.” In that letter he puts forth the grammatical rules for why pluria and not plura is correct

desideraret, 12.4.4)—that is, Gellius assumes that his readers may have access to Ennius, but copies out the verses as a convenience. He does this also by way of convenience for other readily accessed authors, but rarely at such length. One is expected to know Vergil, for example, and only a quick citation is needed to remind the reader of the passage. More extensive excerpting comes typically from obscure works, that is, works di

cult to access. An extreme instance, but not unique, is the copying out of 24 passages from

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (an annalist who wrote at the turn to the rst century BC) in a single chapter (17.2); common is the copying of one or two passages from an unusual source. A full list of such sources p. 133

would be very long, but by way of illustrative sample I present here a list of the excerpts

of length (10

lines or more in Marshall’s Oxford Classical Text) in the rst book of the NA:

1.4 Julianus, Commentary on Cicero’s pro Gn. Plancio, 29 lines 1.6 Metellus Numidicus, On Marriage, 4 + 7 lines 1.8 Sotion, Horn of Amaltheia, 11 lines (1.14 Hyginus, On the Lives and Deeds of Famous Men, 15-line paraphrase) 1.18 Varro, Divine Antiquities, 12 lines Shorter excerpts in book one, by contrast, come from an impressive range of sources, from recherché to common; but here, too, there is noticeable weight given to the unusual. 1.3 Cicero, On Friendship; Theophrastus, On Friendship; Plutarch, On the Soul; Favorinus. 1.7 Cicero, Verrine Oration 5; On Pompey’s Military Command (and Gellius’s amicus quotes from memory examples from Gaius Gracchus, On Publius Popilius; Claudius Quadrigarius 3 and 18; Valerius Antias 24; Plautus, Casina; Laberius, Twins). 1.11 Thucydides 5; Iliad 3; Cicero, On the Orator; Aristotle, Problems 2. 1.12 Fabius Pictor, History; Lucius Sulla, Autobiography; M. Cato, Against Servius Galba; Labeo, Commentary on the Twelve Tables. 1.15 Cicero, On the Orator; M. Cato, On the Tribune Caelius; Iliad 3 and 4; Eupolis; Sallust, Histories; Hesiod, Works and Days; Epicharmus; Euripides, Bacchae; Aristophanes, Frogs. 1.16 Claudius Quadrigarius; Lucilius; Varro, Antiquities of Men; Cato, Origins; Cicero, Oration against Antony 6: Defense of Milo. 1.17 Varro, Menippean Satires. 1.21 Vergil, Georgics; Lucretius; paraphrase of Hyginus’s Commentary on Vergil. 1.22 Varro, Menippean Satires; Cicero, On reducing the Civil Law to a System; Cicero, On the Republic 2; Vergil, Georgics; Sallust, Jugurtha; Ennius, Annals; Cicero, Letters; Plautus, Asinaria. 1.23 Cato, To the Soldiers against Galba, extensive paraphrase. 1.24 Epitaphs for Naevius, Plautus, and Pacuvius. 1.25 Varro, Antiquities of Man; Aurelius Opilius, Muses. As said, many of the texts used by Gellius are remarkably obscure. I think in particular of the ranks of (mostly older) philological commentators that he brings into play, such as Aelius Gallus, Annaeus Cornutus, Antistius Labeo, Asconius Pedianus, Caesellius Vindex, Servius Claudius, Gavius Bassus, Publius Lavinius, Nigidius Figulus, Iulius Hyginus, Sempronius Tuditanus, Valerius Probus, Verrius Flaccus, Volcacius Sedigitus. But even luminaries of the archaizing age can be di

cult to access. At 1.23, Gellius says, “I would

have included the passage from Cato if I had had access,” which both tells us that Gellius does not have Cato to hand in his own library, and, by implication, that he would normally include the text in his excerpts, an act that often (not always) implies that Gellius is making available a text not generally to hand. As p. 134

mentioned, at 12.4.4 he copies lines of Ennius “in

case anyone wants to see the verses immediately,”

which seems to imply that Ennius is not on every bookshelf (or in every head), but can be got if one needs to. Similarly, at 12.6.3, Gellius seems to assume that, even if not on the bookshelf, one can easily enough get to a copy of that central archaizing text, the de lingua Latina of Varro. More surprisingly, he makes an

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

1.3 Stoic philosopher (Epictetus?), 18 lines (Greek.)

analogous comment at 17.13.10, in which he assumes that a reader “who has time (to pursue the di

cult

point of the origins of quin)” will be able to nd and read the Commentaries of Nigidius Figulus. But most of the obscure texts are cited in such a way as to carry the implication that they are rare, and not easily come by. Some examples in which the context suggests rarity or di

culty of access: the Problems of Aristotle

(2.30.11), Letters of Capito (5.21), Annales of Q. Claudius Quadrigarius (9.14), edicts of a praetor (11.17), Aristotle’s de animalibus (13.7.6), a speech of M. Porcius Cato “Nepos” (RE #11, an obscure grandson of Cato the Elder; 13.20), letters of Augustus (15.7.3), an old speech of Favorinus (15.8), Commentaries of Probus (15.30), Commentary on Proloquia of Aelius Stilo (16.8), the (now lost) Physica of Aristotle (19.5), Laevius’s Alcestis (19.7).

teachers, to reports of famous teachers in the recent past. For example, the NA accounts for an astounding percentage of references to visits (explicit or implicit) to one of the libraries at Rome, exactly because 62

Gellius is so eager to highlight exclusive sources.

The obsessive bookishness and narrow focus on certain

teachers is itself part of the claim to special status. The knowledge that this elite group has (or claims to have) is exclusive, something that no one else can have; the group claims, in e ect, a unique authority in the interpretation of the antiquarian texts. The texts themselves, as already remarked, are ones designated as central to a certain view of traditional Romanness, and thus the various competitive group interactions—to the uninvolved reader often bizarrely pedantic and trivial—should be taken not only as vying for status within the group but as e orts to stake out high-ground territory among the elite as a whole. Many of the strange behaviors among the group can be understood as e orts to claim this special status. At its extreme, the claim to control precise knowledge of the texts can verge on the absurd. One thinks, for example, of the claims for authority from ancient—that is to say, rare or unique—manuscripts. At 2.3.5, p. 135

Gellius reports that the grammarian Fidus Optatus

showed him once a copy of Aeneid 2 “believed to have

belonged to Vergil himself”; at 18.5, Gellius quotes his teacher Julianus saying that in order to resolve a textual question in Ennius, he procured “at great e ort and expense a bookroll of highest and venerable antiquity, almost certainly emended by the hand of Lampadio” (a grammarian of the second century BC); at 1.21.2, Gellius cites Hyginus, who in his commentary insists on a certain reading of Vergil on the basis of a copy of the Aeneid that “had come from the home and family of the poet”; at 9.14.7, more vaguely he “readily believes” those who claim to have veri ed a reading in Vergil written in the poet’s own hand. Gellius himself follows in this tradition: at 18.9.5, Gellius reports that he discovered a manuscript “of true antiquity” at the library at Patrae that to his mind settles a question of spelling in the text of Livius Andronicus; at 9.14.1, he resolves a textual problem in Claudius Quadrigarius by “inspecting several antique manuscripts,” and similarly for a problem in Cicero at 9.14.5 (and cf. the old copy of the Annals of Fabius 63

mentioned at 5.4, of Cato’s contra Tiberium Exulem at 2.14, of Cicero’s in Verrem at 1.7.1).

Modern 64

scholarship has found the more extravagant pedigrees claimed for these manuscripts hard to believe,

but

it is the very extravagance of the claims that illustrates the almost desperate measures that this community will deploy in order to assert its privileged status. That status carries with it, nally, the implication that this is the group that claims authority to determine, though internal negotiation, what is “correct” in speech and what is valuable in Roman literature. Masters like Favorinus and Fronto are central, since they are the ones, as we’ve seen, who are the principals in “reading and weighing the value of the writings of old” (in legendis pensitandisque veteribus scriptis, of Valerius Probus: 9.9.12). “Reading,” we now understand, can be construed—normatively—as an interactive process encompassing relentless evaluation. On occasion, we see the negotiation in process. At 12.2, for instance, Gellius outlines the appraisal of whether the younger Seneca, of the previous century, has enough 65

merit to continue being read:

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

The net result is a work su used with claims to special access: to archives, to rare books, to famous

Some think (partim existimant) of Annaeus Seneca as a writer of little value, whose works are not worth taking up, since his style seems commonplace and ordinary, while the matter and the thought are characterized, now by a foolish and empty vehemence, now by an empty and a ected cleverness; and because

p. 136

his learning is common and plebeian, gaining neither charm nor

distinction from familiarity with the earlier writers. Others (alii), on the contrary, while not denying that his diction lacks elegance, declare that he is not without learning and a knowledge of the subjects which he treats, and that he censures the vices of the times with a seriousness and dignity which are not wanting in charm. (12.2.1, trans. J. C. Rolfe) Antiquarian texts can come in for heated criticism, too, though they are almost always revalidated in the correctness of language is subject to constant and vigorous negotiation. At 18.6, Aelius Melissus (a contemporary grammarian) has the temerity to write a book “with a title mightily enticing to readers,” De Loquendi Proprietate (“On Correct Language”). Gellius wryly remarks, “Who could think himself able to speak rightly and properly (recte atque proprie) unless he had learned thoroughly those proprieties (proprietates) of Melissus?” Predictably, Gellius goes on to tear apart one of these “proprieties,” in good imitation of a masterly style by now wholly familiar. The NA is packed with commentary on what are the right ways to speak, to think; who are the right voices from the past to attend; who are the right arbiters— commentators and masters—of this rightness. At a remove, the commentary on commentators may seem tiresome, and the wrangling over minutiae absurd; but in its context this sort of learned disputation is critical, since it is the battle over these details that determines who will be the cultural gatekeepers for the 66

society.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

On what can be inferred (and not) of Gelliusʼs life, see Holford-Strevens 2003, 12–21. Holford-Strevens puts the publication of NA a er 178 and before 192. Galen wrote two treatises for Favorinus, neither extant: To Favorinus on the Best Teaching and To Favorinus, Concerning Epictetus (libr. prop. 44). Gelliusʼs teachers appearing in Fronto: Favorinus, Sulpicius Apollinaris, T. Castricius, Herodes Atticus; perhaps Antonius Julianus (see van den Hout 1999, 104); not the Athenian Taurus. Political figures appearing in Fronto: Sextus Erucius Clarus, M. Postumius Festus, Julius Celsinus; not the jurist Sextus Caecilius Africanus. For references, see index to van den Hout 1999. Fronto, a full generation older, will likely have known Galen, if only in passing: among Frontoʼs vast circle of acquaintance are three of Galenʼs consular friends: Aufidius Victorinus (eventually Frontoʼs son-in-law) and the father-son pair of Claudii Severi. Further below, in chapter 7. On quotation and theory of writing, see Olson 2002. Janson 1964, 97; Vardi 2004. In the preface, Gellius looks back in particular to Pliny the Elder, praef. 24f: cf. Stevenson 2004, 125. The analysis of the preface here largely follows Holford-Strevens 2003, 27–28. Here and throughout, I use the OCT of P. K. Marshall (1968). Cf. Galenʼs caustic remark, already quoted: “I have not written this book of mine for people whose way is like this: being constantly occupied, they cannot devote any time to reading or to anything else” (de opt. med. 1.13). Holford-Strevens 2003, 28. The title enjoyed a long, productive Nachleben (see Holford-Strevens 2003, 28 n. 9). Further on the title and its significance in Vardi 1993. On this theme see below, pp. 110 . Books 1–7, 9–20 contain 383 chapters that are wholly or mostly intact; 15 chapters in Book 8 are known by the brief summaries in Gelliusʼs table of contents. There also appears some loss (not large) at the end of Book 20. Aside from the acquaintances, detailed below, the contemporaries or near-contemporaries are all writers: Plutarch; the historian Arrian; the contemporary grammarian Aelius Melissus; the Hadrianic grammarians Caesellius Vindex and Terentius Scaurus, both of whom were probably alive when Gellius was young; Suetonius, who overlapped only Gelliusʼs boyhood; perhaps the jurist Neratius Priscus, of uncertain date but at least close to Gelliusʼs lifetime. The very fact that

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

end (e.g., Caecilius at 15.9, early poets at 19.9.10; Cicero and Ennius and Vergil commonly). Similarly,

13.

14. 15.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

16.

writers and teachers are the ones named makes it unlikely that Gelliusʼs omission of contemporaries is related to the conventional omission in lists, usually of writers, for those still living (“lest it look like adulation,” Pliny Ep. 5.3.5; cf. Quintilian Inst. Or. 3.1.21). The relationship with Castricius is, however, underemphasized in comparison to the others. Gellius writes himself only twice in Castriciusʼs company (11.13, 13.22; at 1.6 and 2.27, it is unclear whether Gellius is quoting from a written commentary or intends an eyewitness account), and no familiar noster or the like is employed: the bland statement usus sum eo magistro (13.22.1) is all we are told. Uncertain whether Celsinus himself or one of his family is the consul designate: see Champlin 1980, 14; Holford-Strevens 2003, 153–54. Philostratus VS 489–92. Favorinus liked to proclaim “oracularly” the paradoxes of his life: “Though a Gaul, I led the life of a Hellene; though a eunuch, I was tried for adultery; and though I quarreled with an Emperor, I am still alive” (paraphrasing VS 489). Good accounts of Favorinus in Holford-Strevens 2003, 98–130; Baldwin 1975, 21–30; Gleason 1995, 131–58; in brief, Whitmarsh 2005, 35–37. On the outrageousness of his sole surviving speech (= Dio Chrysostom Or. 37), see Swain 2004, 30–31. Such as Sextus of Chaeronea, the two Alexanders (Grammarian and Philosopher), and Claudius Maximus, singled out in Marcus Aurelius (Conf. 1.9, 10, 12, 17), or the long list of teachers and intellectuals in the SHA accounts of Aurelius (2–3) and Lucius Verus (2). Cf. Baldwin 1975, 47. Baldwin 1975, chapter 2. I.e., he did not live to hold the o ice. See n. 14 above. Courtney 2003, 118–20, 372. More on reading as dinner entertainment below. Dinner: 19.9 (Julianus); 7.13.1, 17.8 (Taurus); 2.22, 3.19 (Favorinus); other examples at pp. 127 below. Vacation: 9.15, 18.5 (Julianus); 12.5 (Taurus); cf. 17.10, 18.1 (Favorinus). Visiting the sick: 12.5 (Taurus); 2.26 (Favorinus), 19.10 (with friend Celsinus). The closest he comes is at 11.3.1, where he mentions taking a stroll when in Praenestino recessu, from which it is easy (but not necessary) to infer that he had a summer house at Praeneste. On host and home: Holford-Strevens 2003, 12; Baldwin 1975, 8. Noster: 11.15.8 (Apollinaris), 3.3.6, 5.11.8, 17.12.1, 18.7.2 (Favorinus); 1.9.8, 7.14.5, 9.5.8, 19.6.2 (Taurus). Note that in many respects this maps to the pupil side of the master-pupil relationship delineated in Galen: see chapter 5. Epp. 2.17, 5.6; cf. 1.3. Exceptional is 19.11, where Gellius quotes the versiculi of a friend (amicus meus), predictably unnamed; but that is not a recitation. Only three other poets appear in person in the NA, and all three “poets,” by Gelliusʼs depiction, show much more concern with philological learning than with poetry: Julius Paulus (16.10: Enniusʼs use of proletarius); Annianus (6.7: pronunciation of compound adjectives), an anonymus at 19.8 (propriety of the plural harenae). A scene involving declamation (by an unnamed youth) does occur at 9.15. “Indeed if we compare Gellius with, say, the younger Pliny, Juvenal, Fronto, or Apuleius, it is amazing how little he has to say about contemporary politics and military a airs, about legacies and real-estate business, even about his own experience in court….” Vardi 2004, 183. Relevant to this theme is Gelliusʼs striking habit of (apparently) quoting from and commenting on the commentaries of his teachers (e.g., 1.4, 1.6, 2.27, 15.5), which at times makes these people he knew well disconcertingly similar to teachers of earlier generations like Hyginus and Nigidius Figulus. Gellius quotes from the written commentaries as a convenience, perhaps, but it underlines how close, in Gelliusʼs world, the person is to his text. Strictly of the type are the scenes at 1.2, 1.10, 4.1, 5.21, 6.17, 7.16, 8.10, 8.14, 9.15, 13.20, 13.31, 15.9, 16.6, 17.3, 18.4, 19.10, and 20.10. Less strictly of the type but in similar vein are 9.2, 11.7, 14.6, 15.2, 15.30, 17.5, 17.21, 18.5, 18.9, 18.10, 19.1, 19.8, and 19.9. Other supposed instances inventoried in Baldwin 1975, 48 (1.22.6, 3.1.5, 3.1.7, 3.16.16, etc.) seem to me somewhat di erent in kind. On the subset of professional imposters, see Vardi 2001 (with bibliography). One must be able to read well to the group, for instance (see discussion of 13.31 below, p. 129f). Labeling someone “poorly educated” or the like is a red herring. Someone in the anonymous crowd could be male litteratus and still accepted, more or less, into the group: it is the stepping forward that gets such people excluded. The same idea seems to be behind Plinyʼs practice at Ep. 9.36; further at Ker 2004, 213f. On dictation, see Horsfall 1995, McDonnell 1996, 474f. The comments here on Quintilian follow Ker 2004, 213–16. 10.3.19: the presence of the amanuensis makes us change our writing style, “as though fearing his awareness of our imperfection” (quasi conscium infirmitatis nostrae timentes); 21: gestures in the process of writing “are ridiculous, unless we are alone” (ridicula sunt, nisi cum soli sumus). Cf. 10.7.16. The sociology of writing appears somewhat di erent, as there are more indicators that seclusion is normative, but even in that context our most explicit witness, Quintilian, presents his suggestion that writers seek total isolation as if there were

34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

39. 40. 41.

extraordinary advice. Consider what is implied by the fact that Quintilian (Inst Or. 10.3.22) feels the need to specify that the best place for writing is one quiet and free from onlookers. Writing poetry: Lucretius 1.142; Juvenal 1.51 on Horace; Tacitus, Dial. 9. Oratorical study: Cicero, Cael. 45; Q. Cicero Fam. 16.26.1; Quintilian Inst. Or. 10.3.25–27. Scholarly pursuit: Varro Ling. Lat. 5.9; Cicero, Parad. praef. 5; Seneca Ep. 8.1; Pliny NH praef. 18, 24, 18.43. Ker 2004. Further on Lucretia as an illustration of “good” domesticity in Milnor 2005, 5–46, esp. 30. Ker 2004, 233f highlights (and somewhat overstates) the counter proposition, that Pliny explicitly does this night work in service of the emperor, citing praef. 33, where Pliny says that he has created the index as a time saver “to spare your time and (therefore) for the public good.” On the general importance of memorizing in Roman education and society, see Blum 1969; Small, 1997. NA praef. 12 may be recalled in this regard, but such statements in the preface have more than a bit of the tongue-in-cheek about them. See above, p. 100. A traditional reading habit: see Konstan forthcoming. Cf. the discussion of memoria in chapter 1 of Anderson 2002; more generally, Gowing 2005 (with bibliography). Similarly in Galen: see above, p. 84, esp. de animi cuiuslibet pecc. dign. et curatione 5.65K: “This work will, I hope, be of assistance to the man of natural intelligence who also had that early training which gives him the ability, preferably, to repeat immediately what he hears, or at least to write it down.” The practice is very old (cf. the introduction to Platoʼs Phaedrus); for a historical sketch, Konstan forthcoming. Some additional specifics on the role of reading (to oneself, but with vocalization) in memorizing literature in Quintilian Inst. Or. 11.2.33; more generally 2.7.2. Kühner-Stegmann II.1.87–88. That Gelliusʼs historical facts are in error (see Holford-Strevens 2003, 254) is immaterial. The chapter gives us a bit more information. Gellius later cites some of the individual passages he would like to crosscompare, and he introduces the passages as follows: “I have ordered (iussi) that the (relevant) verses of both poets (Caecilius and Menander) be copied out and set forth for others to decide their merits.” Thus the group activity is followed by individual work on the scholarly question to hand. More on the topic of “scholarly” group reading behaviors in chapter 9. Cf., e.g., the smoking gun at 13.18, where ego is used in the clause that explains nobis praesentibus: Tum Apollinaris nobis praesentibus—nam id temporis ego adulescens Romae sectabar eum discendi gratia—rescripsit Claro etc. A good example of isocolon, as Norden saw (1898, 1.172): quae … repudiaritis = 32 syllables; abesse … dicamini = 31 syllables; aut in each case introduces a phrase of 10 syllables. Quintilian includes similar cautions not to get lost in the rhythms of prose: see esp. Inst. Or. 9.4.112 . At 2.2.9, Q. warns against the schoolroom habit of leaping to the feet and applauding at the end of each period; more on applause at Inst. Or. 4.1.77, 8.5.11–15; cf. 9.4.61–62. Perhaps the closest analogue in modern society is the group study of religious texts, e.g., the Talmud or the Bible. If that is the right text: balneas Titias, Lipsius : balneas sticias/stitias, codd. Baths, in any case. On what made a “classic” in antiquity, see Porter 2006. NA 9.8.15 is the earliest explicit reference to the notion of a “classical” author, according to Horsfall 1993b, 61–62, though of course the underlying idea is in play long before. Cum ad eum cenassemus et apud mensam eius audissemus legi Laevii Alcestin etc. The Latin is not clear as to whether these are cotemporal or successive events. The comparison (synkrisis) was itself a traditional activity (see Nervegna 2005, 109–10): Plutarch, De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute, 1.10, 331C (Homeric lines compared at the table of Alexander); Juvenal, Sat. 6.434–37 (Vergil compared with Homer); cf. Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.12.1 (Menander and Terence). Further on synkrisis and Gellius in Vardi 1996. Peter White (2009, 284) takes the passage to mean that Gellius has the book in hand because he is thinking of buying it. The Latin (tum forte ego eum librum ex isdem saturis ferebam) could, however, suggest that he happened to have the book with him, a scene that recurs; recall 17.3, where a learned youth happens to be carrying a copy of book 25 of Varroʼs antiquitates rerum humanarum and uses it (like here) to expose a know-it-all. For carrying a bookroll in the fold of a toga that functioned as a pocket, see 4.18.9. For “badly punctuated” cf. OLD s.v. indistinctus 1. This is a technical term for not finding the right places for breath pause, and thus not making sense of the phrasing. Cf. OLD s.v. intercido 2, sententia 8. More detail in Johnson 2004 and chapter 2 above. Cf. Galenʼs remarks on people who “are devotees of medicine or philosophy, though unable even to read in a fully educated manner (οὐδ´ ἀναγνῶναι καλῶς δυνάμενοι),” Libr. propr. 19.8–9K; above, p. 85. The other writings of this early first-century writer: on Syllables (Pompeius Gramm. Lat. 5.110.2 Keil), libri spectaculorum (Lactantius Inst. div. 6.20fin p. 49 Fritzsche), De antiquitatibus libri (Jerome quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim p. 15.10 Lagarde). The letters seem to have been full of philology, at least judging from NA 5.20 (citing Sinniusʼs letter for the

60. 61. 62.

63.

65. 66.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196073768 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

64.

definition of solecismus). Sinnius Capitoʼs judgment on the correctness of pluria is rejected by modern scholarship, even as an antiquarian stance: Kühner-Stegmann I.361. Opinor is added not to express actual doubt, but to refocus on the speaker—the deliberate assertion of “I”—and to draw attention to the phrase that follows, in templo Pacis. See now the excellent historical overview of public libraries in Rome in Dix and Houston 2006. Temple of Peace: 5.21, 16.8 (Letters of Capito, Commentary of Aelius Stilo); Forum of Trajan (edicts of praetors): 11.17; suburban library at Tibur: 9.14, 19.5 (Annals of Q. Claudius, Aristotle on water); Domus Tiberiana: 13.20 (speeches of Cato “Nepos”). References to libraries in Rome or its suburbs are collected in Boyd 1915; and see now Dix and Houston 2006 for an up-to-date review of the evidence. Again, an elite tradition informs this activity, as we can see, e.g., from the similar focus on antique manuscripts at Quintilian Inst. Or. 1.7.21–23. For the classic statement on the topic, Zetzel 1973, esp. 230 ; cf. Zetzel 1984, 60–62. Cf. other positions on this question gathered by McDonnell 1996, 478 n. 41. Among those who thought Seneca of little value was Fronto: de fer. Als. 3 (with heavy irony), ad M. Ant. de orat. 2–3 et passim. Wytse Kevlen, Gellius the Satirist: Roman Cultural Authority in Attic Nights (Brill 2009) unfortunately came into my heads too late to be included in this chapter.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0007 Published: April 2010

Pages 137–156

Abstract Fronto was the teacher and friend of Marcus Aurelius. Fronto’s Letters show a man intent on constructing literary culture within the context of the contubernium, an ideal of close connection and friendship. His pupil Aurelius, however, shows a strong inclination toward reading habits that privileged the solitary, a set of habits that his contemporaries judged idiosyncratic. The chapter also focuses on the use of excerpts and excerpting in imperial reading culture.

Keywords: reading culture, Fronto, Marcus Aurelius, Contubernium, solitary reader, excerpting Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction 1

Fronto (c. 95–c. 167), famously, was tutor to the designated emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. But he was no schoolmaster. Aristotle was likewise tutor to Alexander the Great, and we should be clear that 2

this is the operative paradigm. From an equestrian family of African origin (Fronto was born in Cirta), he emigrated to Rome early and grew deep roots there. The leading light of Latin letters in his day, Fronto 3

became a senator, a consul (142), later in life appointed proconsul (157/58, to Asia: we do not know if his 4

bad health allowed him to take the post )—and a very wealthy man. Brilliant as an advocate and particularly proud of (and praised for) his panegyric, his life and career is uncannily parallel to that of the younger 5

Pliny. So, too, is his passion for literary pursuit in general and oratory in particular, and his abiding conviction that these studia are the proper binding force in elite society. What survives of Fronto’s work is a curious collection of letters, clumsily put together—“edited” seems too 6

generous a word—after his life, probably in the third or early fourth century. Extant are about 250 letters, often trivial, mostly written by Fronto, but quite a few written to him (many from Marcus Aurelius). Yet the whole is hardly a rich mine of the daily workings of antiquity. From the letters one gets little sense of p. 138

Fronto’s regimen, or

business dealings, or life with his family, and a surprisingly strong sense of how

almost simple-minded was this genial leading light of his generation. The grave disappointment that scholars have felt on the matter of Fronto’s writing style—praised to the skies in his day, but now dismissed

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

7 Fronto and Aurelius: Contubernium and Solitary Reader 

7

as third rate even by his Teubner editor —can be put to one side for our purposes, as can the infamous history of the sole surviving manuscript (a palimpsest mutilated by the rst editor’s chemical treatments, 8

and now in large part illegible). Of more relevance is the simple fact of the haphazard, serendipitous nature of the collection. The more self-conscious letters will of course show the weight of the literary tradition, but by and large the witness here is unstudied, and thereby gives an important, if also limited, cross-check to Gellius’s construction of the Frontonian circle. Particularly fortuitous is the fourth-century compiler’s natural interest in the correspondence that includes the emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Here, too, our view is limited, but the collection’s disproportionate number of (mostly inconsequential) letters written by Fronto to Marcus and by Marcus to Fronto give important glimpses of the emperor’s idiosyncrasies, which as it happens include some interesting, quirky, and somewhat notorious habits as a reader.

“salon” or “school” that is sometimes imagined? How was the community around Fronto constructed, who constituted the community, and what was the importance or relevance of that literary society to the elite society at large? The nature of the evidence (sporadic) will allow only partial progress toward answers to these questions, but even so the conclusions will dovetail in intriguing ways with evidence already presented. Second, we will turn to focus on the gure of Aurelius himself, who as a determinedly solitary reader helps to ll in, as it were, a missing part of the picture. As we will see, his reading habits draw enough remark to allow us to say something about his own idiosyncrasies, but also have much to say by implication about societal norms. These conclusions, too, will have deep resonance with evidence already presented from other authors.

Contubernium and Literary Culture As we have already seen in Gellius’s account, Fronto was constructed by his contemporaries as the headman p. 139

of Latin letters in counterpoise to his Greek

rival Herodes Atticus. Fronto’s central place in the cultural

schematic led him into contact with the socially and politically powerful at every turn. As a senator, he as a matter of course rubbed elbows with this exclusive club of 600, but his position in the powerhouses of society was based on far more than that. The friends with whom he corresponds form an impressive list, as a sampling from only the rst 10 of the letters to the amici can demonstrate: in those, he writes with evident familiarity to a consul and intimate (perhaps also the teacher) of Aurelius; a consul and famous orator; two more consuls; a twice-consul and fellow student of Aurelius, important enough to garner a statue in the 9

Forum of Trajan upon his death; another consul (probably) and one of Aurelius’s future in-laws. More impressive yet, most of the letters are in fact direct correspondence with the imperial family, and in the case of his tutors Verus and Marcus, of a strikingly intimate sort. Only 292 of an original 680 pages of the sole manuscript of Fronto’s letters survive, but of those the imperial correspondence lls the vast bulk, about 80% of what is legible. Fronto did not make it into the emperor’s consilium, and he may well seem to us rather vacuous and hardly able to carry the weight of a magnus vir, but there is no question but that he consorted, comfortably and in uentially, with the most powerful circles at the heart of the Roman empire. Fronto was also a wealthy man. Property de ned economic status for a Roman, and we know of at least three, and perhaps four, estates. Perhaps the grandest was a huge villa at Surrentum, which sits underneath part of the modern town of Sorrento in Campania. Only in small part excavated, the ancient property occupied several hundred yards of coastline at this spectacular cli

site overlooking the Bay of Naples,

sported an elaborate nymphaeum and vineyards (M. Caes. 4.4.2), and had a vast mansion that must have dominated the ancient town and its surroundings (“the remains indicate that the word palace would not be p. 140

inappropriate to describe the

10

complex”).

11

The property seems to have once been owned by Augustus;

we do not know how Fronto came to occupy it. Fronto had at least one other villa outside Rome, also with substantial vineyards (again, M. Caes. 4.4.2, cf. M. Caes. 5.39–40). As yet undiscovered, this villa was closer

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

We will rst, then, focus on the people and society about Fronto. What was the character of the Frontonian

to the city, to the northwest along the via Aurelia and near the town of Lorium, a fashionable coastal area 12

that boasted among other things a large villa owned by Pius.

Perhaps distinct from this is Fronto’s villa

13

suburbana (ad amic. 1.6.1), whose exact location is unknown.

In the city itself was, however, the most remarkable of Fronto’s properties. At M. Caes. 2.2.5 Fronto quotes Horace and adds with patent smugness, Horatius Flaccus, memorabilis poeta mihique propter Maecenatem ac Maecenatianos hortos meos non alienus, “Horatius Flaccus, a renowned poet and connected to me through Maecenas and my ‘gardens of Maecenas.’” The horti Maecenatiani are, to say the least, prime property in Rome. Nestled along the Esquiline hill near the porta Esquilina, the gardens and house were famous in Maecenas’s day for their luxury (Horace Sat. 1.8.7,14–16 with scholia; Cass. Dio 55.7.6). The pedigree of the from Rhodes in AD 2 (Suetonius, Tib. 15.1), and Nero is said to have watched from a tower in the horti as Rome burned during the great re of AD 64 (Suetonius, Nero 38.2, cf. Horace, Carm. 3.29.10). That Fronto means to say that he owns the gardens of Maecenas and the residence there is certain: water pipes have been excavated in the area bearing the inscription Corneli(orum) Front(onis) et Quadrati (CIL 15.7438: Quadratus is Fronto’s brother). The house remained in the hands of Fronto’s descendants until at least the third century (CIL 15.7398), and was probably the Esquiline residence known as the domus Frontoniana still in the twelfth 14

century.

Whatever Maecenas’s original design, the house had been elaborated into a large domestic

complex by Fronto’s time. Still standing is the Auditorium of Maecenas (Figure 7.1), so called because the p. 141

large cascading fountain in the apse

on the west side was mistaken as theater seating by the nineteenth15

century excavators; the building is now recognized as a large hall with adjoining nymphaeum.

The room 2

gives some idea of the scale of the domus: the rectangular hall is about 2,000 square feet (230 m. ) and 16

almost 40 feet (13 m.) high.

Literally dozens of hangers-on could lounge about in this one great hall

without crowding.

Figure 7.1

The so-called Auditorium of Maecenas (chairs give an idea of the size of the room) Urgent for our purposes is a better understanding of who were the hangers-on in Fronto’s domus, and what they gathered there to do. What exactly was the relationship between Fronto and his circle? How did literary interests intersect with social relations? Was there a Frontonian “school,” as is sometimes asserted? This p. 142

very house, recall, was the backdrop to

scenes from Gellius already introduced. We were able to peek into

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

property is matched by its history. Maecenas bequeathed it to Augustus, Tiberius lived there upon his return

the house by virtue of the scene depicted in NA 19.10. The scene, as we have seen, is one of Fronto reclining on a Greek couch while builders show him plans for some new baths—to be installed for 300,000 sesterces (almost one-third the total of the senatorial requirement, an immense sum). Fronto is surrounded on all sides, Gellius tells us, by “many” men, all sitting, who are “well-known either by virtue of their learning or family or wealth” (circumundique sedentibus multis doctrina aut genere aut fortuna nobilibus viris). Gellius’s presence implies that there are others, less well known, as well. Clearly we are led to imagine a large room— something very much like the so-called Auditorium of Maecenas. The scene at Fronto’s house recurs, though with less detail, at 2.26 (apud Frontonem plerisque viris doctis praesentibus), 13.29 (a book is read to Fronto and nobis ei [= Frontoni] ac plerisque aliis adsidentibus), and 19.8 (a more vague “we” that includes a familiaris of Fronto’s who is an illustrious poet and Gellius as adulescentulus). Fronto as actor in these scenes use of language, resort to antiquarian texts both to introduce and to resolve questions, ever-present signals of culture and learning, such as the casual use of literary quotation and words and phrases in Greek. We have already seen that in Gellius’s portrayal, the construction of the audience and the typecast interactions interlock. The group is put together so that the community has available not simply the interested and powerful as spectators, but docti, both professional and gentleman-amateur, ready to be summoned as participants. Importantly, Fronto is only a teacher of sorts in Gellius’s portrayal. Even in 19.8, where Gellius visits as an adulescentulus, the time with Fronto is explicitly contrasted with the time spent with magistri and the student recitations (auditiones) that form Gellius’s occupation at that age (19.8.1); and the audience is explicitly made up of busy men of a airs (hominibus negotiosis in civitate tam occupata, 9.8.14). This does not stop Fronto from o ering advice that is decidedly magisterial in tone—he advises the group to be on the lookout for oddball forms like quadriga and harenae as they read high literary authors (classicus adsiduusque aliquis scriptor, non proletarius) in their spare time (quando forte erit otium), 9.8.15—but that advice is clearly to be taken as from a leader within the reading community. Fronto is not a magister, not a professional (grammaticus or anything else), and does not (indeed cannot, as a senator) take fees. As portrayed in Gellius, the Frontonian circle embodies primarily a particular idea of how an elite community should construct and value its leisure time. Fronto is at the top of that community. The question arises, then, how the evidence in Fronto’s own letters maps to the portrayal in Gellius. When p. 143

we turn to the letters to try to populate

Fronto’s manor, we nd that Fronto himself was prone to using

the words contubernalis and contubernium (e.g., in meo contubernio) to describe at least some of the group of men who attend him at his home. What constitutes the contubernium? It is often assumed that these men 17

lived with Fronto,

but the words contubernalis and contubernium do not in themselves carry that

implication: for example, at Epistulae ad amicos 1.3.1, Fronto has to add an additional phrase to make clear that Licinius Montanus stayed in his house (quotiensquomque Romam venit, in meo contubernio fuit, meis aedibus usus est; cf. ad amic. 1.10.1). The words do, however, imply not just an intimate, but someone with whom Fronto had extended, close, daily association at his house over some period of time. He uses the term explicitly of six men, and implicitly of a seventh. Four of these are at least a generation younger than Fronto. Thus, Fronto writes that Sardius Saturninus is “joined to me with the closest bonds of intimacy (artissima familiaritate) through his two very learned young sons ( lios suos doctissimos iuvenes), whom I keep regularly with me in the contubernium (quos in contubernio mecum adsiduos habeo)” (ad amic. 1.9). The signal term doctus recurs in another letter about one of these sons, Lupus, “a learned and eloquent man,” doctum et facundum virum (ad amic. 1.10). In the letter, it becomes clear that Lupus’s relationship to Fronto was de ned by the well-known institution of the tirocinium fori, in which a youth, in the manner of a high-brow apprentice, attaches himself to a leading advocate for his introduction into the ways and people of the forum. Interestingly though unsurprisingly, this legal apprenticeship is bound up in Fronto’s description with the role of contubernalis, and also with the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

encapsulates the now familiar habits of learned behavior that Gellius espouses: intense focus on the proper

general matter of literary education: “[Lupus is] a man who was inducted into the Forum from my house and my contubernium, who was instructed by me in all the gentlemanly arts” (virum, de mea domo meoque contubernio in forum deductum, ad omnis bonas artis a me institutum). We know one further detail about Lupus, which rounds o

the picture: Fronto writes on his behalf to Petronius Mamertinus, a former prefect

of Egypt and an important man, and mentions that Lupus is “a frequent listener and admirer of your poems.” The easy intermingling of literary studies, oratorical training, and connection with the powerful comes forth in other, briefer mentions of the contubernium. Writing to consul and then proconsul L. Hedius Rufus Lollianus Avitus on behalf of a fellow townsman, Licinius Montanus, Fronto mentions that Montanus is “a great devotee of the gentlemanly arts” (artium bonarum magnus sectator), along with similar marks of p. 144

praise for his literary and

oratorical accomplishment (ad amic. 1.3.1–2). The youth M. Gavius Cornelius

son of M. Gavius Squilla Gallicanus, consul ordinarius in AD 150 and proconsul of Asia in 165,

pleads a case, apparently his rst, which Fronto’s ill-health forces him to miss, but on which the 19

contubernales report;

again the relationship of tirocinium fori seems implied.

Not all the contubernales were younger or inexperienced. The term is used of the elder Sextus Calpurnius Iulianus, as Fronto pleads with Antoninus Pius to give him a third procuratorship as a point of honor for his old age (ad Anton. Pium, 10.1–2). Probably Fronto means that he and Iulianus were contubernales together 20

when they were young,

but clearly the word is used here (as commonly in Latin) for someone of the same

age. Similarly, Terentius Vanus, “long an intimate and among those most dear” and a man who “has performed many o

cial duties on my behalf and pleaded many cases,” is unhappy to be no longer part of

the contubernium by reason of a respiratory problem that forces him to live in the drier climate of North 21

Africa (ad amic. 1.3.3–5).

Vanus may be younger than Fronto, but he is certainly no tiro. Similarly, Fronto

writes of Sulpicius Cornelius (ad amic. 1.1) in ways suggesting that he is younger (e.g., the phrase innocentia fretus magis quam con dens) but also that he is a friend and not just an understudy: “we have lived together, studied together, shared laughs but also serious things” (habitavimus una, studuimus una, iocum seriumque participavimus). The letter of recommendation that Fronto writes does not use the term contubernalis explicitly, but the letter echoes—I think deliberately—Pliny’s Epistle 2.13.5: “whenever we studied together, I found much close and intimate friendship; he was my contubernalis in the city and out of it; I shared both serious things and laughs with him” (hunc ego, cum simul studeremus, arte familiariterque dilexi, ille meus in urbe, ille in secessu contubernalis, cum hoc seria, cum hoc iocos miscui). Fronto’s letter is addressed to Claudius 22

Severus, a consular father-son duo whom we met before in the context of the Galenic circle,

both of whom

were not only very powerful (the younger Severus was to marry Aurelius’s daughter) but also leading lights p. 145

of culture, with serious

interest in Peripatetic philosophy. Such men might be expected to catch the

Plinian allusion. 23

That is all that Fronto says explicitly of his contubernium.

It needs to be remarked that this picture does not

add up to the Frontonian “school” that many scholars want to imagine. Van den Hout writes that Fronto’s residence at Rome “was a sort of boarding house for young men of the upper class…. His students received a higher education in the eld of literature, history and politics…. This Frontonian school was one of the 24

reasons for Pius to apprentice Marcus to Fronto.”

But the evidence does not amount to nearly so much. We

expect Fronto, a wealthy man with powerful friends and a leading light of the forum and of literary culture, to have about him amici of a variety of sorts who participate in cultural exchange; we expect some of these to stay with him in his residence, just as they do with Pliny or Spurinna; we expect some of the younger men to be under his wing as they learn the ways of the Forum, just as they do in Tacitus’s Dialogus (Dial. 2). When Fronto writes to the proconsul of Africa on behalf of his fellow townsman Licinius Montanus, he suggests, “I would like for this man to be treated by you just as you would demand that your hospes, your contubernalis, your consiliarius, be treated by another” (huic tantum honorem haberi a te velim quantum tuo hospiti contubernali consiliario tributum ab altero postulares). The trio hospiti contubernali consiliario seems to lie along a graduated line of intimacy: hospes = a guest-friend, often used of a fellow countryman; contubernalis = daily associate; consiliarius = one of the inner advisory circle to a great man, analogous to a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

18

Or tus,

25

member of the consilium to the emperor.

The contubernales were, in short, young men training for the

forum and other men who were “friends” but also social inferiors—that is, the entourage that great men were expected to have about them during the day. For a literary man like Fronto, that will mean a group with strong interests in things literary. There is nothing special in Fronto’s usage, by the way: already in the late republic Cicero complains that his neighbor, Arrius, is “a veritable contubernalis who does not go to Rome expressly so that he can spend his whole day philosophizing with me”; thus Cicero is bothered even after mid-morning (by which time the salutatio crowd has gone home), and, he complains, he can get no writing done (Att. 2.14.2). From this example, we are reminded that for the vir magnus the cultivated nature of the p. 146

associates and

their activities is a traditional feature of the group of amici in daily attendance sometimes

labeled contubernales.

because they turn up in letters of recommendation. Consistently if not quite universally, the virtues of literary culture are an important topic in the letter of recommendation, and a brief survey of examples will show some real-world consequences for an individual’s involvement in literary society. As we have seen, Sardius Lupus is “learned and eloquent,” doctum et facundum; Licinius Montanus is characterized by “re ned learning and eloquence,” doctrina etiam et facundia … eleganti; Cornelius Or tus is praised for his oratorical acumen; Sulpicius Cornelianus is notable for his “zeal for things literary and re nement in the 26

gentlemanly arts,” litterarum studio et bonarum artium elegantia.

The importance of literary culture

extends, however, far beyond this particular set. Among the many instances brought to light in Champlin’s admirable and illuminating chapter “Literary Society at Rome,” I pick two per exempla that help to give 27

some idea of the centrality of literary culture in the larger web of social relations.

In ad amic. 1.4, Fronto

writes the proconsul of Africa, Q. Egrilius Plarianus, to recommend Iulius Aquilinus, “a most learned and eloquent man” (virum … doctissimum, facundissimum), who is marked by erudition in philosophy in the rst instance and oratorical eloquence in the second. The terms Fronto uses for why to prefer this learned gentleman are suggestive: “A man so learned and so cultured should naturally nd from a man of your serious character and wisdom not only protection but advancement and honor. Aquilinus is also, believe me, a man of such a character that he deserves to be accounted an ornament (ornamentum) to yourself no less than to me” (trans. Haines). Fronto goes on to say that “great crowds of people (maximi concursus) constantly gathered to listen to him at Rome” (ad amic. 1.4.2), apparently to hear him discuss Platonic doctrine. Yet this man is known from epigraphy as a provincial aristocrat who served as a judge and a military o 28

poet.

cer; and whose father was the epistrategus of Thebes, a procurator in lower Dacia—if also a

There is no reason to think that Aquilinus is seeking a position that directly exercises his

philosophical knowledge; nor is it right to think of this man as a “philosopher” in any strict or professional sense. Rather, his command of philosophy, like his command of oratory, is what makes him a special p. 147

companion and

“ornament” to the proconsul, and a worthy member of that special clique we call the

ruling class. Ad amic. 1.7 presents an interestingly di erent, and complementary, example. In this case, Fronto recommends Antonius Aquila, “a learned and eloquent man” (vir doctus … et facundus), with whom, it turns out, Fronto has little or no acquaintance. But he can nonetheless rmly recommend him on the basis of the judgment of certain men “who are all very learned and gentlemanly and dear to me,” doctissimis et honestissimis et mihi carissimis viris. That last is signi cant, for these doctissimi are particularly cherished by Fronto, and that fact is supposed to carry the day with his correspondent. The correspondent, Au dius 29

Victorinus, was Fronto’s friend and was, or was to become, Fronto’s son-in-law;

he also was a fellow

student of Marcus Aurelius, and on his way toward a second consulate. At this moment the governor of an unnamed province, Victorinus is asked to appoint Aquila as a public teacher of rhetoric for the youth. As Champlin notes, “The chain of patronage is striking, stretching back from the unknown state to the provincial governor, to the governor’s father-in-law and friend, to that man’s learned friends, and 30

ultimately to their client the pedagogue.”

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Note that we know the names of these contubernales and men in similar relationship to Fronto precisely

31

An important conclusion devolves from examples like these—which, again, are two of many.

Fronto’s

ability to advance the careers of his “learned” friends and friends-of-learned-friends demonstrates that literary culture is an important determinant of real-life advantages—social and economic status, real things—and not something cerebral or only notionally bene cial. Fronto’s own great wealth may itself have 32

been the result of exactly this web of social relations,

a web built upon the interconnections among those

who styled themselves the doctissimi. At the other end, even a lowly pedagogue can use his learning as a way to connect, through several links of a chain, with the provincial governor who controls the appointment he seeks. Fronto says to Marcus that he counts himself among those “who give ourselves to serving the ears of the learned (docti),” and it is for that reason that he must continue to pursue “with utmost care” his study into “even the ne minutiae” of what constitutes proper Latin (ad M. Caes. 4.3.6). We must be careful not to

p. 148

When we turn from the people to the literary goings-on in Fronto’s manor, the letters do not yield very much. There are hints. We have already seen that Fronto says of his relationship with Sulpicius Cornelianus, in language taken over from Pliny, “we have lived together, studied together, shared laughs but also serious things.” Similarly, Appian (the historian) is claimed as a friend, “with whom I have shared both a longstanding closeness and an almost daily habit of studying together” (cum quo mihi et vetus consuetudo et studiorum usus prope cotidianus intercedit, ad Pium 10.2). We see the Pliny-like exchange of speeches, with mention of corrections and readings, which certainly occupied parts of Fronto’s literary day and presumably 33

involved the group that surrounded him.

Fronto is, however, nally vague about the exact nature of the

social interactions that he describes as his studia with others. Nonetheless, the letters in broad sketch, with their determined emphasis on the values of the docti, give good reason to believe that the scenes in Gellius, however idealized, do re ect a social reality, and certainly a reality of dispositions and valuations. This in itself is an important conclusion. Ironically, it is Gellius and not Fronto who gives us the best peek at the reading community inside Fronto’s palazzo on the Esquiline. Yet Fronto’s correspondence is critical as both a supporting witness, and as a vehicle for perceiving the broader, real-world rami cations to the learned concerns of that community.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

mistake these studia as an intellectual a air without social and material consequence.

Aurelius the Solitary Reader We now turn to focus on Fronto’s correspondence with Marcus Aurelius, which will redirect our attention from social and communal interactions to the details of the system of reading. From these letters, we learn more than a bit about the idiosyncratic habits of the emperor-designate, and by contradistinction also about what Marcus and Fronto take as the norms of their society. A particularly striking instance is at ad M. Caes. 2.2.6, where Fronto writes that he is sending back Marcus’s verses by the hand of Victorinus, but with the roll carefully sewn up and sealed so as to keep “that little rat” (musculus iste, intending Victorinus) from poking in his nose (rimari). Fronto goes on to explain: “You see, Victorinus has never given me any verses quickly and all in a rush (ait te de industria cito et cursim hexametros tuos recitare), so that he is not able p. 149

to commit them to memory.” Setting aside the motivations imputed (playfully?) to Marcus, we

see that

he does two things that are odd: he reads aloud to his audience quickly (cito), but he also reads without 34

pausing (cursim);

this leads to Victorinus’s inability to recall the poetry. Importantly, the passage implies a

norm in which a reciter of poetry, at least of his own poetry and in the context of friends, is expected to read slowly and with pauses, and—strikingly—a listener is expected to be able to memorize chunks on the y 35

that he can carry away to share with other friends.

This is consistent with evidence already canvassed, but

adds precious detail. In reviewing the scene in the NA in which Gellius and Celsinus play the learned game of quoting back and forth snatches of Laevius’s Alcestis, a play they had just heard over dinner, I had posed the 36

question of what style of reading might be implied by the audience’s desire to memorize exempla.

The

passage in Aurelius’s letter gives a partial answer to that question: slow and full of pauses. The passage also makes clear that in certain contexts this type of reading event is normal, that is, wherein a slow, pausing style of recitation is driven by the presumption of certain habits (including memorizing select parts) on the part of the reader-listener. The emphasis on pauses and time for re ection dovetails also with other features we have already seen to be normative for this group: we have surveyed at length Gellius’s depiction of a reading community that not only tolerates but cultivates interruption for questions and remarks and debate, and not just in magisterial contexts but even in a (to us) seemingly unsuitable circumstance like a 37

public recitation of Ennius.

This is not the only context in which Marcus Aurelius proves unusual as a reader. In ad M. Caes. 4.12.5, when 38

Marcus was in his late twenties,

Fronto gently chides him for his strange behavior in public settings.

Fronto confesses that he has sometimes, in the company of a few intimate friends, called Marcus harsh and malaprop, and even disagreeable (durum et intempestivum hominem, odiosum etiam). The impetus to such an 39

outburst? Irritating habits like (1) looking “more severe making o p. 150

than is suitable” (tristior quam par erat) when

cial appearances at public gatherings, and (2) constantly reading books in contexts like the

theater and dinner banquets

40

(cum in theatro tu libros vel in convivio lectitabas; note the frequentative).

The fault is clearly social: this is a man too serious to accommodate to the social niceties. That this is itself a consequential matter is evident from the startling vocabulary—odiosum is a strong word to use of a man designated emperor—even though the remainder of the letter, like the correspondence in general, is fawningly full of protestations of a ection. We have the clear sense of a man lost in his interior world, of the 41

philosopher personality that becomes a leitmotif in the Aurelian biography. 42

clearly reading by and to himself.

In terms of reading, he is

We have already established that readings aloud over dinner were

routine, including the reading of serious matter, and it is in this context that Marcus’s readings alone should be seen. In a di erent context—in the early 160s, after he had become emperor—Marcus writes to Fronto that “I read your Alsian letters at a time that was good for me (meo tempore) while the others were still dining and I was lying down, content with a light meal, at the second hour of the evening” (de fer. Als. 4.2). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that his behavior—stealing o

to read by oneself during dinner—would also have

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

information about your hexameters, that evil and malicious man. He said that you deliberately recite your

struck his contemporaries as egregiously antisocial. Indeed, Marcus laughs at himself for this, anticipating Fronto’s reaction: “So much for my advice, you will say!” (de fer. Als. 4.2). The “Alsian letter” that Marcus is reading survives, and the “advice” that Fronto gives is of interest. Fronto had written to Marcus at the imperial villa in Alsium (de fer. Als. 3), a spectacular coastal spot 24 miles up from Rome. In this long letter of exhortation, Fronto with gentle sarcasm writes the following: What? Am I not aware that you went to Alsium with the intention of indulging yourself and there giving yourself up to recreation and mirth and complete leisure for four whole days? And I have no doubt that you have set about enjoying the holiday at your seaside resort in this fashion: after taking your usual siesta at noonday, you would call Niger and bid him bring in your books; soon 43

(expleres) p. 151

yourself up

with Accius, or soothe yourself with Lucretius, or re yourself with Ennius…. Then

even, if the fancy took

you, you would get on board some vessel, that, putting out to sea in calm

weather, you might delight yourself with the sight and sound of the rowers and their time-giver’s baton; anon you would be o

from there to the baths, make yourself sweat profusely, then hold

44

a

royal banquet with shell sh of all kinds, a Plautine catch hook-taken, rock-haunting, as he says, capons long fed fat, delicacies, fruit, sweets, confectionery, felicitous wines, translucent cups with no informer’s brand. Perhaps you will be asking, what sort of language is this? Listen then. I as a man greatly eloquent and a disciple of Annaeus Seneca call Faustian wines “felicitous” wines from the title of Faustus Sulla Felix. And when I speak of a cup “with no informer’s brand” I am talking about a cup without a spot…. (de fer. Als. 3.1–2, trans. after Haines) Given that the mode is tongue in cheek, these are by inference activities Marcus detests or, at the least, has no time for. The list is an interesting one: napping, reading poetry for entertainment and ethical or emotional bene t, boating, bathing, banqueting. The description of the banquet, in particular, is an 45

extended tease by his master and friend. Marcus’s delicate stomach could not take rich or excessive food;

“Senecan circumlocution” was a point of particular condemnation for Fronto and his student; and the sort of utterly pedantic allusion here, so familiar from Gellius, is not an entertainment that the austere Marcus 46

admired.

(This tells us by the way both that this sort of learned foolery was indeed practiced, and also that

it was not welcome in the emperor’s company.) In other contexts, we have seen sequences of this sort— reading, exercise, bathing, dining, learned conversation—set forth as an ideal of good living. For many, this 47

is exactly the sort of daily regimen that makes the elite life the better life.

By implication, Fronto

subscribes to that, or at least to most of that. Marcus apparently does not, or cannot. We see, then, that Fronto’s teasing is rooted in an implicit criticism of Marcus: that he cannot relax in a tting—socially normalized—way. It was not always this way. Letters from his youth make clear that, however serious Marcus was, he at least in broad sketch tried to follow the usual elite prescription of the balanced life. In ad M. Caes. 4.5.2, when 48

Marcus was in his early 20s, p. 152

he writes Fronto a description of his day: awake at the ninth hour of the night

(about 3 am), ve hours(!) of study, an hour of walking

to and fro in front of his cubiculum, then a boar

hunt; after noon, two more hours of reading on his couch (in lectulo), followed by some writing; in the evening, this letter to Fronto and an early bedtime because of a cold. In a letter written the next day (ad M. Caes. 4.6), Marcus again describes his day: because of his cold, he “slept somewhat late,” until the eleventh hour of the night (about 5 am), read and did some writing for about four hours, then spent the rest of the morning attending a sacri ce with his father Pius; after lunch, he picked grapes and worked up a good sweat; in the afternoon he returned to his studies, but for just a little while, and had a long chat with his mother; then bath, supper among the rustics in the oil-press room, a letter to Fronto, and bed. There is hardly the studied regularity of Pliny’s friend Spurinna here, but one detects nonetheless an attempt at balanced and alternating rhythms of life. Importantly, the literary activities of his day are mostly structured 49

into the late hours of the night and the wee hours of morning, a time naturally secluded from company.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

when you felt the inclination to read, you hone yourself (expolires) with Plautus, or pu

Nowhere in the Letters or elsewhere do we get a hint that Marcus participated in, much less created, the sort of literary salon atmosphere that existed at Fronto’s house. In later life, too, Marcus seems to look to literature for private, solitary relaxation rather than as a springboard into cultured society. As the imperial duties begin to press upon him, the correspondence picks up as a theme the problem of Marcus’s inability to put these duties aside. We have already seen this in the “Alsian letter” that Fronto writes to Marcus. A particularly striking instance for our purposes is ad 50

Antoninum imp. et invicem 4.1, written in his rst years as emperor.

51

Marcus writes, “[I have read]

a little

from Sallust and from Cicero’s speech, but by stealth as it were (quasi furtim), certainly in any case by snatches (raptim). So much does one care press on the next, my only relaxation all the while being to take a apart from society. At the end of the same letter, Marcus asks, “Send me something to read that seems to you particularly skillful in expression (disertissimum), either something of your own, or from Cato or Cicero or Sallust or Gracchus or some poet. For [with italics indicating phrases in Greek] I have need of relaxation, p. 153

and especially of this kind, that the reading uplifts

me and relieves me from besetting cares; also if you

have any excerpts from Lucretius or Ennius, sonorous ones, in grand style and if possible with the impress of character.” Here is a vivid reminder that the culture of reading was signi cantly di erent from our own. Marcus is clearly speaking in terms of private, personal relaxation—the alternative relaxation given in the same letter is to play with his toddler daughters (parvolae)—and yet the list corresponds to some of the weightier items in a graduate reading list today: challenging oratory on the one hand and (to us) quite di

cult poetry on the other. We recall that the “beach reading” that Fronto playfully imagines for a

leisurely afternoon at Alsium also includes Lucretius and Ennius. Note how typically intense is this elite idea of relaxation under the high empire. This is, of course, correspondence between two intellectual grandees, 52

yet even so the constitution of the entertainment is striking.

It is also of a piece with what we have

encountered elsewhere, from Galen’s senatorial friend who relaxes after a hard day at the Forum with a medical text to the many scenes of learned playfulness in Gellius. None of this is meant to suggest that Marcus did not as a matter of course interact with texts in social settings. We hear incidentally of a time when the young Marcus read aloud (recitarem) a letter of Fronto’s to his father Pius (ad M. Caes. 2.5.3); and another time when Marcus declaimed, again to Pius, a passage from one of Fronto’s speeches, with full histrionics (ὑποκρινάμην, and cf. ad M. Caes. 1.7.2). But the prevailing impression from the correspondence, as one might have guessed from the Confessions, is of a man whose intellectual life is mostly interior and deliberately secluded. This apparent fact is important as a corrective to any view that seeks too simplistically to situate intellectualism solely within society, but it is also signi cant that Marcus’s intellectual seclusion seems to have appeared rather odd to his contemporaries. The more social, communal situating of intellectualism that we see at play in Galen, Gellius, and elsewhere appear, by contrast, to be the norm.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

book in hand (librum in manus sumere).” In the context, furtim and raptim surely suggest reading alone,

Excerpting and the Culture of Sharing Not at all surprising, but interesting to see in action, is the habit of the sharing of literary texts hinted at 53

here and there in the correspondence. p. 154

leads Marcus

At rst, one might suppose that Fronto’s role as tutor naturally

to rely on Fronto for supply of some of the texts that form his education. Thus in

correspondence from Marcus’s early youth (the early 140s), we nd Marcus returning a selection of 54

speeches of Tiberius Gracchus that Fronto has supplied:

“I need hardly say how much I enjoyed reading

those speeches of Gracchus, which, with your exceptionally wise judgment and kindly intention, you encouraged me to read…. Farewell my sweetest of masters and friendliest of friends, to whom I will be ever 55

me these extracts of yours (excerpta tua)….” (ad M. Caes. 3.19). Perhaps a couple of years earlier,

Marcus

similarly makes mention of an extract of Coelius Antipater that Fronto had sent: “I have not yet read the selection from Coelius (Coelianum excerptum) that you sent, nor will I read it until I have hunted down my own wits [since he is mightily distracted by a speech he must write for the senate]” (ad M. Caes. 3.9.3). Coelius was an outstanding historian and stylist of the late second century BC, admired by Cicero (de orat. 2.54; de leg. 1.6), rated above Sallust in the quirky but in uential view of Hadrian (SHA Hadr. 16.6), and like Gracchus a natural target for archaizing interests. The selections from Gracchus and Coelius can, then, be taken as a part of the program that Fronto has in mind for the education of his pupil. Even so, one sees from the brief bits quoted above that these are not so much assignments or textbooks as recommended reading matter. In the later correspondence, as we have already seen, Marcus in c. AD 161 asks that Fronto send to him “something of your own, or from Cato or Cicero or Sallust or Gracchus or some poet,” and then, more speci cally, “selections (excerpta) from Lucretius and Ennius” (ad Anton. imp. et inv. 4.1). Similarly, in ad 56

Antoninum imperatorem et invicem 3.7

Marcus writes Fronto to ask that he share (inperti) any selections of

Cicero’s letters he might have, whether entire or incomplete (epistulas electas totas vel dimidatas). Fronto in the event (ad Anton. imp. et inv. 3.8) sends along all the extracts that he made for his own use, which included both letters on the speci c subjects of eloquence, philosophy, or politics, and those written with conspicuous elegance or striking vocabulary. Interestingly, he asks that Marcus have the extracts from the letters to Brutus and Axius copied and return the originals because, as he explains, “I haven’t made any p. 155

copy of the extracts to those.”

By implication, then, Fronto keeps on hand as a matter of course copies of

at least some of the volumes of literary extracts that he uses and shares. We get the sense that Fronto at times operates as the supplier of a sort of reader’s digest of readings for archaizing or classicizing enthusiasts. This habit is reminiscent of the extraordinary lengths that Galen pursued in order to supply Boethus and other powerful friends with the digested essentials for medical study. Only a couple of books, as opposed to extracts, are known to have passed between Fronto and Marcus, and both are unusual cases. Early on (probably c. AD 143–45), Marcus lends Fronto the Sosa of Ennius, a rare text, and Fronto returns a gussied-up copy “on superior paper, and in a more attractive bookroll with ner 57

lettering than before” (ad M. Caes. 4.2).

Later, in 161 or 162, Fronto sends to Marcus a volume, the de

imperio Cn. Pompei of Cicero, as a sort of friendly commentary on the then current problems of the Parthian War that Marcus was having to face (de bello Parthico 10). To another literary friend, Volumnius Quadratus, 58

Fronto is willing to lend some books of Cicero,

but these are no ordinary copies: rather, they are the unique

volumes which Fronto has personally emended, punctuated, and annotated (Ciceronianos emendatos et distinctos … adnotatos); and he lends them only on the proviso that they not be shared (ad amic. 2.2). In short, the correspondence gives substantial indications of a community that by custom shared texts not in the mode of a lending library, but in the mode of a master creating and then sharing special aids for his 59

pupils, much in the manner of the minor publications of Galen.

The fact that the “pupils” include the 40-

something emperor and an amateur but fully adult friend (Quadratus) demonstrates the nature of the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

indebted for all the literature that I know. I am very grateful, and well understand what you o er by showing

relationship: as with Galen, the sharing of these digests hovers between an act of homage to the powerful and an assertion of intellectual superiority. As for the many other books in Fronto’s personal library, we know that they were wont to travel in large numbers with him as he moved among his villas. Marcus in the 140s writes, “Are you at your villa in Aurelia or Campania? Make sure to write me and tell me whether you have begun the harvest and whether you have brought along crowds of books (multitudinem librorum)” (ad p. 156

M. Caes. 4.4.2). The implication seems to be that Marcus might be willing to come for the

autumn festival

if the library is strong enough to keep him entertained. We can guess that Fronto’s library, as was customary for a great man with literary tastes, may have formed one reason for his friends and followers to spend their days at his Esquiline manor. Recall the tale in Gellius in which Julius Celsinus mentions that a word occurs in the Iphigenia of Ennius, and Fronto immediately orders that the bookroll be fetched by a slave (NA 19.10); or best sense if Fronto was known to have had an extensive personal book collection, and one well known to the members of his entourage.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

Champlin 1980, 137–42 does the best job of sorting out approximations for birth and death dates. Still very much alive as a metaphor for the Romans: cf. Quintilian 1.1.23. Not AD 143: Eck 1998. Champlin 1980, 82 and 164 n. 13. For the formal parallels (some inferred) between the careers of Pliny and Fronto, see Champlin 1980, 80–81. At least the earliest allusion is in Nazarius (c. AD 325) and the first secure citation in the grammarian Charisius (latter fourth century). Further details and bibliography at van den Hout 1988, lxi–lxiii and testimonia ##20–27. Van den Hout 1999, p. x: “Fronto was no simpleton, only a third-class writer.” Of course, if we had his speeches we might make the judgment di erently; but I doubt it. Summary account in Champlin 1980, 3; full history of decipherment and editing in van den Hout 1988, lxvii . Ad amic. 1.1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10: Cn. Claudius Severus, either Arabianus, cos. ord. 146, an intimate and teacher of Marcus Aurelius (Medit. 1.14; SHA Marcus 3.3) or his son, cos. su . 167(?), cos. ord. 173 and future son-in-law of Aurelius; L. Hedius Rufus Lollianus Avitus, cos. ord. 144, procos. Africae 157/8, singled out by Apuleius for his oratorical ability (Apol. 24, 94–95), patron of the grammarian and future emperor Helvius Pertinax; Q. Egrilius Plarianus, cos. 144, procos. Africae 159; Ti. Claudius Iulianus, cos. 154, legatus Augusti pro praetore to lower Germany in 160, close enough that Fronto uses an a ectionate nickname (Naucellius, “little boatman,” from his command of the classis Germanica at Bonn); Aufidius Victorinus, cos. su . 155, procos. Africae, cos. ord. 183, Aureliusʼs fellow student and later Frontoʼs son-in-law, for whom a statue was set up in the Forum of Trajan; Petronius Mamertinus, either praef. Aegypti 133–37 and praef. praet. 139–43 or cos. su . 150, and either the father or grandfather of the Mamertinus cos.ord. 182 who became Aureliusʼs son-in-law. See van den Hout 1999 ad locc. for the o en substantial arguments over the details of consular dating and the like. I follow here the dates and other details as given in Der Neue Pauly, q.v. Here and throughout I follow the numeration of the Teubner edition (van den Hout 1988) for citations to the text of Fronto. Champlin 1980, 24; cf. Mingazzini and Pfister 1946. The identification is secure: found on the property is a marble inscription (Lʼannée epigr. 1945 nr. 38 p. 16, Surrenti = van den Hout 1988, 266, testimonia #14) in memory of Frontoʼs daughter, reading Corneliae Cratiae M. Corneli Frontonis [f(iliae)]. Mingazzini and Pfister 1946, 70. The existence of this villa was first sni ed out by Champlin 1980, 23; cf. van den Hout 1999, 93 (“if Fronto could visit Lorium daily, he must have had a villa nearby”), 140, 165, 202. On Piusʼs villa at Lorium: Marcus, Conf. 1.16.8; SHA Pius 1.8, 12.6; ISmyrna 600.1–18 (= CIG II 3176.A). So van den Hout 1999, 410 (“the villa in Aurelia … is too far away … to be called suburbana”), contra Champlin 1980, 23; further on the di iculties of definition for a villa suburbana in Champlin 1982, esp. 97–99. Champlin 1980, 21–22; van den Hout 1999, 53–54. Nash 1981, 1.160–63; Richardson 1992, 44–5, 200–201. The handbooks now routinely describe the hall as a place for dining, but that is supposition. The hall was 19.1 m. long (24.4 m. including the apse); 10.6 m. wide along the expanse of the hall, and 15.7 m. wide at the broader section opposite the apse. The floor of the hall was sunk about 6 m. into the ground, thus a vault of about 7 m.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

the bookroll of Caesar’s de Analogia, fetched to resolve a philological dispute (NA 19.8). Such stories makes

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

23. 24.

with a total height at the apex of over 13 m. from floor to ceiling. See Vespignani and Visconti 1874, 139; Heres 1995, 102– 12, esp. 104–5. The auditorium probably dates to the early first century (third Pompeian style for the frescos: Richardson 1992, 44–45), and is thus an early part of the gradual elaboration of the domus on the property. Haines 1928–29, 2.245 n. 2 defines contubernales as “his pupils who lived in his house.” Similarly, van den Hout 1999, 404, speaks of a “boardinghouse.” Not M. Gavius Cornelius Cethegus. Van den Hout 1999, 435 (contradicting p. 404). The context seems to imply that Orfitus is one of the contubernales, but that is not certain. Not, however, the military use of the word: Fronto skipped the usual service in the Roman army. Earlier editors assumed that this part of the letter referred to Montanus, but newly legible lines make clear that the subject here is Terentius Vanus: see van den Hout 1999, 404–5. The father = Cn. Claudius Severus Arabianus, cos. ord. 146, an intimate and teacher of Marcus Aurelius; the son = Cn. Claudius Severus, cos. su . 167?, cos. ord. 173, later Aureliusʼs son-in-law. The respectful tone of the letter argues for the father, but there are arguments on both sides: see references in van den Hout 1999, 400. On the role of Claudius Severus in the Galenic circle, see above, p. 78f. The list of contubernales in van den Hout 1999, 404 contains several red herrings. Van den Hout 1999, 404. Van den Hout is not however consistent on this point of view: he argues against the idea of a Frontonian “school” at p. 227. Cf. Suet. Vesp. 4.4, where Vespasian is said to have been “barred not only from the contubernium [of Nero] but even from the public salutatio.” The contubernium is the group that is welcomed to stay a er the salutatio and is allowed to spend (parts of) the day with the emperor; the next movement into the inner circle is the special group nominated the consilium. Only Calpurnius Iulianus (ad Pium 10) is recommended without praise of his cultural attainment. (Frontoʼs recommendation of Terentius Vanus (ad amic. 1.3) is too lacunose for us to know.) What follows leans heavily on Champlin 1980, 33–37, esp. for the epigraphical details. Or at least a poetaster: he inscribed two of his poems on the status of Memnon at Thebes. See Champlin 1980, 34 n. 27. On the problem of dating this letter, see van den Hout 1999, 411–12. Champlin 1980, 38. Further examples in Champlinʼs chapter, “Literary Society at Rome” (1980, 29–44), as already remarked. The two most spectacular of Frontoʼs properties (the villa at Sorrento and the Esquiline domus) had been owned by the imperial family, at least in the earlier history of the properties. We may well imagine that imperial favor was involved in the acquisition of these properties, whether directly or indirectly. Champlin 1980, 24. Ad Anton. imp. et inv. 3.7.2, ad M. Caes. 2.2.6, ad amic. 2.3; cf. ad M. Caes. 1.6.1, 1.7.2, 2.5. By itself, cursim can of course mean “quickly,” but in combination with cito and in the context, the meaning “all in a rush,” i.e., “without pauses,” seems inevitable. This does not imply circulation or transmission of full poems, at least poems of any size (see Parker 2009), but it is an important element in sharing things literary within the reading community, and in building a literary reputation. Above, pp. 104f, 120. NA 16.10: see above, p. 127. Van den Hout 1999, 180 dates to AD 148; Champlin 1980, AD 132 to 147. Or perhaps “more wretched”: so van den Hout 1999, 183. But tristis, meaning “serious” or even “grim,” seems better suited to the context. Not necessarily the same activity described at SHA Marcus 15.1, fuit autem consuetudo Marco ut in circensium spectaculo legeret audiretque ac subscriberet…. Champlin (1980, 107) takes this as “he would read a book or listen to conversation or subscribe documents,” but the phrase could equally well mean that Marcus (outrageously) conducted o icial business during the games (i.e., he read, heard, and subscribed documents). E.g., SHA Marcus 2.1, 2.6, 3.7, 4.10, 8.3, 15.1, 22.5; Cass. Dio 71[72].1.2, 71[72].35.1–2, 35.6. As in most contexts, it is a moot point whether alone might include the use of a slave as lector. Implicit is an opposition between expolires and expleres (a point missed in van den Houtʼs analysis: 1999, 511), which I take to be the contrasting styles of the authors, and the e ect of these styles on character (a natural consequence, from a Roman point of view). Haines (1928–29, 7) translates agitares as “discuss,” wrongly, as van den Hout (1999, 512) points out. The phrase convivium agitare is pointedly Plautine: cf. Miles 165, Asin. 834. Cass. Dio 71[72].6.3–4, 71[72].24.4; cf. ad M. Caes. 4.6.1, de fer. Als. 3.5. Fronto taught his pupil that “Senecan circumlocution is the great enemy”: Champlin 1980, 139. Cf. ad M. Ant. de orat. 2–3, 9–10; de fer. Als. 3.1–2, quoted just above; and Champlin 1980, 126. E.g., Plinyʼs friends Vestricius Spurinna and Pomponius Bassus. In contemporary medicine, riding in a boat, just as riding in a litter or carriage, constituted “passive exercise,” and was constructed as virtuous behavior. See above, pp. 36–42.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196075437 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

53. 54.

On the date (early 140s), van den Hout 1999, 167. A variation of the idea of lucubration (see above, pp. 114–17); cf., e.g., ad M. Caes. 2.8.2 (noctibus studeo), de eloquentia 5.4 (per noctem meditandum aut conscribendum). References to Marcusʼs tendency to read vesperā, a er supper, are collected at van den Hout 1999, 141–42. Probably in 161 or 162, but certainly before 167. Details on the date in van den Hout 1999, 259. The text given in van den Hout 1988 (expere podam etc.) is uncertain at best, relying as it does on extensive editorial additions to a text taken from an almost illegible page (A 239). The paraphrase of this sentence in Frontoʼs reply at de bello Parthico 9, however, urges “read” as the sense of the verb here. Even Fronto found Marcus too intense, and suggests to the young Marcus the role models of his grandfathers, who enjoyed actors (Trajan), music and rich meals (Hadrian), and wrestling and clowns (Pius) as relaxation: de fer. Als. 3.5. For an overview of the common Greek and Roman practice of excerpting, see Konstan forthcoming. The word excerpta at 3.19.2 refers back to the speeches of Gracchus, as van den Hout (1999, 138) saw, and thus I refer to a selection of speeches. Probably AD 139, given the apparent mention of a speech celebrating Piusʼs nomination as “Caesar,” but certainty is impossible. See van den Hout 1999, 112. Most scholars date to the early 160s, though van den Hout (1999, 256–57) thinks anytime before 161. Sosa Ennianus remissus a te et in charta puriore et volumine gratiore et littera festiviore quam antea fuerat videtur. McDonnell 1996, 489–90, mistakenly in my view, supposes a “doting” remark here, that the roll comes back more attractive “just for having been read by Fronto” (McDonnell certainly mistakes the Latin, which cannot mean “on a cleaner surface, in a more attractive binding”). Champlin 1980, 40 supposes Ciceronianos to mean “compositions by Quadratus in Ciceronian style”; corrected by van den Hout 1999, 437. Above, pp. 85 .

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

cient Intellectual 

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0008 Published: April 2010

Pages 157–178

Abstract This chapter explores three treatises of the satirist Lucian for what they imply not only about the norms of the reading culture that Lucian lampoons, but also for the thoughtful, subtle ways in which Lucian makes his critiques and seeks to privilege other ideals. In Lucian’s subversive presentations are detected the voices of those who did not subscribe to the high intellectualist writings that are the principal survivors of the high empire. The three treatises explored to that end are The Ignorant Book Collector (adv. Indoctum), On Salaried Posts in Great Houses (de mercede), and Symposium (convivium).

Keywords: Lucian of Samosata, Satire, reading culture, Adversus Indoctum, De Mercede, symposium Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction The writings of Lucian famously defy classi cation, since they range broadly from dialogue to rhetorical preamble, often with novel mixings of genre, and with a dizzyingly wide span of topics (encomium of a y to dialogues of the dead to the proper way to write history). The authorial persona tends, however, strongly toward the satiric stance. As we read through the corpus, we nd a detached and rather cynical observer who 1

can move swiftly from amused and amusing to caustic satire, and who is more often acerbic than light. The blend of satire, comedy, and parody with apparent seriousness creates challenges for interpretation. There is something peculiarly “Lucianic” in the tone and authorial stance of these disparate works that is more easily recognized than analyzed. Much could be built upon statements such as Branham’s remark (1989: 22): “the serious qualities of [Lucian’s] texts are the product of a subtle style of impersonation that wavers between wry caricature and authoritative evocation of a given role or mental attitude, the humor of which serves as a means of making foreign, fanciful, and subversive points of view accessible.” Of the man Lucian, we can say little. We know his birthplace (Samosata in Roman Syria) and era (born c. 120) 2

and a few odd details. He tells us more signi cant things about his life and upbringing (particularly in Somnium sive Vita Luciani), but the mocking tone of the authorial voice rightly leads at least some scholars to 3

hesitate at taking his statements at face value. E orts to link him to the circles of Gellius, Fronto, Herodes,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

8 Lucian’s Insu

p. 158

4

and

Galen stretch from the possible to the probable, but are nally uncertain. That he is contemporary to

the Aurelian era is, however, beyond doubt; and although the satiric stance makes analysis di

cult, he

stands as an important witness to the culture of this era. As we will see, he is particularly valuable as a multifaceted commentator who, in the process of satirizing all sides of the community, gives us insight into those elite whose writings—and viewpoints—do not adequately survive.

The Ignorant Book Collector The treatise commonly known by its Latin title, adversus Indoctum (et libros multos ementem), and pithily 5

antiquity as Πρὸς τὸν ἀπαίδευτον καὶ πολλὰ βιβλία ὠνούμενον, “To the man who lacks paideia and buys a lot of books”—a curious conjunction that will repay exploration. Paideia, a central concept, is a hard word to translate, because it can encapsulate so much in the elite Greek experience: “upbringing” and “education,” especially in the sense of aristocratic training in the liberal arts, but also the result of that training— learning, high culture, high status. How and why book buying should be linked with paideia will become clear as we work into the treatise. The adversus Indoctum is in any case an especially illuminating work for our purposes. In this treatise, the speaker attacks a Syrian—the “Ignorant Book Collector” of Harmon’s translation—who buys up expensive bookrolls without understanding how to use them. Importantly, it is not that the Syrian cannot read, but rather that he cannot properly make use of the books. The adversus Indoctum, then, as a matter of course talks in some detail, implicitly and explicitly, about what kind of reading behaviors are right behaviors and how these t in more broadly with assumptions about best practice in social and personal conduct. All of this, of course, is discussed in the context of the particular, elite social codes assumed by the speaker. The 6

time frame is that of the Aurelian era.

The treatise is also, however, challenging to interpret. The speaking persona is a shifting mask, as is p. 159

characteristic of Lucian; and the vehemence

of attack easily misleads the modern reader to lose sight of

the sly smile behind the mask, the lightly satiric voice that permeates the whole. In form, the treatise accommodates to the mode of a Cynic diatribe. That stance prepares the reader for a voice that is extravagant and exaggerated, and in particular exaggeratedly moralistic. The opening reads: What you’re now doing is exactly the opposite of what you intend. You think that by eagerly buying the nest bookrolls (τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν βιβλίων) you also will seem like a man with paideia (ἐν παιδείᾳ). But in your case it goes wrong side up, and becomes rather the proof of your lack of paideia (τῆς ἀπαιδευσίας). In the rst place, you don’t even buy the nest bookrolls: rather, you trust those who give recommendations at random, you are a godsend for swindlers who make fraudulent claims about their bookrolls, and you are a ready treasure-trove for the purveyors of these. How are you able to determine which bookrolls are antique and worth a lot, and which are decrepit and rotten besides—unless you judge by how worm-eaten and broken-up they are, and you take the bookworms as advisors in your appraisal. What and of what quality is the judgment you use to determine the (textual) accuracy and integrity (τοῦ ἀκριβοῦς ἢ ἀσφαλοῦς) in these bookrolls? (adv. Ind. 1) From the start, then, the speaker takes on the stance of the man who does command paideia, a gentleman7

scholar. Yet it is important to bring to mind that lurking in this is at least a bit of a joke. This very rst criticism—that the Syrian is “lacking in paideia” because he cannot judge the textual merits of an antique manuscript—can itself be read as a dig against scholars’ unreasonable expectations (or indeed pretensions) to knowledge. We have already seen that a somewhat pompous Galen thought it admirable that a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

translated by Harmon as The Ignorant Book Collector, was known to Greeks in the middle ages and perhaps in

grammarian could at a glance pass stylistic judgment on the spuriousness of a treatise under his name (de libris propriis, 19.8–9K), and that Gellius with sincerity glori ed others’ and his own ability to validate ancient manuscripts that resolve textual problems in Vergil, Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Cicero (above, pp. 134f). But the satirist Lucian, as will become increasingly apparent, approaches this sort of intellectual self-grandiosity with a smile. 8

The diatribe—or parody of a diatribe —continues: Yet even if I grant that you have selected out those very books that Callinus or the celebrated Atticus copied out calligraphically with every care (i.e., with attention to textual accuracy), what p. 160

make good use of it,

any more than a blind man gets anything from the beauty of young boys

(τυφλὸς ἄν τις ἀπολαύσειε κάλλους παιδικῶν). (adv. Ind. 2) The comparison is deployed with a mischievous smile, if not a smirk. We will in a moment see the rhyme and reason behind the unexpected parallel to a blind man’s perception and enjoyment of boys as sexual objects (παιδικά). But even at the moment, it injects a strange, discom ting—and funny—reading into the following sentence, in which the image of the boy-as-sexual-object now insinuates itself into the Syrian’s gaze upon his books: You with your eyes full open gaze upon the books, and wantonly (κατακόρως) by God, and you read some of them, running lightly over them (ἐπιτρέχων), and with your eyes keeping just ahead of your mouth (φθάνοντος τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ τὸ στόμα). (adv. Ind. 2) Vague sexual innuendo to one side, the surface meaning is clear enough: the Syrian is a uent reader, able to keep his eyes moving in advance of his lection. But his reading is perverse, an improper use of the bookroll, since uent reading is not nearly enough, not for the truly educated man. The speaker chides the Syrian for his insu

ciency:

Yet in my view that is not at all adequate: you have to know the virtue and vice of each detail inscribed in the book (εἰδῇς τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ κακίαν ἑκάστου τῶν ἐγγεγραμμένων), and to perceive what is the sense of the whole (συνίῃς ὅστις μὲν ὁ νοῦς σύμπασιν), even while also seeing what informs the arrangement of words (τίς δὲ ἡ τάξις τῶν ὀνομάτων), as well as knowing to what extent the author has perfected the work in accordance with the proper rules (ὅσα τε πρὸς τὸν ὀρθὸν κανόνα τῷ συγγραφεῖ ἀπηκρίβωται), and to what extent the work is debased and bogus and counterfeit (ὅσα κίβδηλα καὶ νόθα καὶ παρακεκομμένα). (adv. Ind. 2) We see here a clear delineation of how—from the point of view of the gentleman-scholar—one properly reads: the reader must (1) apprehend the moral ber of the piece, understanding in detail what leads to or away from virtue, (2) perceive clearly the thought and (3) likewise the rhetorical structure, and (4) evaluate 9

how well the work accords with established traditions of perfection. For this last, a coin metaphor is introduced: works that do not accord with tradition are debased or spurious or badly struck, and by implication must be excluded. Central to the metaphor, and to the passage as a whole, is the idea of the p. 161

cultural gatekeeper, one we have encountered

before. The gatekeeper acts as exclusionary judge (#4),

textual interpreter (#2, #3), and moral assessor (#1). All of this is spoken by a gentleman-scholar persona that is itself a parody. That fact might create severe complications for our own interpretation—how to know what is comic exaggeration and what is re ective of contemporary society?—except that this is by now well-known terrain. We know from the preceding chapters that Galen, Gellius, Fronto, and other contemporaries took very seriously exactly these duties of their own self-de ned communities. Within these communities of gentlemen-scholars—which, as we’ve

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

bene t does the possession a ord you, o amazing one—you who neither perceive the beauty nor

seen, included or intersected with some of the most powerful elite circles in Rome—there was a seriously engaged contest over who was the best judge and interpreter of texts, and on what grounds interpretation and judgment properly rested. The fact that the satirist now laughs up his sleeve at a pose so strikingly in keeping with the very reading communities we have been studying leads to an important if unsurprising conclusion: that not everyone, nor every intellectual, bought into or admired the sort of scholarly selfaggrandizement celebrated by Galen, Gellius, and Fronto. The speaker now moves on to attack the Syrian’s education, and to assert that the Syrian cannot know what is necessary to be able to assess, interpret, and judge a text. “Where could you have learned these things, unless once upon a time you got hold of a bough of laurel from the Muses like the famous shepherd. But 10

nor did you attend the same

haunts/schools (διατριβάς) as we did in our youth” (3). The famous shepherd is

of course Hesiod (cf. Theogony 30–34), and Hesiod now serves as foil to the other problem with the Syrian’s upbringing: for he is exactly the opposite of that admirably hard and hairy and suntanned (sic) poet of old (σκληρῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ δασεῖ καὶ πολὺν τὸν ἥλιον ἐπὶ τῷ σώματι ἐμφαίνοντι). That is, by counterpoint the Syrian is soft and plucked and pale and worse, so much worse in fact that it is “unholy” (ἀνόσιον) for him even to mention the Muses. Rather than hand him laurel, the Muses would drive him away, whipping him with myrtle and sprays of mallow, to prevent him from polluting the pure springs of Hippocrene! Later in the treatise (23–25), the speaker speaks more plainly, attacking the Syrian repeatedly and at length for his cinaedic habits: for debauchery with male slaves (23, 25), use of cosmetics and depilatories (explicitly following strictures laid down by the κίναιδος Hemitheon, 23), adoption of e eminate modes of bodily and vocal expression (“the p. 162

ways of walking and looking and talking,

and the thin neck, the white lead and mastic and rouge that you

people—viz., κίναιδοι—use to adorn yourselves,” 23). This is not mere calumny. Rather, it sets the Syrian at one side of a bipolar opposition that Lucian exploits elsewhere, and that is a common theme of the era. The most expansive Lucianic example is in his Rhetorum 11

praeceptor (Professor of public speaking),

where Rhetoric is imagined as a bride with opposing suitors: (a)

the guide of the rough road, “a man strong, hard, manly in his stride, showing a deep tan on his body” 12

(Rhet. praec. 9)—repeating much the same vocabulary used to describe Hesiod, the Syrian’s opposite —and (b) the guide of the easy and downhill road (cf. Rhet. praec. 26), “a man entirely wise and beautiful (πάνσοφόν … καὶ πάγκαλον), with swinging gait, e eminate neck, womanly eye, and a honey-sweet voice” (Rhet. praec. 11), who among much else advises (Rhet. praec. 23) a lifestyle of sexual depravity and e eminacy— immaterial whether real or a ected—as well as depilatories (“all over, but at least where most necessary”) as elements of the easy route to rhetorical success. Elsewhere, too, Lucian draws repeated connections between cinaedic a ectation and sophists of a certain stripe (e.g., Pseudolog.). Along similar lines, Lucian in Merc. Cond. 33 paints the image of the Stoic Thesmopolis, a philosopher of the old school (“a stern old man with a long white beard”), who was seated at dinner next to a cinaedus named Chelidonion (Little Swallow, “a fellow with painted cheeks, underlined eyelids, a lascivious glance, and an e eminate neck”). Philosopher and cinaedus are invited as potential contributors to the conversational entertainment valued by wealthy Romans of the era, and Lucian’s absurd image of the two side-by-side on the dining couch serves to objectify the diverse range of re ned intellectual wares available to the Roman consumer. There is more to the story: in the Roman tradition as well as the Greek, the question of manly deportment was long a deeply felt anxiety within the contentious history of rhetorical education in particular, and intellectualism p. 163

13

in general.

But even these brief parallels will serve to bring to notice that the

Syrian is here not

described but typecast, accommodated to a brand of (caricatured) intellectual condemned by traditionalists. We come to see, then, that even the attack on e eminacy and sexual depravity is culturally and intellectually grounded. It is not that the Syrian is illiterate, not even that he is uneducated, but rather that he is wrongly 14

educated and part of the wrong crowd. His teachers and classmates are “not the same as ours” (3),

his

intellectual alliances (for instance, with the wrong type of sophist) likewise at odds with the particular brand of propriety advocated by the speaker.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Helikon, where the goddesses are said to make their haunt (διατρίβειν), you haven’t even heard of, I’d guess,

Much of the remainder of the treatise revolves around the Syrian’s improper focus on the physical book as an instrument to knowledge. The Syrian is tendentiously described as being so clueless that he thinks the association with books in itself will impart learning: a strikingly ludicrous (if hypothetical) image is of the Syrian sleeping with bookrolls under his pillow and trying to wear bookrolls pasted together as clothing (4). A long series of comparisons, by way of mock elenchos, make vivid the point that a superior instrument does not translate into superior skill: the aulos of Timotheus or Ismenias will not help a bad aulete (5), the bow of Heracles will not help someone unable to string it (5), and similarly for the unskilled helmsman of a beautiful boat or rider of an outstanding horse (5) or player of a superior kithara (8–10); later, a hack medical man with the best equipment fails in comparison with an expert doctor wielding a rusty scalpel, and so it is too in the case of barbers (29). In the same vein, the book-collecting Syrian is compared to hopefuls of Peregrinus (14), or the writing

tablets of Aeschylus (15), with the expectation that the instrument will bring an advantage. The skill that the book-as-instrument does not bring to the Syrian is, of course, the art of reading: “But you, even though you’re always holding a book in your hand and reading it, know nothing of the things being read, but rather you are like an ass who listens to a lyre and moves his ears” (4). Several other musical exempla adumbrate the sense in which the Syrian is incompetent with his bookroll-as-instrument. In the most extended of these (8–10), the speaker describes a wealthy man, Evangelus, who wants to win a prize at the Pythian games. Unable to compete athletically, he decides to try his luck as kitharode (i.e., as a singer to accompaniment of a large performance lyre)—taking what he thinks is the quick and easy route to a prize. He is soon convinced of his talent by his toadies, who shout and applaud whenever he strikes the least harmonic chord. At the performance itself, he appears with magni cent dress and instrument—the p. 164

audience is awed by his bejeweled kithara, a “great marvel” (θαῦμα μέγα, 8)—but he opens with

dissonant

and chaotic chords (ἀνακρούεται μὲν ἀνάρμοστόν τι καὶ ἀσύντακτον, 9), breaks three strings, and sings with a voice that is thin and “far from the Muses” (ἀπόμουσον). He is laughed at by the audience and whipped o

stage by

the judges “for his arrogance.” Note the moralism in this parable: his arrogance derives from his interest in the easy road to prizes, his (consequent) disinterest in the hard work necessary to become a kitharode, his reliance on the (wrong) opinion of his toadies, his focus on the external trappings of the art rather than the art itself. As we’ll soon see, the Syrian likewise uses inappropriately ostentatious bookrolls and is convinced of his talents by toadies. Evangelus and the Syrian, we are told, “ t the same shoe,” except that the Syrian is “not in the least perturbed by the laughter of the spectators (τῶν θεατῶν, 10).” Evangelus, note, is not unable to play the kithara and sing, but is unable to do this in a harmonious, rhythmical, musical way. We see clearly in this and other comparisons that the art of reading is by no means constructed as an interior—or morally neutral—act. Again, this does not mean that the speaker imagines the Syrian unable to read silently and to himself, but rather that the speaker’s construction of the art of reading focuses on the performative, and agonistic, side of reading—those contexts in which the gentleman acts as lector and in which he is evaluated by spectators (θεαταί). We have seen the intense criticism of the Syrian’s paideia as unequal to the task of properly using or gaining bene t from (ἀπολαύω) a bookroll, and we have some sense of the sort of expert judgment and knowledge that the speaker thinks paideia gives to a reader. On a couple of occasions, we are told of the Syrian’s inadequacies as a lector in more speci c terms. These details are interesting in and of themselves, but what is particularly fascinating is the way in which inadequate performance transmutes into moral insu

ciency. This is hinted early on (4), where the Syrian is criticized

for being like book dealers and retailers who “just like you are barbarous in speech (βαρβάρους μὲν τὴν φωνὴν) and obtuse in mind, just as one expects for people who have no clear perception of good and bad (τοὺς μηδὲν τῶν καλῶν καὶ αἰσχρῶν καθεωρακότας).” More explicitly (7), the Syrian is compared to Thersites, that “ridiculous” (παγγέλοιος) man “dis gured in body” (διάστροφος τὸ σῶμα) familiar from Iliad 2, who, if he were to put on the golden armor of Achilles, would look as inappropriate, laughable, and disgraceful as the Syrian does with his πάγκαλον βιβλίον, with its purple vellum slipcover and golden rod. “Don’t you see [how equally disgraceful it is] … when in reading the bookroll you barbarize and de le and dis gure it (βαρβαρίζων καὶ

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

who collect the lyre of Orpheus (12), the lamp of Epictetus (13), the sta

καταισχύνων καὶ διαστρέφων), laughed at by men of culture (τῶν πεπαιδευμένων) and praised by the toadies who accompany you, who however also mostly turn to one another and laugh?” There is room for ambivalence p. 165

here: is the criticism

merely that he recites the text “barbarously,” that is, with faulty pronunciation, and

with poor perception of the moral underpinnings (“de ling”) and rhetorical structure of the work (“dis guring”), that is, with faulty emphasis, clause division, intonation; or is the Syrian implicitly criticized for his moral failings, which somehow debase his reading of the work? The terms chosen— καταισχύνων καὶ διαστρέφων—certainly have a moralistic ring; and Thersites, note, does not simply look ridiculous in the armor of Achilles, but dressing this most ungentlemanly gure in a hero’s garb is said to “disgrace utterly (ὅλως αἰσχύνων) both the maker of the arms [Hephaistos] and their owner [Achilles].” The curious connection between inadequate lection and moral failing is more explicit in another passage (27– what is the state of your soul when you lay hold of these books, and with what sort of hands do you unroll them?” The satiric blend of sexual rub and moral posturing is revisited at the end of the passage (28): “May you never lay hold with your hands, nor read, nor sully with your tongue (ὑπαγάγῃς τῇ γλώττῃ, undoubtedly 15

with sexual innuendo)

the prose and poetry of the writers of old.” Again, the hint of sexual depravity is

neither incidental nor purely comical. In the (parodied) view of the gentleman-scholar, only the pure should read aloud these sacred ancient texts. And the pure-of-soul, rightly educated, and able-to-interpret-thetext-su

ciently are, in this view, one and the same.

The Syrian’s insu

ciency is explored further in an earlier passage (16–17). We are told that the Syrian

knows all about taking care of his book-as-instrument—he knows to exercise a bookroll by rolling and rerolling, and how to make patches, trim frayed edges, treat the papyrus with oils, even that he should put on a cover to protect it and put in a rod to sti en the interior (16). But all of these are activities that men of 16

quality left to their servants or hirelings.

The Syrian also has, as we’ve seen, baseline uency as a lector

(able to “keep the eyes ahead of the mouth,” 2), but this, too, is no more than one expects of a slave or 17

freedman lector.

It is precisely the gentlemanly qualities he lacks: he doesn’t know how to bene t from the

use of a bookroll (ἀπολαύσων, 16: “gain bene t from,” not simply “enjoy”). The evidence? He doesn’t know the right way to talk (presumably once again a hit on the Syrian’s “barbarizing” speech) and he lives in a morally depraved fashion (16). By implication, this is because the Syrian is ill-read or at least inadequate in p. 166

his reading: “if books made men like that, they ought to be

given as wide a berth as possible” (16: trans.

Harmon). The speaker goes on to explain why one reads classical texts: “Two things can be acquired from the writers of old: the ability (a) to speak and (b) to act as one ought, by emulating the best models and shunning the worst” (17: trans. after Harmon). It now becomes clear that moral action, proper speech (which seems to include proper lection), and the right understanding of classical texts are tightly bundled. Morally depraved people are naturally poor in speech and lection and ignorant of the classics; and well-read gentleman-scholars are well spoken but also virtuous. All of these consequences ow as a matter of course from the set of oppositions that the speaker assumes in his cultural schematic. The social context in which this plays out is cut from the same cloth. The Syrian reads literature aloud over dinner (20), in the grand manner by now familiar to us, but the circle of friends who attends the Syrian’s readings is all wrong. They are not men of substance but toadies (κολάκες, 20; cf. the story of Evangelus). They shout “like stranded frogs” since otherwise they get nothing to drink (20). Worse, the Syrian’s following though famous is “cultured” in exactly the wrong ways: Bassus the sophist, Battalus the aulete, Hemitheon the cinaedus (23). The Syrian may think that by trumpeting his book collection, he will get 18

everything he wants from the scholar-emperor Marcus Aurelius (22).

But the emperor has many ears and

eyes: the ways the Syrian and his followers pass their time are notoriously decadent, and the Syrian’s sham attempts at elite intellectual display are in fact drunken orgies (23, cf. 27). In the event, the Syrian can o er no better than a grotesque and dim re ection of the intellectual ideals of the time.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

28), where the Syrian is taunted for his sexual depravity. The speaker asks (27), “One may well wonder,

It is hard at rst to nd a gauge to the social standing of the Syrian. He is wealthy, without a doubt. But he also is presented as having creditable connections. Though it may be tongue in cheek, he is presented as someone with reasonable aspirations to attention from the emperor (22). His is a society in which one of the pepaideumenoi might well come along and ask him about one of his books. He will of course be unable to discuss the contents intelligently—such is his failing in paideia—but this is clearly presented as a source of great shame for him within this social circle (18). The Syrian himself seems in broad sketch to belong to the same social rank as the speaker (cf. esp. the story in 25, in which he, albeit tongue in cheek, claims to have stood up for the Syrian), and the speaker is also—in accommodation to the Lucianic voice—a Syrian (19). In short, the Syrian seems to be not simply wealthy but in some sense one of the social elite. The diatribe, then, at least purports to distinguish an us as against a them within the elite ranks from the Greek east. The them in this equation are those who, whatever their education (clearly not ours) have not absorbed the contents and thus the lessons of the classical Greek texts that inform this particular idea of Greek elitism. Their super cial knowledge of the texts leaves them not only inadequate as readers, but morally unformed. The knowledge presumed for the us, by contrast, is implicitly at a very high level, and comprises a broad swath of texts. The speaker taunts the Syrian on this point: “What do you like best to read? Plato? Antisthenes? Archilochus? Hipponax? Or do you look down on these, and make the orators your particular study? Tell me, is it the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus that you are reading? No doubt you know that speech well and understand all the details, but have you dipped into Aristophanes and the Baptai of 19

Eupolis?”

(27). Elsewhere, in similar vein, the speaker sco s, “To be sure you have all the works of

antiquity pretty much at the tip of your tongue; you know not only all the histories but all the arts of literary composition as well, its merits and defects, and how to use an Attic vocabulary; your many books have made you the all-learned one, the pinnacle of education (πάνσοφόν τι χρῆμα καὶ ἄκρον ἐν παιδείᾳ)” (26). Earlier, in what amounts to a learned insider joke, the speaker tells the Syrian to go ahead and collect “those bookrolls of Demosthenes that the orator wrote in his own hand, and those of Thucydides that have been found, likewise 20

copied eight times

by Demosthenes, as well as all those that Sulla dispatched from Athens to Italy” (4). 21

The joke is that many such books would have been forgeries aimed at the gullible,

and this folds together

with the stance taken at the front, that the gentleman-scholar should be able to discern the textual value and authenticity of an antique book (1–2). At the conclusion of the text, the speaker notes that the Syrian could at least do what is by implication the usual thing, and lend out his books to whoever could make use of them, since he can’t really make use of them himself. But even here the Syrian fails, because he refuses to loan his books, “like the bitch in the manger who neither eats the grain nor lets the horse eat it” (30). Education—paideia—is, we come to understand, a very loaded expression in the worldview propounded by Lucian’s gentleman-scholar. Simple facility and interest in reading literature will not do. Rather, “learning” p. 168

of a

di erent sort seems necessary in order to t in with this (idealized) notion of a cultural elite. What,

then, does the gentleman-scholar expect? The answer, clearly, is a lot: • Education with the right people: the diatribe speaks sarcastically of not only where the Syrian went to school and who was his teacher, but which intellectuals were his schoolmates (3), and what is the education of the circle of friends and admirers now around him. Those educated in the wrong way (i.e., in the wrong group) will, like Thersites, be unable to overcome their ungentlemanly upbringing. • An ability to read performatively, and with detailed, deep knowledge of the meaning, style, structure, and conventions; and with a right-thinking appreciation and conveyance of the moral underpinnings and implications of the work. To do otherwise is to “barbarize”—a loaded term given that this is one Syrian speaking to another. • A broad knowledge of rather arcane persons and works in the literary tradition; also of the ne details of whatever text is being discussed, including an understanding of rhetoric and stylistics; and of what constitutes correct Attic usage.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 167

• Strikingly, also an ability to judge the text of a bookroll, from the point of view of both textual value and authenticity. • Finally, a willingness to loan books, so as to share the usefulness of the text among one’s fellows (as we saw also in Galen, above, p. 94). This particular is indicative of the intensely detailed way in which social interactions and expectations were encoded among the intellectual elite. What is especially striking about all this is that the treatise does not present the Syrian as someone aspiring to be a leading scholastic or scholar. Rather, he seems more simply to claim a place of some leadership among the elite. What is problematic for him is that certain elite of his era particularly valued learning, and ranks. In the adversus Indoctum itself (dated to c. AD 170), Lucian suggests that this inclination, not unnaturally, devolves from the interests of the “scholar emperor,” Marcus Aurelius (22). The contrasts in the cultural schematic are stark. The us are learned men, but also rightly learned: learned in the right things (the classical authors, details of composition and style, Atticism), who take the hard path to this learning, and who are morally virtuous, as we see even in the nest details of life, such as what they do at night (by implication, studying and sober dinner parties), and even how they bene cently share their p. 169

books. The them

22

are black to this white: while parading bookrolls at every moment,

they are ignorant of

the particulars of text and composition, and of the traditions behind those; they take the easy path to their so-called learning; and they are (therefore) morally depraved, drunken in their dinner parties and perverse in their sex—no work on the details of stylistics and moral exempla for these people as the night’s candle 23

burns.

The upshot is that they are unable to read properly. That consequence ows naturally because the

(exterior) process of fully adequate lection is predicated upon the (interior) process of right understanding of the particulars (moral, rhetorical, etc.) of a text. We would say that the Syrian fails in both the interior and exterior process, but to Lucian the two seem to be inseparable: reading here is exactly this overall process of rendering the (right) meaning from the bare letters of the bookroll for the bene t of oneself and the intellectual circle—by proper lection, proper understanding, no doubt also proper commentary—and this is what the Syrian’s failure of paideia does not allow him to do. The extremity of contrast here depicted ows from the moralistic exaggeration of the diatribe stance. Moreover, the cultural mapping is de ned by the persona of Lucian’s gentleman-scholar, itself a parody and thus a voice from which the author distances himself. (Lucian’s contempt for this kind of traditionalist intellectual can be felt most keenly in his caustic presentation in Rhet. Praec.; cf. Symp. 34.) It is important, I think, to be clear that this sort of cultural schematic both matches no real world, and yet is a re ection of something very real in the bipolar ways in which cultural attitudes were constructed. The schematic does, that is, re ect a real way in which people tried to come to terms with the contrasting views on elite intellectualism at the time—in evaluating a gure like Favorinus, for example, who was immensely learned 24

and yet socially outrageous.

As so often with satire, it gives us a fundamental insight into how people

constructed the world for thinking even while not telling us what they thought. Finally, it is worth pausing for a moment to re ect on the image of the Syrian with his bookroll, and to ask what makes that image so central to the satire, so ripe as an object of ridicule. Implicit in the treatise is a world in which the aesthetic allure—and power—of the bookroll was richly appreciated. An interesting aspect of this is the way in which, to the gentleman-scholar, the image of the bookroll moves seamlessly p. 170

from the book-as-beautiful-object to the book-as-accurate-witness-to-tradition to the

book-as-

harbor-of-traditional-virtue. From the rst and repeatedly, we see that the books the Syrian buys are expensive and “the nest,” “the most beautiful,” τὰ κάλλιστα (Ind. 1). But in order to be truly beautiful, they must be copied carefully as well as calligraphically, that is, they must have textual authority—and, of course, they must be classics. As we have seen, the Syrian is attacked for misconstruing as “beautiful” an old (presumably calligraphic) and worm-eaten manuscript without textual merit (1). Ideal are the (old)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

sought to establish as a core value a strong sense of intellectual re nement and attainment among their

editions prepared by Callinus and Atticus, which combine calligraphy and textual accuracy (2)—in much the same way that a truly beautiful ship, ναῦν καλλίστην, is constructed in every detail “both for beauty and for seaworthiness” (εἰς κάλλος καὶ εἰς ἀσφάλειαν, 5). Deep-seated in Greek is this easy con ation between καλός in the sense of “ ne = pleasing to look at” and in the sense of “ ne/re ned/noble/good = being worthwhile or validated.” When the speaker tells the story (19) of a man who saw an “uneducated man” reading a “most beautiful” book, τινα βιβλίον κάλλιστον (and then tears up the bookroll in order to prevent the lout from metaphorically mangling it), it is unclear whether he means a book physically beautiful, textually sound, or with worthy contents. Probably all of the above: the Greek can support all three meanings, and, for the gentleman-scholar, the three naturally belong together. In a manner analogous to the Greek ideal of the aristocrat (cf. ὁ καλὸς κἀγαθός, “the perfect gentleman,” literally, the “beautiful and good”), exterior beauty those with paideia su

cient to appreciate both the beauty of the object and the neness of the contents. The

ignorant Syrian’s publicly intimate relationship with his collection of bookrolls marks then a comically 25

unexpected conjunction of elements—that paradoxon so characteristic of Lucian.

Intellectualism and Entourage 26

Lucian’s understudied

“On Salaried Posts in Great Houses” (de mercede conductis potentium familiaribus,

abbreviated Merc. Cond.) provides us an intriguingly di erent look into the life of the scholar and gentleman-as-scholar that has been the focus of much of the last several chapters. What we see is not the p. 171

idealized world by now so familiar from Galen, Gellius, and

Fronto but rather a depiction of the 27

intellectual’s daily life that intentionally—and satirically—crosses the grain.

The resulting image is not

necessarily real, but serves as a reality check nonetheless. The scholar of the Merc. Cond. is a well-educated but poor Greek gradually seduced by the extravagancies of Roman aristocratic life; the Roman aristocrat and scholar-gentleman, on the other hand, is a pseudo-intellectual, much more interested in society and power than in literature and culture. Of particular interest for us will be the social codes embedded in the scenes. As usual in Lucian, we must remember the moralistic exaggeration that informs the speaker’s voice. In this 28

case, the voice approximates “Lucian”:

a Greek, himself an intellectual (Merc. Cond. 1), purporting to give

advice to a Greek philosopher and friend, Timocles, who has in mind taking up a post in a great Roman house (2–3). The unnamed Roman aristocrat is a generalized gure of the upper echelon—one of “the noblest of Romans” (τοὺς ἀρίστους Ῥωμαίων, 3)—whom we see in a series of striking vignettes. The speaker gives the rm impression that the aristocrat carefully crafts his environment so as to put subordinates, including those with talents and education far beyond his own, at considerable disadvantage. His treatment of the Greek intellectual falls squarely within this deliberated orchestration of power. For example, when he rst has in mind to add the scholar to his household, he carefully arranges an introductory dinner. Too grand to be obvious about his involvement, he nonetheless welcomes the scholar with esteem (ἐντίμως, 14), honors him with a toast (16), and behind the scenes has given, we are told, personal attention to details like having him seated with two old family friends (15), assigning certain servants to watch him (15: to make sure he doesn’t make eyes at his wife or sons!), and staging an unusually elaborated after-dinner entertainment (θεαμάτων ἐπὶ θεάμασι, 18). By implication, the general opulence of meal and prolongation of discussion and entertainment is also the aristocrat’s contrivance. After this magni cent feast, early the next morning, with “two or three friends” present (19), he summons the scholar, ill slept and with a hangover, to discuss the arrangements for the scholar’s addition to the household. In a delicious passage, the aristocrat begins, “You have already seen what our household is like, and that there is not one bit of a ectation in it, but everything p. 172

is unostentatious,

pedestrian, ordinary. You must feel that we shall share everything…. I see that you are

measured and independent in character, and I am aware that you are not joining our household through hope of pay but on account of the other things, the friendliness from us and the honor that you will have

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

and inner worth are two halves of the same whole. The bookroll, then, serves as objective correlative to

from all” (19, trans. after Harmon). With that captatio benevolentiae, he now brings up the subject of pay, but in such a way that the scholar feels obliged to leave the decision to him. The aristocrat then, with brilliant manipulation, turns the question of the salary over to a third party—one of the friends there present. The friend waxes enthusiastic over how many men of distinction would themselves pay for the honor of such intimate association with “the rst household in Rome,” and how lucky the scholar is to receive pay for this happy task (20). Inevitably, a scanty sum is settled upon. The ruse to cheat the scholar of a decent salary is characteristic of the aristocrat: his own behavior is controlled and contrived, the situation and scene carefully planned, the helpers conspiratorially deployed. The aristocrat is wholly uninterested, we come to understand, in the intellectual side of his resident Greek 29

the household:

“he has no need at all for such things—the wisdom of Homer or the eloquence of

Demosthenes or the high-mindedness of Plato—… but rather, since you have a long beard and solemn appearance and a Greek cloak wrapped elegantly about you—and thus everyone knows that you are a grammarian or rhetorician or philosopher—it seems to him a ne thing to have such a man in his company and to be among those who go before him and form his escort. For it will seem from this that he too is a devotee of Greek learning and in general a re ned and educated man” (25). The aristocrat, as he sweeps about town with his entourage, is wont to grandly place his hand on the scholar’s shoulder from time to time and “babble on random topics.” In that way, he feigns to others that “not even while walking down the road is he neglectful of the Muses, but puts to good use his unoccupied time during a stroll (τὴν ἐν τῷ περιπάτῳ σχολήν, with ironic word-play on Peripatetic schools)” (25 n.). The aristocrat contrives the situation to present the image—but not the reality—of attention to culture, in what we now recognize as a typical elite anxiety over how he appears to spend leisure time. He is not in fact interested in books (or even lectures, 25): rather, the Greek is required to follow about as part of the entourage, carrying a bookroll as if to p. 173

instruct, but reading the bookroll only when he is left waiting outside alone

while his master is inside

talking to a friend (26; cf. 10, 21, 24). Roman aristocratic wives are no di erent. “To them it is counted as one among other embellishments (καλλωπισμάτων, a word normal for cosmetics), if they are said to be educated (πεπαιδευμέναι) and learned (φιλόσοφοι) and compose songs not much inferior to Sappho’s” (36). Note that the reality is not at issue; rather, it is “what is said.” These women, too, like to have about them “hired rhetoricians and grammarians and philosophers” whose lectures they listen to over “beauty treatments or hair dressings or over a meal.” “You see,” the speaker bitingly adds, “they otherwise do not have the leisure time (σχολή)” (36). Clearly, Lucian o ers here a lampoon—from a Greek outsider’s viewpoint—of the Roman aristocratic impulse to ll leisure time with useful intellectual pursuits. The Greek scholar prospectively entering such a household is in the rst instance the philosopher Timocles, to whom the treatise is addressed, but that gure is also explicitly generalized: the treatise concerns “not only those like yourself who pursue philosophy … but also grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, and in short anyone who thinks it a good idea to become part of a household as an educator for hire” (4). The fantasy is that, as the aristocrat promises, the scholar will join the household as a friend and, more or less, an equal (19); and that his constant companionship with the nobleman (10, 24, 25 n., 26) and the full access to the house (21) will establish him as one of the inner circle. The “reality”—itself, of course, a satirized fabrication—is far di erent. Once the philosopher is established as a part of the household, the aristocrat “does not even look in your direction for many days at a time” (10). This—apparently deliberate—strategy of distancing, self-grandiosity, and intimidation works, since when the spotlight suddenly shines on the scholar, he panics: asked the (ridiculously elementary) question “Who was the king of the Achaeans?” he sweats, trembles, and blurts out the nonsensical answer, “They had a thousand ships” (11). As in any welldeveloped hierarchical community, the household, with and without the explicit complicity of the aristocrat, works in inventive ways to reduce the newcomer’s sense of status. At dinner, he is the only one 30

not given an egg; his fowl is small or tough; his roast fatty and scant; his wine inferior (26).

In trips to the

country villa, he is given the slow horse, and lodging t for a servant (32). These and myriad other things

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

scholar. The Greek is, rather, part of the parade (πομπή, 10 n.) that follows the great man, an adornment to

“unsupportable for a free man” and intolerable for “any man of culture (παιδείᾳ)” (13) take their toll. In the p. 174

end he is full of self-loathing for his inability to shine in this society: “I am unentertaining and

not at all

convivial, and cannot so much as raise a laugh” (30). Note that the self-loathing is not for his inability as a philosopher, but for his inability as entertainer. He nds himself overshadowed by rivals—a cinaedus, a dancing master, a dwarf—and would gladly become a composer of love ditties or a singer, a magician, or soothsayer (27). For these are what is highly valued. Much of the humor of this satiric treatise lies in the disconnect between di erent grids of social expectation. The scholar naively buys into the expectation that as a “man of culture” he will be valued, that his command of culture will lend him a privileged position in the household, and that he will maintain this status through system. Yet not every elite household found literary questions so deeply diverting as did Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. The bathetic “reality” that the treatise wishes to expose is one in which the elite feel the pressure to spend leisure time in socially validated activities like literary and intellectual pursuits, but in fact value— 31

not more, but instead—popular entertainments and material self-indulgence.

In consequence, they

engineer the social scene to have the semblance of intellectualism without any substance, and subtle social interactions converge so as to support the central value of rather mindless diversion. The intellectual— pointedly and amusingly a philosopher—succumbs readily to this amoral materialism. He loses the battle the moment his interests, in re ection of the community’s interests, shift from the elements of philosophy 32

to his status and role as philosopher.

In Lucian’s world (a more real world), the intellectual can maintain

self-assurance and scholarly interest only when those around him value and validate that interest. In Merc. Cond. the supposed centrality of intellectualism among the elite is rst embodied in the scholar and then slavishly subordinated to the power of the aristocrat; ironically, intellectual and intellectualism are made subordinate and marginal even while lip service is given to their importance. As with the adv. Ind., the Merc. Cond. serves to give us the peculiarly Lucianic—satiric, cynical, Greek-as-outsider, even bottom-up— view of some characteristic social behaviors. We are reminded that not all reading communities were so functional as those in Gellius’s world, and not all aristocrats so earnest in their intellectual aspirations as p. 175

the Frontoniani or Galen’s Boethus. Moreover, despite its evident humor, the treatise bears witness to what we have already surmised: that literary culture and its intellectualism had become so rmly rooted in the elite system of validation that even the uninterested felt the need to bring it under their wing. The great men (and great women) in this period needed at least the accoutrements of intellectualism to maintain their position in society. Scholars thus became critical members of the entourage, as emblems of re nement and superiority, regardless of whether they were in fact a valued and essential part of the constructed community, or (as here) debased and marginalized, an out-of-favor option for entertainment.

Intellectuals at Dinner We have looked at two reading communities fashioned by the master satirist, both dysfunctional in their di erent ways. In Merc. Cond. the aristocrat successfully uses the presence of scholars to construct a public show of intellectualism and literary cultivation even while privately showing no interest in reading or learned discussion; the Greek scholar himself su ers a sort of existential crisis, in the end wishing that he were someone—such as a magician!—of more value to the community. In adv. Ind. the Syrian also puts on a public show of literary sophistication, but is unsuccessful (according to the diatribist) in convincing others; his pretense of an intellectual community is upended by glaring defects in his entourage and in his own education, both of which are insu Images of insu

cient as authenti cation for the sort of intellectual the society admires.

cient intellectuals abound in Lucian, a favorite target of this intellectual’s satire, but let us

pause brie y to consider a third community. Again, we need to bear in mind the satiric nature of the 33

treatise, this time the Symposium (Convivium), written as we expect in the form of a Platonic dialogue.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

continuing to lead the household in plying the literary and other intellectual pursuits central to this value

34

The dramatic frame for the dialogue is conventional if also tongue in cheek. Philo approaches “Lycinus”

to

learn about the philosophical discourses (τινας λόγους φιλοσόφους εἰρῆσθαι) at a dinner held at Aristaenetus’s p. 176

house, at which it is said that a considerable quarrel arose (Conv. 1). The

interlocutors dance about the

question of who has the most accurate information on what was said (2), in parody of a traditional style of 35

Platonic dramatic frame:

Lycinus has been sought, since not only does he “know in detail what happened”

but he “has a good memory for the words themselves (τοὺς λόγους αὐτούς), being a conscientious and careful listener to such discourses” (2). This is all by way of an elaborate joke, because the story Lycinus tells contains only snatches of discourse, and certainly nothing that could be considered philosophical. The Platonist in the crowd, Ion, is the only one who even gives philosophical discourse a try, but he succeeds only in pointing up his own boorishness (37–40). The story line itself is simple. The wealthy Aristaenetus philosophizer (τῷ φιλοσοφοῦντι), the son of a wealthy banker. Included are wordsmiths like the grammarian Histiaeus (who composes, ironically, a perfectly horrid wedding song, 41) and the rhetorician Dionysodorus, but the bulk of the highlighted guests are philosophers: two Stoics, one Peripatetic, an Epicurean, a Platonist, and a Cynic. The philosophers do not get along, and after several barbed encounters, verbal and physical, sticu s break out and an ensuing free-for-all ends the dinner. Toward the front of the dialogue Aristaenetus is praised in familiar terms. On hearing the makeup of the dinner party, Philo proclaims it a veritable mouseion (i.e., a learned academy): “Good for Aristaenetus, I say, for in celebrating the greatest festival day that there is, he thought t to entertain the most learned men (τοὺς σοφωτάτους) before all others, and culled the bloom, as it were, of every philosophical school, not including some and leaving out others, but asking all without discrimination.” Lycinus in reply makes clear Aristaenetus’s pro le as a gentleman-scholar: “Why, my dear fellow, he is not one of the common run of rich men; he is interested in culture and spends most of his time with these people” (10, trans. after Harmon). Aristaenetus throughout is depicted as a gracious host, trying repeatedly to get the dinner back on track (we see him intervene actively at 14, 18, 29, 33, and 36). But the guests, scripted to be men of culture in high intellectual converse, do not play their roles. The very rst dinner conversation related by Lycinus is the prominent Peripatetic Kleodemus remarking to the celebrated Platonist Ion: “Do you see how (the Stoic) Zenothemis stu s himself with delicacies and is getting soup all over his cloak and is secretly handing food for his servant to hide? He thinks no one sees. Point it out to Lycinus, so he can act as our witness” (11, paraphrased). This sort of petty, behind-the-back sniping is characteristic of the early conversations, but p. 177

things get much worse once opposing

philosophers start talking face to face. In the rst extended

discussion among the august company, the steady stream of insults includes charges and countercharges of philosophical charlatanism, quickly escalating to accusations of desecration and theft, adultery, spousal prostitution, fraud, and patricide by poisoning (30–32). The upshot is the rst of several ghts: wine thrown in the face, spitting, beard tugging. Aristaenetus has to physically lie down between the two principal antagonists to prevent a melee. Some mouseion! To multiply instances of indecorum for the distinguished (i.e., named) guests would not be di

cult. None of

the principals at the dinner deport themselves well, aside from Aristaenetus himself, and almost all of the 36

philosophers are grotesquely ill-behaved.

The dialogue is, after all, a parody. But what’s interesting is that

despite the unphilosophical discourse, there are many of the normal trappings of high intellectual society. Even jibes are readily delivered through casual poetic quotations or literary references (12, 13, 25, 30–31; cf. 45, 48); a petulant letter from the philosopher who lives next door is attacked for its literary demerits with moderate sophistication (30–31); the recourse to argumentation on ne philological grounds, so familiar from Gellius and Fronto, also is in evidence (40, on the proper use of ζῆλος). As entertainment over their drink, the rhetor Dionysodorus makes epideictic speeches, pleading rst one side of an argument and then the other; Histiaeus the grammarian fashions comical verse by combining lines from Pindar, Hesiod, and 37

Anacreon; Zenothemis reads aloud from a scholarly(?) book (17).

The fact that they are doing these three

activities all at the same time, and thus without a proper audience and in contribution to a general uproar

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

invites to dinner a host of fellow Greek intellectuals to celebrate the wedding of his daughter to a budding

(βοῆς μεστόν [συμπόσιον]), says only that the scene is socially outrageous, not that the trained intellectuals are 38

incompetent in their literary pursuits. p. 178

The dialogue presents us, then, with an intellectualized community that despite obvious problems is curiously in order in many super cial ways. The patron is deeply involved (the philosophers are his “friends and companions,” φίλοι καὶ συνήθεις), the company distinguished, the repartee sharp, the knowledge of literature and language, so far as we’re allowed to see, reasonably profound. The intellectuals are not sham, are not ignored or marginalized, and yet are also not useful or interesting or even pleasant. Far from being populated with idealized gures of perfection in the (naive) manner of Gellius, Lucian’s Symposium is full of smart but impossible people. The intellectualism is there, at least in super cial ways, but not the intellectual intellectual training the weaponry for self-aggrandizement and petty disputes. The result is a host who comes o

well enough, but an intellectual community that seems worthless.

A central point of the parody seems to be to get the reader to ask how it is that people this boorish and impossible can be so well read in the texts that are supposed to form character. Never oversubtle in such moralistic matters, Lucian has Lycinus bring up this very point: While all this was going on, Philo, various thoughts were in my mind; for example, the very obvious one that it is no good knowing the liberal arts if one doesn’t improve his way of living, too. At any rate, the men I have mentioned, though clever in words, were getting laughed at, I saw, for their deeds. And then I could not help wondering whether what everyone says (τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν λεγόμενον) might not after all be true, that education (τὸ πεπαιδεῦσθαι) leads men away from right thinking (τῶν ὀρθῶν λογισμῶν), since they persist in having no regard for anything but books and the thoughts in them. (34, trans. Harmon) “What hoi polloi say” comes as a surprise. “Education leads men away from right thinking”! We hear here, however distantly—through an interlocutor in a dialogue that is itself a parody—the voice of an “everyone” who thought very di erently from the high intellectualist writings that are the principal survivors of the era. Lucian serves, in short, to remind us that not only did the ideal not often obtain, but that there were those— voices not often heard in the written record—who not only quibbled and quarreled, but even raised essential questions, over the bene ts and desirability of the bookish culture celebrated in the Antonine circles we know best.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

The best discussion to date (with bibliography) of the tone and seriocomic purposes in Lucian is Branham 1989, 9–64. Such as that he traveled extensively, including areas as far west as Italy and Gaul, including at least one visit to Rome, and seems to have lived in Antioch, Athens, and Egypt at di erent points in his life. See Hall 1981, 1–63, Baldwin 1973, 7–20, Jones 1986, 6–23. A single citation in Galen (Epid. II.6 [5.138.6–9 Littré] = CMG 5.10.1 p. 402 Wenkebach) is all the mention he draws from surviving contemporary sources. Discussion in Goldhill 2002, esp. 67–71. The most concerted attempt is Baldwin 1973, 21–40 (with bibliography). As usual, a moot point. Even if ancient, the titles may go back to the ancient compiler, on which see RE 13.2, 1775, s.v. “Lukianos.” The titles are fairly well fixed by the ninth century: Photius cites by title at Bibl. Cod. (Migne PG 103) 128, and cf. the testimony of the MSS as reported in N. Nilénʼs 1906 Teubner edition. Hall 1981, 38 dates the treatise between AD 165 (on basis of the reference to Peregrinusʼs suicide at adv. Ind. 14) and 180 (on the fair assumption that adv. Ind. 22 refers to Aurelius, not Commodus, as the current emperor). Branham 1989, 29: “the indignant guardian of true classical culture,” one of three among “Lucianʼs self-presentations”

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

cooperation nor the social decencies—rather, intellectual matters have become the battleground and

8. 9.

10.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

11. 12. 13.

that Branham sees as typical. Richter 1999, who is one of the few to see clearly the (to my mind obvious) irony of the speakerʼs voice in the adversus Indoctum. The metaphor is transparent for κίβδηλα and παρκεκομμένα, but νόθα is also used in this way: ancient scholiasts and lexicographers routinely gloss κίβδηλον as οὕτως ἐκάλουν τὸ νόθον ἢ ἀδόκιμον νόμισμα καὶ παρακοπέν vel sim., e.g., Timaeus Sophista, Lexicon Platonicum, p. 992b Dübner; Photius, Lexicon, p. 163 Porson; Suda κ 1575; Scholia in Lucianum, Hist. Conscr. 9, p. 277 Rabe. Reading τὰς αὐτὰς διατριβάς with M. D. Macleodʼs OCT (Oxford, 1974). The manuscripts have τὰς τοιαύτας διατριβάς, “nor did you attend the sort of haunts/schools as we did,” which may well be right. See Gleason 1995, 126–30. Predictably, this guide is later described as “hairy” (Rhet. praec. 10fin). From Maude Gleasonʼs illuminating study on “Voice and Virility in Rhetoric” (1995, 103–30), we know something of the tradition, Roman and Greek, as well as the popularity of the theme of rhetorical virility. Gleasonʼs study (which centers on the question of the voice) could be usefully extended, both to explore the theme more generally and to examine the metastasis of the theme between Greek and Roman cultures. E.g., on the Roman side, one finds already in Quintilian comments like, “[rhetorical ornament] must not favor e eminate smoothness or the false coloring of cosmetics, it must shine with health and vigor” (Inst. Or. 8.3.6) and “although this debauched eloquence (eloquentiam libidinosam, referring to a smooth and polished style) … may win the approval of audiences enervated by pleasure, I decline to regard as eloquence in any sense something which shows no trace at all of a normal male, let alone of a man of weight and integrity” (5.12.20). The theme is a favorite of Quintilianʼs: cf. 1.10.31, 1.11.18, 2.5.10, 2.5.12, 8.pr.19–20, and the lectio virilis advocated for boys at 1.8.2. Paraphrasing οὐδὲ τὰς αὐτὰς διατριβὰς ἡμῖν ἐν παισὶν ἐποιοῦ. “Friends by education” are mentioned as early as Lysias (20.11, ἐκ παιδείας φίλος): Cribiore 2001, 42. Translation a er Harmon. See LSJ s.v. ὑπάγω III for examples of the sexual connotations to the verb. Cf. Cicero, Ep. ad Att. 4.4a, 4.8.2; Nepos Att. 13.3–4; Galen, de an. a . dign. et cur. 5.48 (discussed above, chapter 5). Starr 1990–91. Dio Cassius 71.35.2 similarly reports that “a great many pretended to pursue philosophy, hoping that they might be enriched by the emperor.” This last is a dig: the Baptai was a comedy that evidently described orgiastic cult in lewd terms (cf. Juvenal 2.91 and scholia ad loc.: see PCG V, s.v. Eupolis, Bάπται, esp. test. ii, p. 331f.). There is a textual problem in this area (adv. Ind. 4), and the sense seems to want the meaning “copied in eight books.” Could αὐτὰ ὀκτάκις μεταγεγραμμένα intend that? On forgeries in this era, see Zetzel 1973; Zetzel 1984, 60–62; McDonnell 1996. One can well imagine how much value an old bookroll would gain by being said to have been part of Sullaʼs collection. An old complaint: cf. Seneca, de tranq. an. 9.4. On lucubration and its cultural implications, see above, pp. 114–17. On Favorinus, see above, p. 103. One can readily imagine the views of the Syrian (fawning) and speaker (scornful) in assessing Favorinus. But more important is that the constructed oppositions would also influence the ways that those in the middle ground tried to think through the relative good or bad in that (deliberately) paradoxical figure of learning. On the centrality of paradoxa in Lucian, see now Popescu 2009. Recent exceptions, all brief, are Jones 1986, 78–83; Swain 1996, 317–21, Goldhill 2002, 85–86. Anderson 1976, 85–89, has some useful remarks on motifs common between Merc. Cond. and Roman satire; on the possible link between Juvenal and Lucian, see also Hall 1981, 246–48 and Jones 1986, 81 (with bibliography). None of these studies materially address the issues discussed here. Note, however, that the idealized depiction of the intellectual must be widely known to the readers in order for Lucian to turn it on its head. In Apol. 3, we are told something of the reception of the Merc. Cond.: “it has been well thought of, both when read before a great crowd, as those who heard it at the time have reported, and privately among the educated (pepaideumenoi) who have seen fit to take it in hand and spend time with it.” The Apologia makes this particularly clear, in which “Lucian” in autobiographical terms defends his decision to work in the Roman bureaucracy and tries to explain away the apparent contradiction between that decision and the stance of the Merc. Cond. This is the flip side of the coin to Frontoʼs recommendation of a man who will be an ornamentum to a great household because of his eloquence and knowledge of philosophy. Above, p. 146. In this case, however, the ornamentum is selfconsciously the lone Greek in the household (Cond. Merc. 24, cf. 40), rightly stressed at Swain 1996, 318f. Inferior food and wine for the inferior guests was a real practice: it comes in for criticism at Juvenal, Sat. 5.24 and Pliny Ep. 2.6; Sherwin-White 1966/1985 ad loc. cites also the elder Cato, Pliny the Elder (NH 14.91), Suetonius (Iul. 48), Martial

31. 32.

33.

34.

36.

37.

38.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196076424 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

35.

(e.g., 1.20, 3.60, 4.68), SHA Hadrian (17.4). Galen likewise complains that the wealthy too o en cultivate imposters over true experts, and prefer popular entertainers to intellectuals: cf. esp. de praecogn. 1.11–16, along with Jones 1986, 82–83. An interesting passage at Nigrinus 24–25 remarks with irritation (in the voice of the philosopher Nigrinus) on men who dress like philosophers but are only play acting (ὑποκρινόμενοι τοῦ δράματος), and who indulge in crass behavior such as stu ing themselves at dinner, drinking, and who “have even gone so far as to sing.” The relationship, if any, to Menippusʼs lost Symposium, is unclear. Few scholars now buy into the view of Helm 1906 that Lucian borrowed heavily from Menippus in writing his own Menippean treatises. On Platonic and other traditional elements in Lucianʼs Symposium, Bompaire 1958, 316–17, Männlein 2000, 247–48; on Lucianʼs Symposium as an inversion of Platoʼs, Branham 1989, 104–20, esp. 113. A favorite name for the principal interlocutor in Lucianʼs dialogues (so also in Imag., Pro Imag., Salt., Eun., Herm., Nav.), obviously a play on the authorial “Loukianos.” Dubel 1994, 24–26 styles “Lycinus” in general Lucianʼs “Athenian double.” On the special characteristics of the voice of Lycinus in Symp., see Branham 1989, 105–8; more generally on Lucianʼs “name games,” Goldhill 2002, esp. 66–67. On dramatic frames in Platonic dialogue, see Johnson 1998 with bibliography. Lucian was of course well aware of such conventions: see the metanarrational comment on these conventions at Nigrinus 10. The interlocutor and narrator Lycinus seems to be the sole exception. The ill behavior does not stop with words and fighting: during the brawl at the end, the lamps are knocked over, and, when they are relit, one philosopher is found in the act of raping the aulete, and another is caught stealing a bowl from the host. The Greek reads, λεπτόγραμμόν τι βιβλίον, thus a book written in a script that is “thin,” i.e., fine, delicate, perhaps small. LSJ s.v. take the meaning as “written small or neat.” My guess is that we are meant to imagine the sort of second-century script, unnamed but well known to papyrologists, used particularly in commentaries and marginalia by writers who evidently (judging from the marginalia) think of themselves as “scholars.” The script is generally small to tiny, neat, informal and “so quickly written as to be almost characterless” yet not cursive (Turner and Parsons 1987, 21). Examples conveniently found among the plates in Turner and Parsons 1987 are POxy 2536 (Commentary of Theon on Pindar, Turner #61), POxy 2078 (Euripides(?), Turner #33), and cf. POxy 2076 (Sappho, Turner #18), POxy 1809 (Plato, Turner #19). There are also good reasons to think that the activities in themselves were socially outré. To deliver a speech a er dinner is not appropriate behavior for a gentleman (as seems to be the implication of the example at Merc. Cond. 35); Zenothemis grabs the book that he is reading from a boy, and this is no doubt also boorish behavior for a guest not invited to do so. In any case, there is no hint that any of these were done incompetently, simply that they were not socially appropriate.

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0009 Published: April 2010

Pages 179–199

Abstract This chapter collects and investigates a variety of papyrus documents and bookrolls of the rst and second centuries AD that provide evidence for the ways in which Greeks in Egypt collected and worked with literary texts. These papyri give substantial indications that Greeks of scholarly bent formed reading communities that shared the habit of working on texts in groups

Keywords: Papyri, book collections, bookrolls, scholars, reading communities Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Introduction An obvious fact, yet one seldom brought clearly to mind, is that an ancient “edition” is a single, unique copy 1

of a text. We bring along a host of associations and assumptions in envisioning a modern edition of a classical text: that a scholar—that is, an expert in matters textual—has put the edition together; that the readings are based not only on that scholar’s expertise, but on thorough review of the history of the text; that the edition itself is unusually meticulous in its proofreading, and in its reporting of variant readings and their sources. It is not clear that much or any of this obtains in antiquity. Little in an ancient “edition”—that unique copy belonging to the ancient scholar—need be like our own idea of an edition, and, the subject here, little in the attitudes toward and use of such texts. We have already had much occasion to speak to the ways in which, in the high empire, elite intellectuals became focused upon, even obsessed with, certain types of philological scholarship. Here I want to look at the gure of the philologically oriented intellectual—scholar is the word I will use—from a di erent angle, by focusing on the papyrological evidence. My concern, as always, will not be so much the contents of the scholar’s text, but rather the sociocultural encumbrance upon that text. What, that is, can we say about the ways in which scholars di ered from other users of literary texts in antiquity—how was a scholarly reader di erent in his use of, and interaction with, these texts; or was the scholarly interaction with the text materially di erent from that of other educated readers? Who in fact were the people in uencing the constitution of the text, and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

9 The Papyri: Scholars and Reading Communities in Graeco-Roman Egypt 

what were their attitudes and goals? In what follows, I will use papyri, documentary and literary, to try to p. 180

open a window into

2

some real-life interactions by intellectuals with their texts. We will stay grounded,

as much as possible, in roughly the second century AD, and in provincial Egypt. The focus is driven by where the evidence lies, and that evidence will also bring the focus somewhat more tightly upon one town in provincial Egypt, namely, Oxyrhynchus.

Book Collecting and Book Collections I begin with a well-known example, one that, however, deserves more study. Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2192 that city, is assigned to the second century of our era on the basis of the scripts. The letter is written in at least three, more probably four, hands. The body of the letter, mostly lost, is written in the owing semiliterary hand of a practiced scribe. Following the body of the letter, as often with ancient letters, the sender adds a subscription in his own hand (“I hope you’re well my dear brother”). The same hand, that of the sender, adds a substantial postscript underneath the subscription. A second postscript, also substantial, follows the rst, in what is clearly a third hand (which we will call that of the sender’s colleague). Following that the papyrus breaks o , but there are remains of what appears yet a third postscript, in what seems to be a fourth hand (apparently, a second colleague).

Figure 9.1

Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2192 (second century AD) Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

3

( gure 9.1), a letter excavated in Oxyrhynchus and thus presumably—though not certainly—a letter sent to

The postscripts deserve our close attention, for they combine to convey a vivid impression of one side of “scholarly” activity in second-century Oxyrhynchus. The rst postscript, in the hand of the sender, reads as follows: Have a copy made of books six and seven of Hypsicrates’ Men Who Appear in Comedies and send it to me. Harpocration says that Pollio has them among his books, and probably others have them too. 4

And he also has prose epitomes of Thersagorus’s Myths of Tragedy.

A di erent hand—the sender’s colleague—then adds another paragraph in postscript:

according to Harpocration. I have ordered Apollonides to send to me some of my own books— p. 181

which ones you’ll nd out from him.

And if you nd any volumes of Seleucus’s work on

Tenses/Metrics/Rhythms that I don’t own, have copies made and send them to me. Diodorus’s circle 5

also has some that I don’t own.

Not every particular is clear, but a number of inferences can, I think, be fairly drawn. First, though the books p. 182

are personally owned (“some of my

own books,” writes the colleague), we garner a strong impression of

a group that shares books. And not just any books, but books that are learned compilations of background information for classical drama, rather like a scholar’s accumulation of reference works today. We sense the vigor with which this group of people pursues the collecting of such books, and the serious interest in having some rather arcane knowledge available. Second, the sender’s colleague seems to assume that the recipient both will recognize him by his hand (though it is possible that the lost beginning or nal subscription to the letter identi es him), and that the recipient will know all about both Seleucus (perhaps the rst-century grammarian: Hemmerdinger 1959), as well as the contents of his own library (“collect the volumes I don’t already own”). The focus in the letter on books of reference for tragedy and comedy seems to imply something akin to a scholarly project, or at least a circle of readers with focused attention for the moment on, it appears, classical drama. The colleague in any case certainly seems eager to acquire specialty books within a de ned area of knowledge. The ease with which he orders the recipient to collect “whatever volumes [of Seleucus] that I don’t own” is also telling: we gain the impression of a man of some means. Third, the tightness of the network is worth remark. Harpocration (whom Eric Turner identi ed with the 6

Alexandrian lexicographer) appears the central node of the personal network, but both the sender and sender’s colleague give independent suggestions for either alternate books to be gotten or alternate sources for the books. One has the vivid sense of a close, small community of those interested in books of this sort, 7

and of close connections between Oxyrhynchus and whatever town the request derives from. The alternate p. 183

source suggested by the sender’s colleague—οἱ περὶ Διόδωρ[ον]—

leads to our nal point, which is that this

circle of book collectors and readers knows of another circle, that seems in some sense an analogue to 8

themselves—“Diodorus’s circle,” evidently also a group interested in, and perhaps de ned by, its interest in books of a learned sort. We can speculate that those in “Diodorus’s circle” might well have referred to these two writers and their compeers as “Harpocration’s circle.”

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Demetrius the bookseller has them [that is, the two books of the Men Who Appear in Comedies],

The details in this letter are echoed by other documents of similar period from Egypt. From second-century 9

Alexandria, Theon (again, identi ed by Turner as the grammarian of same name) writes a letter to 10

Heraclides in Oxyrhynchus, accompanied by six Stoic texts on self-improvement (PMilVogl 11).

In elevated,

if not pompous, Greek, Theon writes, “Inasmuch as I take great pains to furnish you with useful books, especially those that contribute towards a better life, I think it behooves you not to be careless in the reading of them, since the serviceableness that comes from these books is not tri ing for those who take pains to acquire the advantage.” Theon continues, “I am sending the books you requested via Achilles,” and after the subscription he adds a list of the books. Another, very lacunose, second-century letter (SB 11996) 11

contains similar verbiage about sending books, apparently among friends, via a courier. prose farce written

in the second century and (probably) from the Fayum, has a note on the back that 12

“Heraclides made the copy from the library of Praxias.”

Several book lists come down from antiquity,

usually of somewhat obscure import, but at least a few of the lists from the second or third century AD are clearly either lists of desiderata or catalogues of existing bookrolls, and—of interest here—these book lists 13

are usually rather abstruse materials like rare works, philosophical works, and commentaries.

Yet another

second-century letter (PPetaus 30), this time from Ptolemais Hormou, is written by a son to his father, and reads, “When Deios was with us, he showed us the six parchments (μεμβράνας). We did not take any of these, 14

but we made collations against eight others, for which I paid 100 drachmas on account.”

Apparently a

traveling scribe or book dealer of some sort o ers for sale “parchments” (meaning parchment rolls? codices?), but o ers as an ancillary service the opportunity to collate texts in his collection. The vigor of book collecting activities in the early empire is also signaled by several book titles on the subject: Herennius Philo’s 12 volumes entitled On Possessing and Collecting Books, Telephus of Pergamon’s 3 volumes on the topic of Instruction p. 185

15

on Books Worth Owning, and a book of similar title by Damophilus.

These and the

various papyrus documents, though a thin stream, help to make vivid a scene in which, in the second 16

century, in the regional capitals and perhaps also the towns of provincial Egypt,

a small community of

literate men were actively searching out and sharing literary texts, commentaries, and works of reference, seeking to improve both the text and their knowledge of the text. With this understanding as background, let us return to POxy 2192, the very rst text we examined. What attracts my attention in particular about this letter is the fact that the literarily inclined pursue their interests as a group, that what seems implied in the letter is not the individual scholar at work in his study, but a circle of readers with scholarly interests, and one with contacts in Oxyrhynchus, which as the metropolis, the principal city in the nome, has similar readers’ circles, along with other resources of interest to 17

scholarly readers.

Scholarsʼ Texts: Readers and Their Notes The suggestion of scholarly activity as a group undertaking dovetails interestingly with another set of documentary evidence from the sands of Oxyrhynchus, namely, the actual artifacts of scholars’ texts themselves—for, to anticipate, the marginal annotations in papyrus bookrolls belonging to scholars are also often the product of multiple people’s work. I focus on a group of texts already collected as scholar’s 18

texts by a couple of earlier researchers (Eric Turner and Kathleen McNamee).

These are annotated texts

containing not just textual remarks or variants, but ones in which the textual variants are attributed to a person by name, that is, where marginal annotations read, for instance, “Thus was [the reading] in Theon’s”; “So in Apion’s”; and so forth. The interest in attribution—in applying a name to the variant p. 186

reading—seems to mark an enterprise, or an attitude 19

a scholars’ text.

toward the text, fully consistent with our notion of

It thus makes sense to focus on this particular set of texts as illustrative of scholarly

activity. The challenge will be to de ne better the social context for these texts.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 184

 PLitLond 97, a

The number of such texts is not large, but it is also not small: 19 in all. (See chapter  appendix, pp. 193–99, for details.) In what follows, I will restrict my remarks to the 16 Oxyrhynchite texts that form the bulk of the 20

evidence,

because I wish to explore the possibility that these texts constitute a type of some sort. These

texts share a surprising number of uniformities: 1. Almost all the bookrolls comprise noncanonical texts, and most are di

cult works to read. Aside from

POxy 445 (the Iliad), the texts fall into two distinct types. First are a number of dramatic works, most of which are unusual plays: 4 plays of Sophocles (Ichneutai, Eurypylos, Trachiniai, Theseus), and several plays (it appears) of Epicharmus; all of these are unique surviving witnesses to their texts, excepting of course the bookroll of the Trachiniai. Second are a number of lyric and elegiac texts, comprising Bacchylides, and Simonides. 2. Rarely is the scribe (by which I mean the original copyist) involved in the annotation of textual variants, and when he is involved, there are always other annotators as well. 3. It is unusual, however, to nd only the scribe of the text and a single annotator, though that does happen three times. In 13 of the 16 examples, multiple annotators are in play, often as many as four or ve or six. Not only, then, is the fact of multiple annotators characteristic, but the fact of several annotators—more than a couple—seems also characteristic. Note that for many of these texts, the p. 187

very fragmentary

state of preservation will tend to understate the number of annotators, since only

a few margins, at most, tend to survive. 4. Most of the texts (10 of the 16) show signs of substantial additions of readers’ marks (such as added punctuation, word division, or elision markers), and almost all have at least some readers’ marks (as is generally common in bookrolls, especially for di

cult texts). Often multiple readers are involved.

5. Most of the texts also are marked up with chi or other sigla at the left margin (again, 10 of the 16, even though in some cases very little of the left margin survives). Such sigla have sometimes been taken as 21

keys to commentaries, but, to follow McNamee,

these are best understood as a variety of ways of

signaling nota bene, that is, they are marks by readers signaling passages of interest, or passages that need further attention. 6. A common remark by the editors of these texts is that the annotator’s hand is “contemporary with the text,” and my review of these manuscripts in photograph con rms that very few (no more than a couple) of the annotators here write with hands that are inconsistent with the time period of the scribal hand. Now palaeography, to be sure, is a crude measure of date, but it is interesting that the fact of multiple annotators, whatever the exact social context, does not seem to be simply the product of a book changing hands over multiple generations. 7. Two of the Sophocles bookrolls are written by the same scribe, and 4 others are also by scribes who 22

are identi ed as having written other bookrolls among the Oxyrhynchus publications.

Now the fact

that 6 of the 16 texts here are written by identi ed scribes must be stacked up against the fact that among many hundreds of published literary texts from Oxyrhynchus, only 45 scribes in total have 23

been identi ed as having written multiple bookrolls.

It is hard to know what exactly to make of the

correspondence, but a fair inference may be that the coincidence of scribal hands is the consequence of the disposal in the Oxyrhynchite town dump of a set of bookrolls by a single owner or group (in the 24

manner of the Hypsipyle archive). p. 188

these identi ed scribes 25

elegiac.

If that is so, then of interest is the fact that the other bookrolls by

are also predominantly bookrolls of, or pertaining to, tragedy, lyric, and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

several bookrolls of Pindar, a couple of Stesichorus, a couple of Alcaeus, and one each of Alcman,

Now we must be careful not to overstate the uniformities. There is, to be sure, a great deal of variation in detail—such as, for example, the fact that some bookrolls are annotated freely by a number of hands, whereas others seem principally annotated by one hand with occasional additions by others. Yet for all that, the uniformities remain remarkable. If I am seeing this at all clearly, we are dealing not just with a random collection of examples, but a group that in use and function represents a type. That is, the use and function of the manuscripts seems to re ect some rather speci c sociocultural context obtaining in second-century Oxyrhynchus. By that, I am not suggesting that the manuscripts can be localized to a particular set of 26

contemporaries —the fact that the hands in these manuscripts are assigned all along the spectrum of over a century will defeat that hypothesis. Nor do I wish to draw too tight a line between the letter we examined earlier (POxy 2192), in which a group of scholars are collecting background data for the study of tragedy, and group centers on a couple of genres, in a manner similar to the scholarly project implied in POxy 2192. In general terms, what is so fascinating about this group of manuscripts is what they suggest about scholarly habitudes, that is, what sociocultural models of behavior we can nd that account for the ways in which these papyri seem to have been used. Noteworthy at once is that two standard models do not seem adequately to account for the consistencies here noted: 1. The diorthotes model. In that model, one expects that once the scribe is nished with the copying, the p. 189

bookroll is handed over to a “corrector” (the diorthotes) who collates the text for errors—whether this happens at the instigation and under the control of scribal shop or owner is immaterial. This model does not seem adequately to account either for the style of annotation, in which the attributions are carefully named, or for the number of hands involved in annotating the text with variant readings and other learned data. 27

2. The inheritance model. We do know of bookrolls in antiquity that are passed along with an estate, which is hardly a surprise given the value of the artifact and, for exotic texts, the rareness of the

product. In that case, the reuse of the bookroll over generations might account for the presence of multiple annotators. But that model, which is frankly what I expected to nd, does not obtain here. The hands are too many, and too contemporary, to allow it, whether by inheritance we mean from relative to relative (as, for example, parent to child), or from master to pupil. Moreover, there are some surprises of detail in the list. I draw attention in particular to Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2387 (Alcman’s Partheneia). In the intercolumn to POxy 2387 we nd the usual syntax of attribution: μό(νον) Π(τολεμαίου) (fr. 3.ii.19: “only in Ptolemy’s”), οὕ(τως) Π(τολεμαίου) (3.ii.22, “thus in Ptolemy’s”). Here, as always, the referent of the possessive is not entirely clear: Ptolemy’s what? His commentary? His copy? But in this case, we have more information, for in the upper margin (2387, fr. 1) an extremely interesting note reads as follows: π]αρενγρά(φεται) ἐν [το]ῖς ἀντιγρά(φοις) αὕτη καὶ ἐν τῶι] π̣έμπτωι· κα̣ὶ̣ ἐν ἐ̣κείν̣ω̣ι̣ ἐν μὲν τῶι] Ἀρ(ιστο)νί(κου) περιεγέγρα(πτο), ἐν δὲ τῶι Πτολ(εμαίου) ἀπερ[ί]γρα(πτος) ἦν This [passage] is wrongly inserted in copies [also in the] fth (book), and in that book it was 28

bracketed [in] Aristonicus’s copy, but was left unbracketed in Ptolemy’s.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

the prominence of bookrolls of tragedy in the group here. But I do nd of great interest the fact that the

That is, the writer of the note claims to have not only the information that the passage is interpolated generally into copies of Book 5, but that in two speci c antigraphs, those belonging to Aristonicus and Ptolemy, respectively, the interpolation is variously treated. Throughout the list of papyri with attributed annotations, as mentioned, one is confronted with the question of the referent for the possessive: “Thus it p. 190

was in Theon’s”; “Thus only in Ar( )’s” (whether the abbreviation “Ar” means Aristophanes or Aristarchus or someone else). When the name may be taken to match that of a known grammarian, the impulse has been to take the possessive with the notion of an accompanying hypomnema (commentary): “Thus the reading was in Aristophanes’ (or Aristarchus’s or Theon’s) commentary on Sophocles.” And I suppose that this resolution may well be right for at least some of these manuscripts. But in the case of POxy 2387, what is being collated are not Aristonicus’s and Ptolemy’s commentaries, but rather the copies—those unique 29

Augustan-age grammarian of that name.

In any case, the fact that the annotation in POxy 2387 witnesses a group of readers with access, whether directly or at a remove, to the unique Alcman copies used by Aristonicus and Ptolemy folds together with other evidence in our list. For instance, in POxy 2452, the variant reading is attributed not simply to a scholar whose name begins Ari (the resolution of the abbreviation is uncertain), but the variant speci cally is said to be “ἐν ἑτέρῳ Ἀρι( )” (“in the second copy, that belonging to Ari( )”). In several other cases, too, attributed variant readings are accompanied by remarks like “in the other (copy),” “in the rst (copy),” “in the antigraph,” which makes clear that at least some of the general activity we seek to tease out of this body of evidence is certainly collation against actual copies (of, it appears, well-known grammarians) as opposed to collation and annotation on the basis of commentaries. The heavy use of sigla like chi and ζή(τει) likewise help to esh out the picture, since these are notes, always placed at the left of the column of text, that mark something that needs to be looked into further, or specially noted. That is, they are the skeletal markings of an active scholarly investigation into points of detail in the text.

Scholars and Society What image, then, can we construct of the use to which these texts are put? We have earlier visited scenes that may help. In a scene mentioned in passing (NA 1.21.4, cf. above, p. 122), we saw Gellius reading out a passage from a commentary to Favorinus, who learnedly responds; behind the event seems to be a context in which Gellius is sitting with Favorinus, and probably others, and interrupts his reading (silently?) of p. 191

Hyginus’s Commentary on Vergil to bring a particular problem to group notice. Several other times

we

have been struck with the ease by which reading alone transmutes to reading with others (e.g., Galen, de ther. ad Pis. 14.211; Gellius, NA 3.1). Similarly, we have repeatedly witnessed scenes in which modes of textual interaction that we think of as scholastic or scholarly play out in a group setting. In Gellius, for instance, think of the scene of a detailed comparison of a Greek play (Menander) with its Latin translation (Caecilius), a close philological study that happened in a group (NA 2.23); or the similar comparison of Theocritus’s Idylls and Vergil’s Georgics, this time over dinner (NA 9.9); or the collecting of verbal and grammatical curiosities from Laelius’s Alcestis, again by friends over dinner and during the walk back to the center of Rome (NA 19.7). Yet Lucian’s Ignorant Book Collector provides perhaps the most riveting parallel. As we have seen, Lucian’s Syrian, though not pretending or aspiring to be more than participatory in the intellectual elite of his day, is expected (by the tendentious diatribist) to be able to evaluate expertly the authenticity and accuracy of exotic antique manuscripts, in a manner familiar from Gellius, Galen, and elsewhere. He also is expected (though, again, with satiric exaggeration) to be able to read with deep understanding of textual, grammatical, and stylistic details in the literary texts. These expectations, importantly, seem to play out in the context of his entourage, as he tries, however insu

ciently, to set himself up as the vir

magnus within a circle of cultured and pseudo-cultured hangers-on.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

editions we began with—belonging to these two people. Moreover, Aristonicus is very probably the

Scenes such as these interlock with the papyrological evidence in some intriguing ways. For instance, readers’ marks in the papyri (such as added punctuation and the like) may of course be successive readers’ attempts to make sense of the text, but the prevalence of multiple readers’ marks may also indicate that members of these intellectual groups repeatedly made performative readings of the text, whether by way of entertainment or as a springboard for discussion. The annotations in the papyri of variant readings and other details from the named copies of previous scholars is in keeping with the hints in Lucian and 30

elsewhere of a strong interest in antique, autograph texts.

A general interest in the correctness of the text,

in the antiquity of the text, and, importantly, the vesting of the judgment of the value of a particular copy of a text in the hands of “the educated” (pepaideumenoi), seems also quintessential to attitudes of the time. Most important, though, is the link between these scenes and what the multiple hands of the annotators product. The combination of evidence does not, that is, seem to sit well with the dominant medieval and modern image, of a scholar quietly sitting in his study, reading a di p. 192

transferring

cult text together with a commentary, and

notes from that commentary into the margins of his bookroll; or collating a text with its

exemplar, side by side. Nor do the mechanics of reading in a pre-codex culture encourage that type of behavior, given the awkwardness for one person to keep open more than one bookroll at a time. Rather, the presence of textual variants in multiple hands seems likely to be, in some sense, the result of repeated group discussion and analysis of the text. That does not mean to imply that individuals do not also interact individually with texts—we have now repeatedly visited the theme of lucubration (see esp. pp. 114–17), and the scene from Gellius mentioned just above (NA 1.21.4) seems to have Gellius interrupt his private reading to read aloud a passage to Favorinus. But many indicators seem to point to a typical mode of scholarly behavior in which the reading and study and analysis of di

cult texts is constructed as a collective

endeavor. As we have seen, that group work would itself include a variety of activities: not only the reading of hypomnemata but also collation against other copies of the text, especially copies of particular value; the reading of works that provided background or ancillary information, such as the list of Men Who Appear in Comedy or of Myths in Tragedy sought from among Pollio’s books in papyrus letter POxy 2192; and (to infer from Gellius and Lucian and elsewhere) vigorous discussion of points of style, structure, convention, as well as (to infer from the papyrus annotations) discussion of the constitution of the text. This scholarly work may well have typically revolved around a central gure—think of Diodorus’s circle and the references to Harpocration in that same Oxyrhynchus letter—but the scene is by no means necessarily professional or scholastic: the other men in the cubiculum and at dinner need hardly be scholars in any conventional 31

sense.

Rather, the scholarly enterprise, in the second century, seems to have been at least as closely linked

to a particular type of cultural elitism and indeed exclusionism, focused on Greek letters, as to professional scholarship. The scene suggested here, in which the social elite in Hellenic Egypt play at being intellectuals, may help account for an enduringly perplexing fact, that those appointed to the Alexandrian Museum in the Roman era were often, even mostly, not scholars per se, though all do seem to be members of the social 32

elite.

Once again, we encounter a theme deep and recurrent in these chapters, that of the sometimes

surprisingly profound intersection between intellectualism and aspirations to social status in this era.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

and the evidence in papyrus letters seem to suggest about a social context to the creation of a scholarly

p. 193

Appendix to Chapter 9 The following is based in part on lists in McNamee 2007; cf. also McNamee 1981. Though I have been able to examine in plate or photograph all but one of the papyri listed below, I have been able to examine only a minority in person. By scribe I intend the rst hand (in all cases an experienced professional hand) that copies the literary text; intercolumn refers to the space between successive columns of writing in the

p. 195

bookroll; v.l. = variae lectiones (variant readings) entered in the margin or intercolumn of the text.

p. 196

p. 198

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 197

Character of annotation, in right intercolumn

Attribution

Syntax of attribution

Sigla in le intercolumn

Number of annotators

Lectional aids (diacritical marks, etc.)

Format notes

POxy 445 (Iliad 6)

v.l. both with and without attribution

αἱ Ἀρι(στάρ)χ(ου) (edd. leg. αἱ ἀρχ(αίαι), corr. McNamee); ἡ κ(οινή)

name or other attribution precedes v.l.

diple, antisigma, diple perestigmene, asteriskos

“two or three hands,” with “no appreciable di erence of time between the writing of the text and the addition of the scholia”

most or all by scribe

normal intercolumn, apparently

POxy 841 AB (Pindar, Paeans)

v.l. with and without attribution or comment; glosses; frequent longer explanatory notes and paraphrases

Ar(?), Aris(?), An(?), Arn(?), Chrysippus, Theon doubtfully, Nicanor (N with vertical bar)

name follows v.l.

chi, diple, ζή(τει), stichometry

“several hands,” at least three, one of whom may be the scribe

mostly by the scribe, with additions

Lines are written “double spaced” to accommodate the interlinear remarks; unusually wide intercolumns, apparently to accommodate the annotations

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Papyrus

annotations are almost exclusively v.l., usually attributed

Theon (θε\ω/), Nicanor (N with vertical bar), Ar(?), Arn(?)

Name or phrase follows v.l. οὕ(τως) ἦν ἐν τ(ῶι) Θέω(νος), οὕ(τως) μό(νον) ἦν ἐν τ(ῶι) Θέω(νος) [15 times]; Aρ( ), Nι( ), μό(νον) Nι( ); ἀ]πεγέγρ(απτο) ἐν τ(ῶι) Θέω(νος)

chi with superscript iota, ζή(τει)

“possibly revised by more than two hands” (McNamee)

added by a second hand

generous, but not unusual, intercolumn

POxy 1175 (Sophocles Eurypylos) Same scribe, format, and annotator(s) as 1174 [Scribe B1]

v.l. common, but usually not attributed

Nicanor, “only in the second copy”

name precedes v.l.; οὕ(τως) ἦν ἐν [α´], οὕ(τως) ἦν μό(νον) ἐν ἑτ(έρῳ) [3 times]

chi

“possibly revised by more than two hands” (McNamee)

added by a second hand

generous, but not unusual, intercolumn

POxy 1234 + 1360 + 2166 (Alcaeus)

v.l., frequent longer explanatory notes and paraphrases; remarks on dialect

Nicanor (N with vertical bar)

name follows v.l.

none

one (not the scribe)

by a second hand, perhaps that of the annotator

intercolumn slightly unusual in width, perhaps designed for annotations

POxy 1361 (Bacchylides, Scolia)

v.l., titles, brief explanations

Ptolemy [Πτο\λ/]

name precedes v.l.

chi

“apparently by more hands than one” beyond the scribe

added by the annotators

n/a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

POxy 1174 + 2081a + PapFlor X (Sophocles Ichneutae) Same scribe, format, and annotator(s) as POxy 1175 [Scribe B1]

v.l., explanatory note

Ar(?)

name follows v.l.

none

one (not the scribe)

added by the annotator, apparently

n/a

POxy 2295 (Alcaeus)

v.l., explanatory notes, paraphrases (some interlinear)

Apion [Ἀπί\ω/ 3 times]

name precedes v.l.

none

“perhaps as many as half a dozen”

mostly added by a “contemporary corrector”

normal intercolumn

POxy 2327 (Simonides) [Scribe A19]

v.l. and brief explanations

Nicanor (N with vertical bar) Apion [Ἀπί\ω/], Am(?) [ἀμ(φότερωι)? or Ἀμ(μωνίου)?]

name follows or precedes v.l.

chi

two? annotators

mostly by the scribe, with additions by others

generous, but not unusual, intercolumn

POxy 2387 (Alcman)

v.l., glosses

Aristonicus? (Aρν, with vertical bar through nu), Ptolemy (Π, Πτο\λ/)

μό(νον) Π(τολεμαίου), οὕ(τως) Π(τολεμαίου), (in upper margin) π]αρενγρά(φεται) ἐν [το]ῖς ἀντιγρά(φοις) αὕτη / [καὶ ἐν τῶι] π̣έμπτωι· κα̣ὶ̣ ἐν ἐ̣κεί̣ν̣ω̣ι̣ / [ἐν μὲν τῶι] Ἀρ(ιστο)νί(κου) περιεγέγρα(πτο), ἐν δὲ τῶι Πτολ(εμαίου) / ἀπερ[ί]γρα(πτος) ἦν.

none

“not less than three, and perhaps as many as five” annotators

added by “at least two hands,” one perhaps that of the scribe

normal intercolumn

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

POxy 1805 + 3687 (Sophocles, Trachiniae)

v.l. and brief explanations

Nicanor (N with vertical bar)

name follows v.l.

chi

“at least two, and possibly as many as four” annotators, “contemporary with the text”

mostly by the scribe

intercolumn slightly unusual in width, perhaps designed for annotations

POxy 2427 (Epicharmus, various plays) [Scribe A22]

v.l., stage directions, dialectical remark, glosses

Theon [θε\ω/ and θ\ε/]

οὕ(τως) ἦν (“sic in the exemplar”), name follows v.l.

none

“no less than three hands” are involved in the annotating

“at least two pens” add the diacritical marks

normal intercolumn

POxy 2442 (Pindar) [Scribe A30]

v.l., explanatory notes, sometimes lengthy

Nicanor (N with vertical bar); Didymus is mentioned as the source of a comment

name follows v.l.

chi, ζή(τει)

at least two, one of which may, however, be the scribe

“at least two” aside from the scribe

generous, but not unusual, intercolumn

POxy 2452 (Sophocles, Theseus) [Scribe A24]

v.l., stage directions, glosses

“In the second copy of Aρι\χ/(?),” “only in the second copy”

οὕ(τως) ἐν Β μό(νον), ἐν ἑτ(έρῳ) Ἀριχ( )

chi, chi rho

one (not the scribe)

mostly by the scribe, with additions

normal intercolumn

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

POxy 2394 (Doric lyric, Alcman?)

v.l., interlinear titles

Arn (?), Theon? (και θ\ε/ twice, twice θ\ε/ directly to the le of the column of text)

name follows v.l.

none (antisigma precedes some notes)

“at least three, and perhaps more” annotators, including the scribe [Lobel assigns scribe to first century BC; I think more probably scribe, as well as annotators, are first century AD]

mostly by the scribe

normal intercolumn

POxy 3876 (Stesichorus)

v.l., marginal and interlinear, attributed and not

Ptolemy (Πτο\λ/, twice)

οὕ(τως) Πτολ(εμαίου)? (reading unclear; follows the v.l.?)

chi

“at least two” hands other than the scribe, but most v.l. are plausibly the scribeʼs hand written small

mostly by the scribe

normal intercolumn

Scribe A19 and so forth refer to instances in which the principal scribe is known to have written multiple bookrolls among those found at Oxyrhynchus. For the details, see table 2.1 in my Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Johnson 2004). Attributed textual remarks also occur in three papyri, not from Oxyrhynchus: PPar 71 (the Louvre Alcman, from Memphis); PHawara 24–28 (the Hawara Homer, Iliad 1 and 2, from Hawara); PLitLond 30 (Odyssey 3, said to come from Soknopaiou Nesos).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

POxy 2803 (Stesichorus)

Notes 1.

2. 3.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

4.

Remarked, however, with characteristic clarity, in Turner 1962, 146; and similarly, Zetzel 1980, 44. That some scholars wrote separate commentaries to argue and support certain textual variants complicates but does not change this essential fact. Following the lead of Turner 1952b and 1956, a pair of investigations now much buttressed and improved in McNamee 2007. POxy 18. 2192, now revised in Hatzilambrou 2007, whose text I follow. In citing papyri, I use the standard abbreviations listed in Oates 2002. [28] Ὑψικράτους τῶν κωμωι- / δουμένων Ϛ̄ ζ̄ ποιή- / [30] σας μοι πέμψον. φησὶ γὰρ / Ἁρποκρατίων ἐν τοῖς / Πωλίωνος αὐτὰ βιβλί- / οις εἶναι. εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ ἄλλους / αὐτὰ ἐσχηκέναι. καὶ λόγου / [35] ἐ̣πι̣ το̣μὰς τῶν Θερσαγόρου / τῶν τραγικῶν μύθων ἔχει. [37] ἔχει δὲ αὐτὰ Δημήτριος ὁ βυβλιοπώλης, / ὡς φησὶν Ἁρποκρατίων. ἐπέσταλκα Ἀπολ- / λωνίδηι πέμψαι μοι ἐκ τῶν ἐμῶν / [40] βιβλίων τινὰ̣ ἅ̣περ παρʼ αὐτοῦ εἴσῃ / Σε̣λ̣εύκου δὲ̣ τ̣ῶν χρόνων [ὅσ]α̣ ἐὰν εὑ- / ρίσκῃς μεθʼ ἃ ἐγὼ κέκτημαι ποιήσα[ς] / μο[ι] π̣έμψον. ἔχουσι δὲ \καὶ/ οἱ περὶ Διό- / δωρ[ον] ὧν οὐ κέκτημαί τιν̣α. For μεθʼ ἃ in the sense of “outside, except” the editor compares PFlor 338.9 and Hatzilambrou 2007 cites Mayser, Grammatik 2.2.122.b2. I accept here Hatzilambrouʼs solution to line 42; she takes the shortened title to refer to grammatical tenses; a study of metrics or music (in drama?) is also possible. But this remains only a probability, as does the identification of Pollio (Pôliôn) with the lexicographer Valerius Pollio of Alexandria and of Diodorus (a common name) with Pollioʼs son, a second-century Alexandrian who was a member of the Museum (note that Pollio and Diodorus are not linked in the letter itself). See Turner 1952b, 92. Turnerʼs suggestion that the Harpocration mentioned here is the Alexandrian has now been elevated to a fact in Der Neue Pauly, s.v. Some suppose the letter sent from Oxyrhynchus to Alexandria, so as to preserve Alexandria as the primary source of copies for unusual texts. Thus Pesely 1994, 41 n. 22, apparently following Bowman 1986, 161 (who assumes that the bookrolls at least would derive from Alexandria, although “there is some evidence for copyists and booksellers working in Oxyrhynchus”; but the thousands of literary texts surviving from Oxyrhynchus surely demonstrate, on the contrary, vigorous consumption of a wide variety of literary products, adequate to support a substantial local market: see Johnson 2004); Hatzilambrou 2007, 283 moots without conviction “a second possibility … that the second note was written as an answer by the recipient, which was never sent back,” imagining a recipient who “had a personal library in Alexandria” (but how then to account for the fact that both postscripts mention what “Harpocration says” as though Harpocration is local?). Since the letter was excavated in Oxyrhynchus the economical hypothesis remains that the letter was sent to Oxyrhynchus, and, presumptions aside, there is in fact no hint of Alexandria in the letter. The POxy editor (Roberts) translates, “Diodorus and his friends,” followed by Otranto 2000 and Hatzilambrou 2007; Radt 1997, 6 thinks “more probable” that the phrase here, as commonly enough in classical and Hellenistic Greek, is simply a paraphrase for “Diodorus” (see LSJ s.v. περί, and the extensive treatment of the phrase in Radt 1980, 47–56). But the use of this phrase for “Diodorus” seems characteristic of high literary rather than documentary or epistolary Greek (and the evidence is slight for the Roman era in any case); the examples in Preisigkeʼs lexicon of οἱ περὶ τὸν δεῖνα (vol. ii, 288 s.v.) in papyrus letters and other documents all seem consistent with the translation “X and intimate associates,” whether family or friends. In any case, it is the focus on the man within the context of his (somewhat invisible) family and friends that I seek to capture in the translation, “Diodorusʼs circle.” More bibliography and discussion in Hatzilambrou 2007, 286. Turner 1952b, 93; further details in Krüger 1990, 199–200, McNamee 2007, 38 and passim (see index). PMilVogl 11 = CorpPapFil 6: Θέων Ἡρακλείδῃ ἑταίρῳ. εὖ πράττειν./ ὥσπερ ἐγὼ πᾶσαν εἰσφέρομαι σπουδὴν τὰ χρήσιμα / κατασκευάζειν βυβλία καὶ μάλιστα συντείνοντα/ [5] πρὸς τὸν βίον, οὕτως καὶ σοὶ καθήκειν ἡγοῦμαι μὴ / ἀμελῶς ἔχειν αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν, οὐ τῆς / τυχούσης εὐχρηστίας ἐξ αὐτῶν περγινομένης τοῖς / ἐσπουδακόσιν ὠφελεῖσθαι. τὰ δὲ πεμφθέντα ἐστὶν / διὰ Ἀχιλλᾶ τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα. ἔρρωσο, ἐρρώμην δὲ / [10] καὶ αὐτός· ἄσπ̣ασαι [ο]ὓς π̣ρ̣οσ ̣ ήκει. / ἐγρ(άφη) ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ. Following the letter is a list of book titles, all of Stoic writers, and all on matters of selfimprovement or ethics. On the back is the following address: “From Theon to Heraclides the ʻphilosopher.ʼ” SB xiv 11996 = CorpPapFil 5 (of unknown provenience). The letter, though very fragmentary, seems to speak throughout about doing something with certain books (at the beginning books by Metrodorus and Epicurus are named, and βιβλία recurs later). The letter writer, in the manner of our other examples, speaks of “another friend” (in the dative), and says “I will send (in return?) through [person X]” (ἀναπέμψω διὰ …); he also, as in POxy 2192, uses the phrase “I will command” (ἀπέστειλα). ἐκ βιβλιοθή(κης) Πραξί(ου) Ἡρακλείδης ἀ̣[πέγραψεν].

13.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

14.

POxy 33.2659 (second century AD), an alphabetized list of comic writers with their works (fragments range from Ameipsias to Epicharmus with an inferred c. 100 works), apparently the catalogue of a substantial library because there are many inclusions of obscurata but also exclusions of well-known works; POxy 47. 3360 (late second or early third century AD), a list of titles and incipits for Hyperidesʼ speeches; PRossGeorg I 22 = CorpPapFil 2 (third century AD), a list of philosophical works (perhaps from a private library? ἐν οἰκίᾳ in line 3 is ambiguous); PSILaur inv. 19662 = CorpPapFil 3 (third century AD), either desiderata or a list of extant book rolls of Plato and Xenophon, organized by author; PVars 5 = CorpPapFil 4 (third century AD), a list of extant bookrolls (some are described as opisthographs), from the likes of Geminus, Diogenes of Seleucia, Xenophon of Tarsus(?), Glaucon (the medical writer?); PTurner 39 (third century AD), a list of household goods that includes five books, among them Eratosthenesʼ geographical commentary on the Iliad, a commentary on Priscus, and a lexicon of words in Plato (Comicus?); cf. also PTurner 9 (fourth century AD, Hermoupolis), a list including various commentaries, rhetoric, and history, claimed by the editor as from a Gelehrtenbibliothek, but without proof. P. Lond. inv. 2110 (second century AD, probably Oxyrhynchite) gives an accounting of fees rendered and paid for the copying of certain bookrolls, including specification of the rate; in the part that is legible, copying fees (τὰ γράπτρα) are noted for the Plutus of Aristophanes and Sophoclesʼ “third Thyestes” (Bell 1921). More run-of-the-mill works are listed in the catalogue in PVindob Gr. inv. 39966 (first century AD), recently republished in Puglia 1998. Several later lists of Christian books survive, e.g., PPrag. I 87 (seventh century AD); for evidence on the practice of lending Christians books, Dostálová 1985. On ancient book lists generally, Otranto 2000; on these lists as evidence for book collections, see the analysis in Houston 2009. PPetaus 30 (second century AD): Ἰούλιος Πλάκ[ι]δος Ἡρκλανῶι τῶι / πατρὶ χαίρειν. / Δεῖος γενόμενος παρʼ ἡμε[ῖ]ν ἐπέδει- / ξεν μὲν ἡμεῖν τὰς μεμβρά- / [5] νας ἕ̣ξ.̣ ἐκεῖθεν μὲν οὐδὲν ἐξελε- / ξάμεθα, ἄλλα δὲ ὀ̣κτὼ ἀντεβά- / λ[ο]μεν, εἰς ἃ ἔδωκα ἐπὶ λόγου (100 δραχμὰς). / προνοήσεις μέντοι . . ω[.]τα. / τα̣[.] . . [.]. . . . α ἡμεῖν γενέσθαι. / [10] [ἐρ]ρῶσθ[αί] σε εὔχ̣ομ ̣ αι. (3, 4, 9 l. ἡμῖν) All of these titles are from the first or second century; for Greek titles, sources, and further examples from other periods, see Platthy 1968, 80–81. See Van Minnen 1998. Turner 1980, 87 infers that the circle is one of “professional scholars.” The conclusion may at least be premature. For recherché or erudite works found among the papers of nonscholars, see Bagnall 1992 and Clarysse 1983, 50 (the latter not certain) for Roman era examples; also Clarysse 1983, 52 for two examples from Ptolemaic times. Further on this point below. Turner 1956; McNamee 1981; 2007, 37–48. I wish to record my deep gratitude and debt to K. McNamee, who generously shared parts of her then forthcoming book (now McNamee 2007) while in manuscript. The data and analysis there collected are fundamental to many of the observations here presented, even where our conclusions di er. Peter White draws to my attention the overlap between this evidence and the variants in early manuscripts of Livy and other Latin authors marked by in alio, legitur et, alii (quidam, multi) legunt, or (rarely) the name of an earlier scholar, which suggests a tradition of this sort of textual information gathered by collation; the Latin evidence is collected and carefully analyzed in Zetzel 1980 (in which see esp. 45–47). POxy 3.445 (Iliad 6), POxy 5.841 AB (Pindar, Paeans), POxy 9.1174 + 17.2081a + PapFlor X (Sophocles Ichneutae), POxy 9.1175 + 17.2081b (Sophocles, Eurypylos), POxy 10.1234 + 11.1360+18.2166 (Alcaeus), POxy 11.1361 (Bacchylides, Scolia), POxy 15.1805 + 52.3687 (Sophocles, Trachiniae), POxy 21.2295 (Alcaeus), POxy 22.2327 (Simonides), POxy 24.2387 (Alcman), POxy 24.2394 (Doric lyric, Alcman?), POxy 25.2427 (Epicharmus, various plays), POxy 26.2442 (Pindar), POxy 27.2452 (Sophocles, Theseus), POxy 37.2803 (Stesichorus), POxy 57.3876 (Stesichorus). Attributed textual annotations in papyri not from Oxyrhynchus: P.Par. 71 (Alcman, from Memphis), P.Hawara 24–28 (Iliad 1–2, from Hawara), P.Lit.Lond. 30 (Od. 3, said to come from Soknopaiou Nesos). McNamee 1992, esp. 19–22. These are identified in the appendix as scribes A19, A22, A24, A30, and B1 following the numeration in table 2.1 in Johnson 2004. See table 2.1 in Johnson 2004. Further details on this point in McNamee 2007 and Houston 2009. On the Hypsipyle archive, see Cockle 1987. In addition to Simonides (POxy 25.2430, also 22.2327), scribe A19 copied a poetry book of anonymous ionic trimeters (22.2318), commentaries on Alcman (24.2389 + 45.3210) and on the Iliad (24.2397), perhaps also a bookroll containing Apollonius Rhodius (34.2694). In addition to Epicharmus (25.2427), scribe #A22 copied a roll of Sophocles (44.3151). Scribe A24, in addition to Sophocles (27.2452), copied Antiphon (11.1364), Aeschines Socraticus (17.2077 and 39.2889), Euripides (45.3215, perhaps including also another tragedian; also PSI xiii 3683), and perhaps also POxy 52.3683 ([Plato], [Lucian], or Leon). Scribe A30, in addition to Pindar (POxy 26.2442 + pap. ined.), wrote a bookroll of Sappho (POxy 1787). Note that Funghi and Savorelli 1992 identify scribes A30 and A20 as the same hand (doubted in Johnson 2004, 63); if so, this scribe also was at work copying rolls of Pindar, Alcaeus (apparently), and, perhaps, Alcman. Six from the sample are, however, now identified as belonging, probably, to a single library. These are POxy 9.1174 +

27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196077317 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

32.

17.2081a + PapFlor X, POxy 9.1175 + 17.2081b, POxy 10.1234 + 11.1360 + 18.2166, POxy 11.1361, POxy 15.1805 + 52.3687, POxy 26.2442, all from Grenfell and Huntʼs “Second Great Find.” For the evidence, and a fascinating bit of detective work on the character of this library, see Houston 2009. An interesting example, with some bibliography, in Bagnall 1992; cf. also Clarysse 1983 generally on literary texts discovered in family archives. POxy 24.2387. Restorations exempli gratia. Text and translation a er Turner and Parsons 1987, 42. Or at least it seems a telling coincidence that the rare ancient notices of Aristonicus cite both a son and a father named Ptolemy, all grammarians and teachers in Rome. Aristonicusʼs son Ptolemy is cited at Athenaeus Deipn. 11.481d and Iliad 1 scholia 4.423a Erbse; Suda Π 3036 mentions the father. See DNP, Aristonicus (5). See Zetzel 1973; McDonnell 1996. For analogous circles of readers in Rome attached to private libraries, hence to prominent political and social figures, see Marshall 1976. Details on Museum members who were not scholars in Lewis 1963 [= Lewis 1995, 94–98]; Fraser 1972, 333–34; Lewis 1981 [= Lewis 1995, 257–74].

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

CHAPTER

William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.003.0010 Published: April 2010

Pages 200–208

Abstract This conclusion summarizes in brief the ndings of earlier chapters, with particular focus on (1) the way in which the reading culture behaves as a interlocking system of habits and logistics, (2) the social construction of reading communities, (3) ideological constructions of reading, and (4) the place of reading in ancient society and politics.

Keywords: reading culture, reading communities, reading system, ideology, society, politics Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Reading Culture, Reading System The various literary universes here explored (chapters 3–8) conspire with evidence from papyri and elsewhere (chapters 2 and 9), toward the conclusion that habits of reading in the high empire displayed, broadly speaking, distinctive features that bespeak a system and culture of reading di erent in important respects from reading today. In these pages, we have encountered an idea of a culture of reading that cedes less to authorial control, and for which active engagement is a base expectation in a wide array of activities. These activities range, on a mechanical level, from the reader’s intervention in phrasing of the sentence while reading aloud, to the group practice of active interrogation of the meaning of a text. Certain habitudes can be isolated as particularly characteristic. First, the educated expected one another to be able to render alphabetic text into full meaning. That is, they expected their compeers both to be able to render the text rhetorically into sensible statements with meaningful phrasing and intonation (a process for which a trained lector might be substituted), and to have the depth of education to perceive the underlying structural disposition, generic features, and allusive contacts with classical tradition and contemporary trends, as well as the text’s placement within realms of thinking like philosophy, medicine, and philology. The habits of memorizing and excerpting and reading texts again and again were particularly important, since they re ected the intense educational emphasis on mastery of the literary tradition—that is, deep knowledge of certain classics—and mastery of language—that is, control of a language largely informed by these classics.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

10 Conclusion 

These sorts of habitudes have sometimes been subsumed in broad-stroke sketches to the idea of the active 1

reader or the intensive reader, in opposition to various styles of reading prevalent today. As broad analysis, p. 201

this is correct,

but in these chapters I have emphasized recovery of the details (some of which are

contrastive to these broad ideas). What emerges from our detailed scrutiny are the ways in which these habits interlock as a system, forming a reading culture that makes sense in its own terms. Thus, for example, the consistent use of scriptio continua in bookrolls is from a broader, cultural point of view seen not as a de ciency nor as a feature of an underdeveloped script, but rather as part and parcel of a set of general attitudes that embrace ideas like aesthetics, costliness, exclusiveness, educatedness (all elite preserves). A book’s lack of extensive punctuation and structural delineators is likewise re ective not of lectional aid the small-scale structure of sentence phrasing and the large-scale structure of a speech or a poem—and, to turn the coin, also values a literary style of writing that adequately delineates these structures. Even the common modern observation that the bookroll—in contrast to the codex—was inadequate as a reference tool can be seen, in this view, beside the point: those with deep knowledge of a book, who have read the text again and again, hardly needed to use the bookroll as a reference. Galen, in any case, had no trouble at all locating particular passages within his (much read and reread) bookrolls. The look and feel of the bookroll, in short, well matches the system and habitudes of reading. The ancient habit of excerpting, too, was not undertaken simply to digest information (as note taking is, normally, for us). Rather, the sometimes extensive excerpting of thoughtfully chosen texts served as a means of gaining control over these texts, often in conjunction with close study and memorizing, as a means of inculcating into the reader certain essential masteries: of language and style (words, phrases, even rhythms), of ways of thought, of morals and character, of identity. In the context of the system, in which literary texts were at the core of certain elite constructions of identity and community, deep internalization of chosen texts makes sense as an elemental requirement for joining the (exclusive) community. Similarly, the practice of memorizing texts on the y (and the reading habits that facilitated this) seems to have played a role in the overall system of validation for the active pursuit of literary endeavor: even “unpublished” authors might expect their work to be circulated and remembered, in that a phrase or snatch of lines here and there might be admiringly repeated. That validation, in turn, symbiotically maintains the p. 202

community’s close focus on literary activities as

fundamental to the construction of the community. Or,

to take a nal example, the habits of group reading of a text aloud can be seen not simply as an appreciation of the audial aesthetics of the text (as Eduard Norden saw it) but also as a practice intimately bound with active interrogation of the text—which itself implies an abiding con dence that texts, especially classic texts, have a depth of meaning that repays the group’s e orts at interpretation and discussion. Again, the system is symbiotic, in that the focal text provides fodder for the community’s activity (this is what they get together to do), while the interrogation of the text validates the community’s sense of self-identity as the educated, able to derive special meaning from this exclusive text. The successful use of the text in this way both revalidates the text as worthy and recommends the community as suitable gatekeepers.

Social Constructions of Reading Reading, as we have seen, cannot be divorced from society. For example, even the seemingly interior act of removing oneself from the group to read alone in lucubratione—by lamplight, at night, and in privacy—can carry with it, in complementary fashion, a deep awareness of one’s position within the group and within society. The marked need to seclude oneself from the group dynamics and the self-conscious stance of serious purpose and dutifulness even in leisure are aspects of this awareness.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

de ciency, but of a culture that values the sort of philological education necessary to see clearly and without

Graeco-Roman society in the high empire in many respects revolved around various notions of the vir magnus and his circle. We have explored in some detail ways in which the reading culture has material interplay with the positioning of the great man and his “friends and companions” on the ladder of status, both within the society at large and within certain self-negotiated communities. We have found evidence, for example, of a culture of sharing whereby leading elites were expected to share with their comites not only utilitarian items such as used clothing, but also resources centered around texts. These included the space for recitations; a variety of social contexts at domus and villa (walkways, gardens, baths, dining rooms, sitting rooms) suitable for various types of readings and text-centered discussions; participants for the readings, including both docti of rank and an entourage of the intellectually curious of all stripes. Leading men also made the books themselves available, by maintaining both a library and the sta

necessary to

certain situations (e.g., comedy at dinner) as entertainment for the group. The more in uential the man, the larger was the group of amici and the greater the demand on resources. Gellius, for example, seems to have p. 203

spent quite a bit of time with other docti at the villa

of Herodes Atticus at Cephisia, yet all indications are

that Herodes did not know him well at all. Within the literary universe surrounding the great man, we have found (idealized) depictions of the contest for status, as the participants vie with one another to claim a de ned role. We have seen the ways in which the community negotiates the complex issue of whose literary e orts are to be valued, and how the structure of the community almost organically fashions itself so as to insulate men of rank from loss of dignitas in plying literary pursuits. At every turn, I have tried to emphasize also the way in which the literary text that is our witness also plays a part in the real-life negotiation of community. Thus Pliny, Galen, and Gellius, in an e ort at in uencing the way real-life communities negotiated their values and preferences, write into their scripts the community as they wish it to be—and that puts the best re ection on themselves. Reading, by this analysis, is deeply embedded within the community itself. When one asks why literature is so important within these communities, the answer in part must be circular: these communities construct themselves as exclusive domains on the basis of their knowledge of, and facility with, literary texts. Not all communities, elite or otherwise, focus on this set of goals, but within the particular communities we have examined, literary pursuits form a large part of what men do. In a society that traditionally embraces the negotiation of power, status, and social mobility within the context of the law courts and assembly (the Forum and Senate in Roman terms), this attachment in the imperial era to activities and concerns that privilege mastery of language makes sense. As noted before, the line from social clientalism to oratory is short and direct, the tradition of a close link between authority and oratory profound, the need for mastery of language to command oratory obvious. In an era when status and power become the emperor’s preserve, and oratory less central (though still important), the sidestep toward a more restricted focus on mastery of language itself is natural enough. In any case, there is a long tradition of elite interest in controlling literature and language, a typical concern 2

for elites in literate societies. The deeply probing and sometimes startlingly pedantic involvement in elaborate codes of language—whether those of archaistic Latin or atticistic Greek or the many subtleties of other prose and poetic traditions—results from what is by the time of the high empire a long-standing fact, 3

that circles of the wealthy and powerful are the central embedding institution for literary activity. In the late p. 204

Republic, Atticus’s employment of a large sta

to service the

bookish needs of Cicero and others (Nepos,

Atticus 13.3) had nothing to do with commercial “publishing,” but was, rather, a form of Freundschaftsdienst that helped join into a closely bound network—with Cicero and Atticus at the center—Atticus’s ties among 4

nancial, political, and literary men of rank. The example is not random, but a de ning one, since Cicero and his friends form an essential model for later generations.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

assess, acquire, and copy the books, and they provided trained lectores who presented certain books in

Ideological Constructions of Reading The activities of tastemaking and gatekeeping are by no means a mere re ex of competition among the di erent elite (and other) communities within imperial society. Rather, these activities are constructed in such a way as to carry moralistic implications. Roman aristocrats are anxious to show o

the busy literary

enterprise of their leisure moments not out of an exaggerated sense of duty, but in reaction to an ideological schema by which the upright Roman opposes him- or herself to degenerates who use leisure time in frivolous banqueting and other “unseemly” ways. Not simply doing one’s duty for friends in the Forum, but literary enterprises—including study of medicine and philosophy but also writing poetry—become, Even within the strict context of reading and writing (and music), moralistic contrasts are found: the assertion of privileged status for archaic writers is, by a curious legerdemain, linked by its adherents to upright morality in the same way that New Comedy is t, mime un t; lyre music seemly, tibia music not; certain styles of reading aloud “manly,” others reprehensible. As we’ve seen, the very idea of gentlemanly behavior or indeed “Romanness” can be urgently at issue in such cultural schematics, as tastes and habitudes toward things literary become part of the moral—and consequently also part of the political— equation. The mastery of literature and language is a considerable component of the struggle within imperial society to de ne the “better” communities, and this struggle often plays out using a vocabulary of the moralistic terms that, signi cantly, we moderns tend more to associate with political spheres of contention. Moreover, we have seen a pervasive inclination that literature be reserved for the few. Literature, that is, is asserted in this period as a major realm of activity in which the elite distinguish themselves as the better (as well as the more rich and powerful) stratum of society. But things literary can’t literally be reserved for the few in a society in which a good many people had instrumental literacy to a fair level of attainment, and in p. 205

which slaves

and freedman were routinely trained to assist in education and in the reading of literature.

Thus, exaggerated exclusionary mechanisms click, spontaneously, into place. Correct apprehension of literature is said to involve an elaborated education spanning many years, as well as a re nement of character such as one nds, naturally, only in the leisured classes. Inevitably, there is a sort of closed circle, since only those with deep appreciation of and exposure to literature have the opportunity to absorb the subtle signals that the classic texts provide for development of good moral character. The deck is stacked against those outside of the elite, whatever their native talents. But this, again, is an ideological schema rather than a map to the exterior realities.

Literature and Society In fact, there clearly were those in the high empire who were able to use their intellectual gifts to nd a way 5

around the exclusionary circles that the elite drew around themselves. To take but a random example, Fronto’s talents as an orator and intellectual leader surely had a lot to do with his movement from obscure beginnings in North African Cirta to consular status and ownership of not one but two spectacular imperial properties. One could reasonably argue that the philhellenic embrace of literature and philosophy and study of language was a critical factor in keeping Roman-era society so vibrant throughout the continuing troubles of the late Republic and early empire, as talented provincials and Greeks found through mastery of things literary an avenue of access to the highest social strata. At times these best and brightest were also able to move up into, and so as to reinvigorate, the ruling ranks directly. 6

Theorists speak of the urgent struggle for communication inherent in writing. In the time of the high empire, there was, I think, a decided intimacy in literary e orts. Our investigation has shown how closely

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

curiously, opposed to binge drinking, inappropriate sex, e eminate habits, and other signs of depravity.

literary production intertwined with the construction of community. There was a parallel engagement with reading—involving the valuation of contemporary texts, but also active criticism and reevaluation of the classics—that also often played out within intimate group structures, whether they were magisterial or high elite circles, and was itself a consequential component in the negotiation of community. The urgent struggle p. 206

for communication did not,

that is, operate in prospect or in theory, but in fact, constituting an ongoing

set of face-to-face (or at least letter-to-letter) interactions that helped to de ne real matters of consequence, like personal relationships, status within the community, and even concrete gains such as income and wealth. Indeed, an important aspect of imperial reading culture is its close link to real-world a airs. What one read, literature so attained, mattered. Material consequence followed. Recommendations (as we’ve seen illustrated in Pliny and Fronto) could e ectively rest on whether a person was su

cient as an “ornament”

to the literary society. Social mobility was in play. Agreement on things literary could in uence political networks—and, probably, vice versa. Income, even considerable wealth, could ow from outstanding success in this arena, especially for those whose literary talents intersected with oratorical mastery. As I have mentioned repeatedly, we must not let the prominence of literary texts in our evidence exaggerate the centrality of literary circles. No doubt a good many elite communities, even under Marcus Aurelius, had more in common with the pathetic show of intellectualism that we see in Lucian’s Merc. Cond., or preferred to set literary pretense to one side altogether. Even so, when we speak of tastemakers and gatekeepers, we should take care not to think solely and dismissively of those who pedantically police language usage, or who wish to promulgate the idiosyncratic literary tastes of themselves or their betters. Rather, within those particular communities in which literary activities were valued, the habits of textual interaction seem to have formed an important basis not only for the construction of their own communities, but for the construction of the perceived hierarchy of their circle in relation to others, including that of the emperor.

Coda As I pen the last paragraph of this volume, I feel the need to say something about the focus on elitism. I had not intended that. The book began life as a much broader look at reading culture, an investigation that would embrace the reading of the acta diurna as well as the philological pedantry of Gellius’s Noctae Atticae. But as I collected and assembled and organized evidence, it gradually became clear to me that to do this was not only to mix the proverbial apples with oranges, but that the topics raised by documentary events like the reading of the diurnal acta were in most respects di erent, involving questions of instrumental literacy rather than an inquiry into community building. Moreover, it is a sad fact, but yet a fact, that the main texts p. 207

that speak to the sociological slant I wished to pursue have grown out of elite

communities. The world

that literary texts portray deserved—demanded, it has seemed to me—its own treatment, on its own (literary) terms. There is, in short, much that remains to be done on the topic of reading, both in the high empire and in antiquity more generally, and it is with considerable humility before the largeness of the task that I o er here what I have been able to pull together of the reading culture within these selected imperial p. 208

communities.

Notes 1.

Active: Konstan 2006. Engelsing 1974 introduced the now widely used term intensive reader to di erentiate the habit of focusing on a small canon of religious texts from more extensive reading practices that came in with Protestantism; but on the falseness of the dichotomy for the early modern period, see Brewer 1997, 170–71. Cavallo 1999, 89 sees intensive

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

how one read, how one understood what one read, and how one deployed the mastery of language and

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

reading as a characteristic mode in late antiquity. On how intensive and extensive are more bound to social context and reading event than to eras, see Darnton 1990. Chartier 1994, 1–23 provides a thoughtful exploration of the general theoretical terrain; see 17 for his criticism of dichotomies such as those between extensive and intensive reader. See Johns 1998 for both general discussion and specific examples. For bibliography and discussion of the importance of embedding institutions in allowing or facilitating elaborated codes of language, see Elwert 2001. See Iddeng 2006, 64–67. Kaster 1988 explores specifics of how this works in later antiquity, with suggestive parallels. How this fits into the larger system of exchange among the elite is explored in Habinek 1998, esp. 7–8. See, for example, the discussion (with bibliography) in Brandt 1990 and Schmitz 1997, 50–63. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078296 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

END MATTER

Published: April 2010

Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Achtemeier, Paul. 1990. “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity.” JBL 109: 3–27. Allan, D. J. 1980. “Ἀναγιγνώσκω and Some Cognate Words.” CQ 30: 244–51. 10.1017/S0009838800041343 Crossref Allen, Walter. 1972. “Ovidʼs cantare and Ciceroʼs cantores Euphorionis.” TAPhA 103: 1–14. Amarelli, Francesco. 1983. Consilia principum. Naples. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Anderson, Graham. 1976. Lucian: Theme and Variation in the Second Sophistic. Leiden. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Anderson, Peter. 2002. “Fame is the Spur”: Memoria, Gloria, and Poetry among the Elite in Flavian Rome. Diss. Univ. of Cincinnati. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Austin, J. L. 1962/1975. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis, eds. Cambridge, Mass. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crossref Bagnall, Roger. 1992. “An Owner of Literary Papyri.” CPh 87: 137–40. WorldCat Baldwin, Barry. 1973. Studies in Lucian. Toronto. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Baldwin, Barry. 1975. Studies in Aulus Gellius. Lawrence, Kansas. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Balogh, Josef. 1927. “Voces Paginarum: Beträge zur Geschichte des lauten Lesens und Schreibens.” Philologus 82: 85–109, 202– 240. WorldCat Barnes, T. D. 1986. “The significance of Tacitusʼ Dialogus de Oratoribus.” HSCPh 90: 225–44.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

References 

Bartsch, Shadi. 1994. Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. Cambridge, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bell, A. A. 1989. “A Note on Revision and Authenticity in Plinyʼs Letters.” AJPh 110: 460–66. WorldCat Bell, H. Idris. 1921. “The ʻThyestesʼ of Sophocles and an Egyptian Scriptorium.” Aegyptus 2: 281–88. WorldCat Berkowitz, Luci, and Karl A. Squitier, eds. 1990. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works. 3rd ed. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Birt, Theodor. 1907. Die Buchrolle in der Kunst: archäologisch-antiquarische Untersuchungen zum antiken Buchwesen. Leipzig. Blanchard, Alain, ed., with preface by Jean Irigoin. 1989. Les débuts du codex: actes de la journée dʼétude organisée à Paris les 3 et 4 juillet 1985 par lʼInstitut de papyrologie de la Sorbonne et lʼInstitut de recherche et dʼhistoire des textes. Bibliologia 9. Turnhout. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 210

Blanchard, Alain. 1993. “Les papyrus littéraires grecs extraits de cartonnages: études de bibliologie.” In Marilena Maniaci and Paola F. Munafò, eds., Ancient and Medieval Book Materials and Techniques. Erice, 18–25 September 1992, 1: 15–40. Studi e testi 357. Città del Vaticano. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Blum, Herwig. 1969. Die antike Mnemotechnik, Spudasmata 15. Hildesheim and New York. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bompaire, J. 1958. Lucien Écrivain, Imitation et Création (Bibliothèque des écoles Françaises dʼAthènes et de Rome fasc. 190). Paris. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bonner, Stanley F. 1977. Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny. Berkeley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Boudon-Millot, V. 2007. “Un traité perdu de Galien miraculeusement retrouvé, le Sur lʼinutilité de se chagriner: texte grec et traduction française.” In V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole, and C. Magdelaine, eds., La science médicale antique. Nouveaux regards. Études reunites en lʼhonneur de Jacques Jouanna, 73–123. Paris. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Boulogne, Jacques. 1996. “Plutarque et la médecine.” ANRW 2.37.3: 2762–2893. WorldCat Bowersock, Glen W. 1969. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bowman, Alan K. 1986. Egypt a er the Pharaohs 332 B.C. –A.D . 642: From Alexander to the Arab Conquest. Berkeley. Bowman, Alan K., et al. 2007. Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts. Graeco-Roman Memoirs 93. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Boyd, C. E. 1915. Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome. Chicago.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Binder, Gerhard. 1995. “Ö entliche Autorenlesungen: zur Kommunikation zwischen römischen Autoren und ihrem Publikum.” In Gerhard Binder and Konrad Ehlich, eds., Kommunikation durch Zeichen und Wort, 265–332. Bochumer Altertumswissenscha liche Colloquium 23. Stätten und Formen der Kommunikation im Altertum 4. Trier. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Google Scholar

Google Preview

WorldCat

COPAC

Brandt, Deborah. 1990. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers, and Texts. Carbondale, Ill. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Branham, R. Bracht. 1989. Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Brewer, John. 1997. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. London. Brink, Charles Oscar. 1982. Horace on Poetry. Epistles Book II: The Letters to Augustus and Florus. Cambridge.

Burnyeat, M. F. 1991. Letter to the Editor in Times Literary Supplement, April 19, 1991, p. 15. WorldCat Burnyeat, M. F. 1997. “Postscript on Silent Reading.” CQ 47: 74–76. 10.1093/cq/47.1.74 WorldCat Crossref Cavallo, Gugliemo. 1999. “Between Volumen and Codex: Reading in the Roman World.” In Cavallo and Chartier 1999: 64–89. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cavallo, Guglielmo, and Roger Chartier, eds. 1999. A History of Reading in the West. Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book. Boston. Trans. by Lydia G. Cochrane from Histoire de la lecture dans le monde occidental (Roma, 1995 and Paris, 1997). Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cavenaile, Robert. 1958. Corpus Papyrorum Latinarum. Wiesbaden. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Champlin, Edward. 1980. Fronto and Antonine Rome. Cambridge, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Champlin, Edward. 1982. “The Suburbium of Rome.” AJAH 7: 97–117. Chartier, Roger. 1994. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Stanford, Calif. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Clanchy, M. T. 1979. From Memory to Written Record. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 211

Clark, W. P. 1931. “Ancient Reading.” CJ 26: 698–700. WorldCat Clarysse, Willy. 1983. “Literary Papyri in Documentary ʻArchives.ʼ” In Egypt and the Hellenistic World (Studia Hellenistica 27), 43– 61. Louvain. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cockle, W. E. H. 1987. Hypsipyle, Euripides: Text and Annotation Based on a Re-examination of the Papyri. Rome. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Courtney, Edward. 2003. The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Brink, Charles Oscar. 1994. “Can Tacitusʼ Dialogus Be Dated?” HSCPh 96: 251–80.

Cribiore, Ra aella. 1996. Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. American Studies in Papyrology 36. Atlanta. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cribiore, Ra aella. 2001. Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crook, J. 1955. Consilium Principis. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Dahlmann, H. 1980. “Die Hendekasyllaben des Sentius Augurinus, Plinius, ep. 4,27.” Gymnasium 87: 167–77. WorldCat

Darnton, Robert. 1990. “First Steps toward a History of Reading.” In The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History, 154–87. New York. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC de Neeve, Pieter W. 1992. “A Roman Landowner and His Estates: Pliny the Younger.” SIFC 10: 335–44. WorldCat Di Capua, F. 1953. “Osservationi sulla lettura e sulla preghiera ad alta voce presso gli antichi.” RAAN n.s. 28: 59–99. WorldCat Dix, T. Keith. 1994. “ʻPublic Librariesʼ in Ancient Rome: Ideology and Reality.” Libraries & Culture 29: 282–96. WorldCat Dix, T. Keith, and George W. Houston. 2006. “Public Libraries in the City of Rome: From the Augustan Age to the Time of Diocletian.” MEFRA 118.2: 671–717. WorldCat Dominik, William. 2007. “Tacitus and Pliny on Oratory.” In William Dominik and Jon Hall, eds., A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, 323–38. Oxford. 10.1002/9780470996485 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crossref Dostálová, R. 1985. “Der ʻBücherkatalogʼ Pap. Wess. Gr. Prag. I 13 in Rahmen der Nachrichten über Bücher aus frühchristlicher Zeit” in ΔΩΡΗΜΑ στὸν I. Καραγιαννόπουλο = Byzantina 13: 537–47. Dubel, S. 1994. “Dialogue et Autoportrait: Les Masques de Lucien.” In A. Billault, ed., Lucien de Samosate, 19–26. Lyon. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Du , Tim. 1999. Plutarchʼs Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice. Oxford. Duncan-Jones, Richard. 1982. “The Finances of a Senator.” In R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., 17– 32. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dupont, Florence. 1997. “Recitatio and the Space of Public Discourse.” In Thomas Habinek and Alessandro Schiesaro, eds., The Roman Cultural Revolution, 44–59. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Durry, M. 1959. Lettres X et Panegyricus. Paris. (Budé) Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

dʼArms, J. H. 1999. “Performing Culture: Roman Spectacle and the Banquets of the Powerful.” In B. Bergmann and C. Kondoleon, eds., The Art of Ancient Spectacle, 301–14. Washington, D.C. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Eck, Werner. 1998. “M. Cornelius Fronto, Lehrer Marc Aurels, consul su ectus im J. 142.” RhM 141: 193–96. WorldCat Eco, Umberto. 1979. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington, Ind. Elwert, Georg. 2001. “Societal Literacy: Writing Culture and Development.” In David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds., The Making of Literate Societies, 54–67. Malden, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 212

Engelsing, Rolf. 1974. Der Bürger als Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500–1800. Stuttgart. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Fichtner, Gerhard. 2004. Corpus Galenicum: Verzeichnis der galenischen und pseudogalenischen Schri en. 2nd ed. Tübingen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Finnegan, Ruth. 1988. Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Fraser, P. M. 1972. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Funaioli, G. 1914. “Recitationes.” RE 1A: 435–46. WorldCat Funghi, Maria Serena, and Gabriella Messeri Savorelli. 1992. “Lo ʻScriba di Pindaroʼ e le Biblioteche di Ossirinco.” SCO 42: 43–62. WorldCat Gavrilov, A. K. 1997. “Techniques of Reading in Classical Antiquity.” CQ 47: 56–73. 10.1093/cq/47.1.56 WorldCat Crossref Gilliard, Frank D. 1993. “More on Silent Reading in Antiquity: non omne verbum sonabat.” JBL 112: 689–96. Gilliard, Frank D. 1997. Letter to the Editor in Times Literary Supplement, August 8, 1997, p. 19. WorldCat Gleason, Maud W. 1995. Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Goldhill, Simon. 2002. “Becoming Greek, with Lucian.” In Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism, 60–107. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Gowing, Alain M. 2005. Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture. Cambridge. 10.1017/CBO9780511610592 Crossref Grillo, R. D. 1989. Dominant Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and France. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guillemin, Anne-Marie. 1929. Pline et la vie littéraire de son temps. Paris. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Fantham, Elaine. 1996. Roman Literary Culture: From Cicero to Apuleius. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Güngerich, Rudolf. 1951. “Der Dialogus des Tacitus und Quintilians Institutio Oratoria.” CPh 46: 159–64. Habinek, Thomas N. 1998. The Politics of Latin Literature: writing, identity, and empire in ancient Rome. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Haines, C. R., ed. 1928–29. The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass. (Loeb Classical Library) Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hall, Jennifer A. 1981. Lucianʼs Satire. New York. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Hanson, A. E. 1998. “Galen: Author and Critic.” In G. W. Most, ed., Editing Texts = Texte Edieren, 22–53. Göttingen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Harris, William V. 1989. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Harris, William V. 1991. “Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-Roll?” In John Monfasani and Ronald G. Musto, eds., Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice Jr., 71–85. New York. Hatzilambrou, Rosalia. “P. Oxy. XVIII 2192 Revisited.” In Bowman et al. 2007: 282–86. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982. “What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School.” Language in Society 11: 49– 76. 10.1017/S0047404500009039 WorldCat Crossref Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 213

Helm, Rudolph. 1906. Lucian und Menipp. Leipzig. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Hemmerdinger, Bertrand. 1959. “Deux notes papyrologiques.” REG 72: 106–9. WorldCat Hendrickson, G. L. 1929. “Ancient Reading.” CJ 25: 182–96. WorldCat Heres, Thea L. 1995. “Het auditorium van Maecenas.” Lampas 28 (1995) 102–12. WorldCat Ho er, Stanley E. 1999. The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger. Atlanta. Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. 2003. Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement. 2nd ed. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holford-Strevens, Leofranc, and Amiel Vardi, eds. 2004. The Worlds of Aulus Gellius. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Horsfall, Nicholas. 1976. “The Collegium Poetarum.” BICS 23: 79–95.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Hankinson, R. J. 1991. Galen: On the Therapeutic Method, Books I and II. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Horsfall, Nicholas. 1993a. Review of G. Vogt-Spira, ed., Strukturen der Mündlichkeit in der römischen Literatur. Rivista di Filologia 121: 81–85. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Horsfall, Nicholas. 1993b. “Empty Shelves on the Palatine.” G&R 40: 58–67. WorldCat Horsfall, Nicholas. 1995. “Rome without Spectacles.” G&R 42: 49–56. WorldCat

Houston, George. 2003. “Galen, His Books, and the Horrea Piperataria at Rome.” MAAR 48: 45–51. WorldCat Houston, George. 2009. “Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries in the Roman Empire.” In Johnson and Parker 2009: 233–67. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Iddeng, Jon W. 2006. “Publica aut peri! The Releasing and Distribution of Roman Books.” Symbolae Osloenses 81: 58– 84. 10.1080/00397670701494404 Crossref Iskandar, Albert Z. 1988. Galen: On Examinations by Which the Best Physician Are Recognized. CMG Suppl. Or. IV. Berlin. Janson, Tore. 1964. Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions. Stockholm. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johns, Adrian. 1998. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, William A. 1992. The Literary Papyrus Roll: Formats and Conventions. An Analysis of the Evidence from Oxyrhynchus. Diss. Yale University. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, William A. 1994. “The Function of the Paragraphus in Greek Literary Prose Texts.” ZPE 100: 65–68. WorldCat Johnson, William A. 1998. “Dramatic Frame and Philosophic Idea in Plato.” AJPh 119: 577–98. WorldCat Johnson, William A. 2000. “Toward a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity.” AJPh 121: 593–627. WorldCat Johnson, William A. 2002. “Reading Cultures and Education.” In Peter C. Patrikis, ed., Reading between the Lines: Perspectives on Foreign Language Literacy, 9–23. Yale Language Series. New Haven. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, William A. 2004. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto. Johnson, William A. 2009a. “Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empire.” In Johnson and Parker 2009: 320–30. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Horstmansho , H. F. J. 1995. “Galen and His Patients.” In Ph. J. van der Eijk, H. F. J. Horstmansho , and P. H. Schrijvers, eds., Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context, 83–100. Amsterdam and Atlanta. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Johnson, William A. 2009b. “The Ancient Book.” In Roger Bagnall, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, William A., and Holt Parker, eds. 2009. Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Jones, C. P. 1967. “A Friend of Galen.” CQ 17: 311–12. 10.1017/S000983880002838X WorldCat Crossref Jones, C. P. 1986. Culture and Society in Lucian. Cambridge, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kaster, Robert A. 1988. Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 11. Berkeley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kaster, Robert A. 1995. De grammaticis et rhetoribus: C. Suetonius Tranquillus. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ker, James. 2004. “Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of Lucubratio.” CPh 99: 209–42. Knox, B. M. W. 1968. “Silent Reading in Antiquity.” GRBS 9: 421–35. WorldCat Konstan, David. 2006. “The Active Reader in Classical Antiquity.” Argos: Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios Clásicos 30: 7–18. WorldCat Konstan, David. Forthcoming. “Excerpting as a Reading Practice.” In Carlos Lévy, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, and Emmanuele Vimercato, eds., Stobaeus. Turnhout. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Krüger, Julian. 1990. Oxyrhynchos in der Kaiserzeit. Frankfurt. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kühn, C. G. 1821–33. Claudii Galeni opera omnia. Leipzig. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Leach, Eleanor W. 1990. “The Politics of Self-Presentation: Plinyʼs Letters and Roman Portrait Sculpture.” CA 9: 14–39. WorldCat Leach, Eleanor W. 1997. “Oecus on Ibycus: Investigating the Vocabulary of the Roman House.” In S. Bon and R. Jones, Sequence and space in Pompeii, 50–72. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Leopold, I. H. 1908. “De vocabulis medicis apud M. Aurelium obviis.” In Sertum Nabericum, collectum a philologis Batavis ad celebrandum diem festum XVIum mensis Iulii anni MCMVIII, 233–51. Leiden. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Lewis, Naphtali. 1963. “The Non-scholar Members of the Alexandrian Museum.” Mnemosyne (ser. 4) 16: 257– 61. 10.1163/156852563X00036 WorldCat Crossref Lewis, Naphtali. 1981. “Literati in the Service of the Roman Emperors: Politics before Culture.” In L. Casson and M. Price, eds., Coins, Culture and History in the Ancient World, 149–66. Detroit.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

p. 214

Google Scholar

Google Preview

WorldCat

COPAC

Lewis, Naphtali. 1995. On Government and Law in Roman Egypt. Atlanta. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Liebemann, W. 1900. “Consilium.” RE 7, 915–22. WorldCat Lilja, S. 1970. “On the Nature of Plinyʼs Letters.” Arctos 6: 61–79. WorldCat

Ludolph, Matthias 1997. Epistolographie und Selbstdarstellung. Untersuchungen zu den Paradebriefen Plinius des Jüngeren. Classica Monacensia 17. Tübingen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Lyons, Malcolm. 1969. De diaeta in morbis acutis secundum Hippocratem. On regimen in acute diseases in accordance with the theories of Hippocrates. CMG Suppl. Or. II. Berlin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Männlein, Irmgard. 2000. “What Can Go Wrong at a Dinner-Party: The Unmasking of False Philosophers in Lucianʼs Symposium or The Lapiths.” In Karla Pollmann, ed., Double Standards in the Ancient and Medieval World, 247–62. Göttingen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Marchesi, Ilaria. 2008. The Art of Plinyʼs Letters: A Poetics of Allusion in the Private Correspondence. Cambridge. 10.1017/CBO9780511482298 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crossref Marshall, Peter K. 1968. A. Gellii Noctes Atticae. 2 vols. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Marshall, Peter K. 1976. “Library Resources and Creative Writing at Rome.” Phoenix 30: 252–64. 10.2307/1087296 WorldCat Crossref Mattern, Susan. 2008. Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing. Baltimore. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mayer, Roland, ed. 2001. Tacitus: Dialogus de oratoribus. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC McCartney, E. S. 1948. “Notes on Reading and Praying Audibly.” CPh 43: 184–87. WorldCat p. 215

McDonnell, Myles. 1996. “Writing, Copying, and Autograph Manuscripts in Ancient Rome.” CQ n.s. 46: 469– 91. 10.1093/cq/46.2.469 WorldCat Crossref McNamee, Kathleen. 1981. “Greek Literary Papyri revised by Two or More Hands.” Proc. XVI Int. Congr. Pap., 79–91. Chico. WorldCat McNamee, Kathleen. 1992. Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri. Pap. Brux. 26. Brussels. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Luce, T. J. 1993. “Reading and Response in the Dialogus.” In T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman, eds., Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition, 11–38. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

McNamee, Kathleen. 2007. Annotations in Greek Literary Papyri. American Studies in Papyrology 45. Cincinnati. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Meyerhof, M. 1929. “Autobiographische Bruchstücke Galens aus arabischen Quellen.” Sudho s Archiv 22: 72–86. WorldCat Milnor, Kristina. 2005. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mingazzini, P., and F. Pfister. 1946. Surrentum, Forma Italiae I.2: 107–20. Florence. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Murgia, Charles. 1985. “Plinyʼs letters and the Dialogus.” HSCPh 89: 171–206. Nash, Ernest. 1981. Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome. 2 vols. New York. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Nervegna, Sebastiana Giuseppina. 2005. Studies in the Reception of Menander in Antiquity. Diss. Univ. of Toronto. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Norden, E. 1898 and 1923. Die antike Kunstprosa I. 1st ed. 4th ed. 1923. Leipzig and Berlin. Nutton, Vivian. 1969. “The Doctor and the Oracle.” Revue Belge de Philologie et dʼ Histoire 47: 37–48. 10.3406/rbph.1969.2761 WorldCat Crossref Nutton, Vivian. 1979. Galen, On Prognosis. CMG V 8.1. Berlin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Nutton, Vivian. 1984. “Galen in the Eyes of His Contemporaries.” Bull. Hist. Med. 58: 315–24. WorldCat Nutton, Vivian. 1990. “The Patientʼs Choice: a new Treatise by Galen.” CQ 40: 236–57. 10.1017/S000983880002694X WorldCat Crossref Nutton, Vivian. 1995. “Galen ad multos annos.” Dynamis 15: 25–40. Nutton, Vivian. 1997. “Galen on Theriac: Problems of Authenticity.” In A. Debru, ed., Galen on Pharmacology: Philosophy, History and Medicine, 133–51. Leiden. Nutton, Vivian. 2000. “Medicine.” Cambridge Ancient History. Second Edition. Vol. 11: The High Empire AD 70–192, 943–65. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Nutton, Vivian. 2004. Ancient Medicine. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Oates, John F., et al. 2002. Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets. 5th ed. Web edition (updated) at http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Muller, Wolfgang. 1964. Rhetorische und syntaktische Interpunktion. Untersuchungen zur Pausenbezeichnung im antiken Latein. Tübingen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Obbink, Dirk. “Readers and Intellectuals.” In Bowman et al. 2007: 271–82. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Oliver, Revilo P. 1951. “The First Medicean MS of Tacitus and the Titulature of Ancient Books.” TAPhA 82: 232–61. WorldCat Olson, David R. 1994. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Reading and Writing. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Olson, David R. 2002. “What Writing Is.” In Pragmatics and Cognition 9.2: 239–58. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Parker, Holt. “Books and Reading Latin Poetry.” In Johnson and Parker 2009: 186–229. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Parkes, M. B. 1991. Scribes, Scripts and Readers. Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Disssemination of Medieval Texts. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 216

Pesely, George E. 1994. “How many Copies of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia have been Found?” The Ancient History Bulletin 8.2: 38– 44. Petrucci, Armando. 1995. Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture. Translated and edited by Charles M. Radding. New Haven. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Pfa , Franz. 1956. “Galens Kommentare zu dem VI. Buche der Epidemien des Hippokrates, Buch VI 6,5–VIII.” In E. Wenkebach, Galeni in Hippocratis sextum librum epidemiarum commentaria I–VI, 355–507. CMG 5.10.2.2. Leipzig, Berlin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Platthy, Jenö. 1968. Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries. Amsterdam. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Popescu, Valentina. 2009. Lucianʼs Paradoxa: Fiction, Ethnicity, and Aesthetics. Diss. University of Cincinnati. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Porter, James. 2006. Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Puglia, Enzo. 1998. “Gli inventari librari di PVindob. Gr. 39966.” ZPE 123: 78–86. Quinn, Kenneth. 1981. “The Poet and His Audience in the Augustan Age.” ANRW II 30.1: 75–180. WorldCat Radicke, Jan. 1997. “Die Selbstdarstellung des Plinius in seinen Briefen.” Hermes 125: 447–69. WorldCat Radt, Stefan. 1980. “Noch einmal Aischylos, Niobe Fr. 162 N. 2 (278 M.).” ZPE 38: 47–58. WorldCat Radt, Stefan. 1997. “Zu P. Merton 19,2 F. und P. Oxy. 2192, 43 F.” ZPE 119: 6.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Otranto, Rosa. 2000. Antiche Liste di Libri su Papiro. Roma. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

WorldCat Reynolds, L. D., ed. 1983. Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Reynolds, Suzanne. 1996. Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text. Cambridge. 10.1017/CBO9780511470356 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crossref Richardson, L., Jr. 1992. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore and London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Riggsby, Andrew M. 1995. “Pliny on Cicero and Oratory: Self-Fashioning in the Public Eye.” AJPh 116: 123–35. WorldCat Riggsby, Andrew. 1997. “ʻPublicʼ and ʻPrivateʼ in Roman Culture: The Case of the Cubiculum.” JRA 10: 36–56. Riggsby, Andrew M. 1998. “Self and Community in the Younger Pliny.” Arethusa 31: 75–97. 10.1353/are.1998.0004 WorldCat Crossref Roberts, Colin H., and T. C. Skeat. 1983. The Birth of the Codex. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Roller, Matthew. 1998. “Plinyʼs Catullus: The Politics of Literary Appropriation.” TAPhA 128: 265–304. WorldCat Rome, A. 1952. “La vitesse de parole des orateurs attiques.” Acad. Roy. Belg., Bull. Cl. Lett. 38: 596–609. WorldCat Saenger, Paul. 1982. “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Literacy.” Viator 13: 367–414. WorldCat Saenger, Paul. 1997. Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Salles, Catherine, with an appendix by René Martin. 1992. Lire à Rome. Realia 14. Paris. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Schenkeveld, Dirk M. 1991. Letter to the Editor in Times Literary Supplement, March 22, 1991, p. 13. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 217

Schenkeveld, Dirk M. 1992. “Prose Usages of ἀκούειν, ʻto read.ʼ” CQ 42: 129–41. 10.1017/S0009838800042634 Crossref Schlange-Schöningen, Heinrich. 2003. Die römische Gesellscha bei Galen, Biographie und Sozialgeschichte. Berlin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Schmitz, Thomas. 1997. Bildung und Macht. Zur sozialen und Politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit, Munich. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sherwin-White, A. N. 1957. Review of Crook 1955. JRS 47: 252–54.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Richter, Daniel. 1999. “Lucianʼs Learned Barbaros: Parodying Diatribe in the Adversus Indoctum.” American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting Abstracts.

WorldCat Sherwin-White, A. N. 1966/1985. The Epistles of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary. Oxford. Corr. ed. 1985. Sherwin-White, A. N. 1969. “Pliny, the Man and His Letters.” G&R 16: 76–90. WorldCat Singer, P. N. 1997. Galen, Selected Works. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Slusser, Michael. 1992. “Reading Silently in Antiquity.” JBL 111: 499. WorldCat Small, Jocelyn Penny. 1997. Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity. London and New York. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Stanford, W. B. 1967. The Sound of Greek. Berkeley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Starr, Raymond J. 1987. “The Circulation of Literary Texts in the Roman World.” CQ 37: 213–23. 10.1017/S0009838800031797 WorldCat Crossref Starr, Raymond. 1990–91. “Lectores and Book Reading.” CJ 86: 337–43. Stevenson, Andrew J. 2004. “The Roman Antiquarian Tradition.” In Holford-Strevens and Vardi 2004: 118–55. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Stock, Brian. 1996. Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Street, Brian V. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Street, Brian V. 1988. “Literacy practices and literacy myths.” In Roger Saljo, ed., The Written World: Studies in Literate Thought and Action, 59–72. Berlin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Street, Brian V., ed. 1993. Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Swain, Simon. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, A.D. 50–250. Oxford. Google Scholar

Google Preview

WorldCat

COPAC

Swain, Simon. 2004. “Bilingualism and Biculturalism in Antonine Rome: Apuleius, Fronto, and Gellius.” In Holford-Strevens and Vardi 2004: 3–40. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Syme, Ronald. 1958. Tacitus. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview

WorldCat

COPAC

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Skeat, T. C. 1995. ʻWas Papyrus Regarded as ʻCheapʼ or ʻExpensiveʼ in the Ancient World?ʼAegyptus 75: 75–93. WorldCat

Syme, Ronald. 1985. “Correspondents of Pliny.” Historia 34: 324–59. WorldCat Syme, Ronald. 1991. Roman Papers VII. Edited by Anthony R. Birley. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Thomas, Rosalind. 1992. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Townend, G. B. 1969. “Some Problems of Punctuation in the Latin Hexameter.” CQ n.s. 19: 330–44. 10.1017/S0009838800024745 WorldCat Crossref

Turner, Eric G. 1952a. Athenian Books in the Fi h and Fourth Centuries. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Turner, Eric G. 1952b. “Roman Oxyrhynchus.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 38: 78–93. 10.2307/3855498 WorldCat Crossref Turner, Eric G. 1956. “Scribes and Scholars in Oxyrhynchus.” In Akten des VIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955, 141–46. MPER 5. Vienna. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Turner, Eric G. 1962. “Lʼérudition alexandrine et les papyrus.” Chronique dʼÉgypte 37: 135–52. WorldCat Turner, Eric G. 1980. Greek Papyri: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Princeton and Oxford. p. 218

Turner Eric G., rev. P. J. Parsons. 1987. Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. 2nd ed. BICS Supplement 46. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Valette-Cagnac, Emmanuelle. 1997. La lecture à Rome: rites et pratiques. LʼAntiquité au Présent. Paris. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC van den Hout, Michael P. J. 1988. M. Cornelii Frontonis epistulae schedis tam editis quam ineditis. Leipzig. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC van den Hout, Michael P. J. 1999. A Commentary on the Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto. Leiden. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Van Minnen, Peter. 1998. “Boorish or Bookish? Literature in Egyptian Villages in the Fayum in the Graeco-Roman Period.” Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28: 99–184. WorldCat Vardi, Amiel. 1993. “Why Attics Nights? or Whatʼs in a Name?” CQ 43: 298–300. 10.1017/S0009838800044360 WorldCat Crossref Vardi, Amiel. 1996. “Diiudicatio Locorum: Gellius and the History of a Mode in Ancient Comparative Criticism.” CQ 46: 492– 514. 10.1093/cq/46.2.492 Crossref Vardi, Amiel. 2001. “Gellius against the Professors.” ZPE 137: 41–54. WorldCat

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Tucci, Pier Luigi. 2008. “Galenʼs Storeroom, Romeʼs Libraries, and the Fire of A.D. 192.” JRA 21: 133–49.

Vardi, Amiel. 2004. “Genre, Conventions, and Cultural Programme in Gelliusʼ Noctes Atticae.” In Holford-Strevens and Vardi 2004: 159–86. Vespignani, V., and C. L. Visconti. 1874. “Antica sala da recitazioni, ovvero auditorio, scoperto fra le ruine degli orti mecenaziani sullʼ Esquilino.” Bulletino della Commissione Archeologica Municipale (communale di Roma) 2: 137–73. von Staden, Heinrich. 2000. “The Dangers of Literature and the Need for Literacy: A. Cornelius Celsus on Reading and Writing.” In Alfrieda Pigeaud and Jackie Pigeaud, eds., Les textes médicaux latins comme littérature: actes du VIe colloque international sur les textes médicaux latins du 1er au 3 septembre 1998à Nantes, 355–68. Nantes.

Walzer, R. 1944. Galen on Medical Experience. London. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Werner, Shirley. 2009. “Literacy Studies in the Classics: The Last Twenty Years.” In Johnson and Parker 2009: 333–82. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC White, Peter. 1993. Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome. Cambridge, Mass. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC White, Peter. 2009. “Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome.” In Johnson and Parker 2009: 268–87. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Whitmarsh, Tim. 2005. The Second Sophistic. Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics No. 35. Oxford. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Williams, Gordon W. 1978. Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire. Sather Classical Lectures 45. Berkeley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wingo, E. Otha. 1972. Latin Punctuation in the Classical Age. The Hague and Paris. 10.1515/9783110805215 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Crossref Wohleb, L. 1929. “Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des lauten Lesens.” Philologus 85: 111–12. WorldCat Zelzer, K. 1964. “Zur Frage des Charakters der Briefsammlung des jüngeren Plinius.” WS 77: 144–61. WorldCat Zetzel, James E. G. 1973. “Emendavi ad Tironem: Some Notes on Scholarship in the Second Century A.D .” HSCPh 77: 225–243. Zetzel, James E. G. 1980. “The Subscriptions in the Manuscripts of Livy and Fronto and the Meaning of Emendatio.” CPh 75: 38– 59. Zetzel, James E. G. 1984. Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity. Salem, N.H.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078665 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. 1994. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities William A. Johnson https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176407.001.0001 Published: 2010

Online ISBN: 9780199775545

Print ISBN: 9780195176407

END MATTER

Published: April 2010

Subject: Ancient Roman History, Ancient History (Non-Classical, to 500 CE) Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Index 

219Index Achilles, in Theon’s letter 183 Achtemeier, Paul 7 n12 Acontius story 6 ad Antoninum imp. et invicem (Marcus Aurelius) 152154 ad M. Caes (Fronto) 148–155 adversus Indoctum (Lucian) book collecting 158–160163–164167169–170 musical performance 163–164 reading style 160–161164–169191 social standing 166–167 Aelius Melissus 103136 Aelius Stilo, L. 132 Aeneid, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 129135 Aeschines Socraticus 188 n25 Alcaeus 186188 n25 Alcestis (Laevius) 105120128149 Alcman 186188 n25 Alexander of Damascus 78–79 Alexandria  See Oxyrhynchus texts Alsian letters, Fronto’s 150–151152 Ambrose, in silent reading debate 458 amici.  See (Pliny); See Fronto; See (Gellius) Annales (Claudius) 119 Annales (Ennius) 129 Annales (Quadrigarius) 118126–127 Annales (Tacitus) 71 Annianus 103104106 annotations, in Oxyrhynchus texts 185–190191194–199 antike Kunstprosa, Die (Norden) 4123 Antiochus, in Galen’s de san. tuenda 92 Antiphanes, in silent reading debate 6 Antiphon 188 n25 Antiquitates rerum humanarum (Varro) 111113 Antonius Aquila 147 Antonius Julianus, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae as authority 106–107112 dinner entertainment 128 frequency of mention 102 memorization theme 118 teaching style 124 text exclusivity theme 135 Antoninus Pius 144145152153 Aper, in Tacitus’s Dialogus 64–6668–72 apices 20 n7 Apollo, in Tacitus’s Dialogus 70 Apollonides, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

education 161–163167–169

Apollonius Rhodius 188 n25 Appian, in Fronto’s letter 148 Apuleius, in Fronto’s circle 139 n9 Aquillius Regulus, M. 47–4856 n566769–70 Archigenes, in Galen’s works 95 Aristaenetus, in Lucian’s Symposium 175–177 Aristarchus, in silent reading debate 14 Aristonicus, text annotation 189–190 Aristophanes 6100 p. 220

Aristotle, in Galen’s works

87

Arrius, Cicero’s complaint 145 Arrius Antoninus 4051 Athenaeus 627 n3374 n2190 n29 Atticus 159170203–204 Au dius Victorinus 139 n9147148–149 Augustine, in silent reading debate 458 Augustus, Fronto’s properties 140–141 Aurelius, Marcus and Galen 7480 in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 166168 Aurelius, Marcus, and Fronto correspondence with 138147–155 student-tutor relationship 137 text sharing 155–156 Bacchylides, in book lists 186 balanced life portrayals Marcus Aurelius’s 151–152 Pliny’s 36–42108 Baldwin, Barry 103 Balogh, Josef 4–58 n16 Baptai (Eupolis) 167 bathing, in Pliny’s Epistles 37 The Best Physician Is Also a Philosopher (Galen) 74 blind man comparison, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 160 book collecting activity  See Oxyrhynchus texts; See  book hand style 17 bookrolls, text layout 17–22201 Bowman, Alan K. 182 n6 Branham, R. Bracht 157159 n7 The Bringing Up of Blood (Erasistratus) 89 Bucolica (Theocritus) 128 Bucolica (Vergil) 128 Burnyeat, M. 38–9 business activity, in Pliny’s Epistles 42 Caecilius, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 122 Caecilius Africanus, S. 103106 Caesellius Vindex 102 n12 Callimachus, in silent reading debate 14

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Arria, in Pliny’s Epistles 41

Callinus, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 159170 Calpurnia, in Pliny’s writing 41 Calpurnius Julianus 144 Calpurnius Piso 34 n105053–54 Calvenus Taurus 102103106–107118124 Cambridge History of Latin Literature (Kenney) 7 n11 Caninius Rufus 4061 carriage rides, in Pliny’s Epistles 37–39 Castricius, Titus 102123124126 Catulus, Q. 118 Catilina (Sallust) 124–126 Cato, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 110113133135 Cato (Maternus) 64 Cavallo, G. 6–7 Champlin, Edward 146147150 n40 Charisius and Fronto 137 n6 Cicero on Arrius 145 in Atticus’s circle 204 and Coelius 154 correspondence characterized 36 n12 Fronto-Marcus Aurelius text exchange 155 in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 124126135 in Marcus Aurelius correspondence 152154 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 67 Clark, W. P. 5 n8 Claudius Iulianus, Ti. 139 n9 Claudius Quadrigarius 118126–127132135 p. 221

Claudius, Q.

119

Claudius Severus 139–9144–145 Coelius Antipater 154 coin metaphor, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 160–161 column format, bookrolls 17–19 comedy Gellius’s reading 121 in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180182 in Pliny’s Epistles 3742 Quintilian’s recommendation 59–60 in silent reading debate 6  See also (Lucian) communicative practices, de ned 10 comparison of texts, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 128 consilium principis, during Pliny’s time 33 contubernium, Fronto’s 143–146 Cornelius Tacitus  See Tacitus costs, bookroll production 21 Cribiore, Ra aella 27 n3328 n34 cultured man, ideal Pliny’s portrayal 36–4261–62

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Categories (Aristotle) 87

in Tacitus’s Dialogus 65–66 Cydippe story 6 daily regimen models, in Pliny’s Epistles 36–42 Damophilus, in book lists 185 de amicitia (Cicero) 126 de analogia (Caesar) 111118120127 de anat. admin. (Galen) 90 de compositione medicamentorum per genera (Galen) 87–88 de imperio Cn. Pompei (Cicero) 155 Deipnosophistae (Athenaeus) 74 n2 de loquendi proprietate (Melissus) 136 de methodo medendi (Galen) 75–77 Demetrius, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180 Demosthenes 6118167 de optimo medico cognoscendo (Galen) 83 de ordine librorum suorum (Galen) 8182 de praecogn. (Galen) 80 de propriorum animi… (Galen) 93 de san. tuenda (Galen) 8292 de theriaca ad Pisonem (Galen) 94–95 Dialogus de oratoribus (Tacitus) 63–72 dictation 1426–2786114 Didymus, in silent reading debate 14 dinner activity in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 104–106120127–129 in Lucian’s writings 166175–178 of Marcus Aurelius 150151 in Martial’s works 59 n64 in Pliny’s Epistles 37–394258–59106 Diodorus 181182 n6183 Dionysodorus, in Lucian’s Symposium 176177 diorthotes 188–189 Dissertationes (Epictetus) 119 The Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (Galen) 87 Domitius Afer 70–71 Domitius, in Gellius’s circle 103 Dupont, Florence 49 Eclogue (Vergil) 122128 Edict of Diocletian 21 Egrilius Plarianus, Q. 139 n9146 Egypt  See Oxyrhynchus texts Elder Pliny 14323460–61117128 elitism  See gatekeeping function e-mail 24 emendatio function, recitation 465152 emoticons 24 Encolpius 58 n6259 Engelsing, Rolf 200 n1

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

de libris propriis (Galen) 818285–8688–8992

Ennius Fronto-Marcus Aurelius text exchange 155 in Marcus Aurelius correspondence 153154 p. 222

Ennius, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae memorization theme 118 praeterpropter citation 105110127 proletarius citation 104 public reading of 129 text availability 132133–134135 Epicharmus 186188 n25 Epistles (Pliny) daily regimen portrayal 36–42 as portrayal of engaged community 56–63 Fronto letter compared 144 literary purpose 35–3672–73 recitation theme 42–56 sociocultural context 32–35 Epistulae ad Lucilium (Seneca) 36 n12 Eprius Marcellus 68–69 Erasistratus 89118 Erucius Clarus, S. 103106 Eudemus the Peripatetic 78–79 Eupolis, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 167 Evangelus, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 163–164 excerpting practice 115118132–134153–156200–201 exercise, in Pliny’s Epistles 37–3840–4142 eye-voice span 829 fama in Pliny’s work 72–73 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 68–72 Fannia, in Pliny’s writing 41 Fantham, Elaine 3564 Favorinus, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae as authority 98101107112135 Catilina reading 124–126 frequency of mention 102 in memorization theme 118 parcus discussion 128 wind vocabulary discussion 129 Fichtner, Gerhard 8196–97 Fidus Optatus 103134–135 Flavius Boethus 78–798087155 Franklin, Benjamin 61 n69 friends  See (Pliny); See Fronto; See (Gellius) Frontinus, Julius 33 n5 Fronto biographical highlights 137–138205 community circle of 98138–139141–148

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Epictetus, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 111112119

Marcus Aurelius correspondence 148–155 text sharing 155–156 wealth and properties 139–141 Fronto, in Noctes Atticae Annales reading 126–127 as authority 106–107135142 frequency of mention 102–103 memorization theme 118 praeterpropter discussion 110–111127 Funghi, Maria Serena 188 n25 Galen biographical highlights 74–7598 and Boethus 78–79155 expectations of audience 7780–8491–93119 n41159 and Fronto 98 intellectual philosophy 74–788090–9193–96130 n58 text circulation practices 85–90131 gatekeeping function overview 203–206 in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 101110–111112–113131–136 in Pliny’s Epistles 52–55  See also (Lucian) Gavius Bassus 127–128 Gavius Cornelius Or tus 144146 Gavius Squilla Gallicanus 144 Gavrilov, A. K. 37–9 Gellius, Aulus 98202–203  See also (Gellius) gentlemanly ideal  See cultured man, ideal p. 223

Georgics (Vergil)

191

Gleason, Maude 162 n13 gloria, in Tacitus’s Dialogus 68–72 Gracchus, Gaius 123124 Gracchus, Tiberius 154 grammaticus role, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 101110–111112–113129–130 Greek scholar, in Lucian’s Merc. Cond. 170–175 Grillo, R. D. 10 Hadrian 154 Harpocration, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180182 Hatzilambrou, Rosalia 181 n5 Heath, Shirley 9–10 Hedius Rufus Lollianus Avitus, L. 139 n9 Helm, Rudolph 175 n33 Helvius Pertinax 139 n9 Hendrickson, G. L. 4 n7 Heraclides, Oxyrhynchus texts 183184 Heraclitus, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 100 Herennius Philo, as book collector 184 Herodes Atticus 102–103106–107108112203 Hesiod, in Lucian’s writings 161162

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Fuscus Salinator 34 n1041

Hiero, in Galen’s de methodo medendi 75 Hild, F. 6–7 Hippocrates, in Galen’s works 8283869192–93 Histiaeus, in Lucian’s Symposium 176177 Horace 47 n3651140 Houston, George 87 n35 Hyginus 109122135 Hypsicrates, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180 Idylls (Theocritus) 191 The Ignorant Book Collector (Lucian)  See (Lucian) inheritance 189 Institutio Oratoria (Quintilian) 25–31 Instruction on Books Worth Owning (Telephus) 184–185 interpuncts 20 interruption practice, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 124–128 Ion, in Lucian’s Symposium 176 Iphigenia (Ennius) 105110127 Isaeus 41 Isocrates 80 n18 Jerome 25 n25 Julius Aquilinus 146–147 Julius Caesar 111118120127 Julius Celsinus 103104–106110–111 Julius Genitor 4160 Julius Paulus 103104–106127 Kenney, E. J. 7 n11 Ker, James 117 Kleodemus, in Lucian’s Symposium 176–177 Knights (Aristophanes) 6 Knox, Bernard 35–613–14 Laevius 105120128149 Lampadio 135 lectors, uses of 1426–27395960–61 Licinius Montanus 143–144145146 Linus, in Tacitus’s Dialogus 70 literacy terminology, de nitions 10  See also reading, overview Livius Andronicus 135 location descriptions, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 101–102108–109 Lorium villa, Fronto’s 140 Lucinius Sura 33 n5 Lucian Greek scholar portrayal 170–175 Platonic dialogue drama 175–178 writings characterized 157–158  See also (Lucian) p. 224

Lucretia

117

lucubration theme, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 114–117149 Lycinus, in Lucian’s Symposium 175–178 Lycus of Macedon 90

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

index, Elder Pliny’s 117 n36

Maas’s Law 18 Macedo 103104 Maecenas property, Fronto’s 140–141 Maintown children, in literacy study 9–10 margins, bookroll layout 21 Martial 17 n15159 n64 Martialius and Galen 89 Maternus, Curiatius 64–6668–72 Mattern, Susan 90 Mayer, Roland 5269 n15 McNamee, Kathleen 187 meals  See dinner activity Menander, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 122 medicine theme, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 77–78  See also Galen memorization theme 111118–120201–202 Menippean Satires (Varro) 129–130 Menippus 175 n33 mental activity, in Pliny’s Epistles 37–384258 n62 Men Who Appear in Comedies (Hypsicrates) 180 Merc. Cond. (Lucian) 162170–175 Metellus Numidicus 126 music formative for Quintilian’s perfect orator 3159–60 in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 163–164 Myths of Tragedy (Thersagorus) 180 Naturalis Historia (Pliny) 117 Necklace (Caecilius) 122 Neratius Priscus 102–12 neurophysiological argument, silent reading 7–8 nighttime study theme, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 114–117149 Nigidius Figulus 132134 Nigrinus 174 n32 Noctes Atticae (Gellius) dinner entertainment 127–129 expectations of audience 99–101 Fronto portrayals 142 group reading style 120–129149190–191 literary text emphasis 109–114 location description approach 101–102 lucubration theme 114–117149 medicine theme 77–78 memorization theme 118–120 people description approach 101102–109 reading competence theme 129–130 text exclusivity theme 131–136159 typicizing approach 101–109 Norden, Eduard 4123202 nugatory poetry, Pliny’s 43–4650–5152

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

McDonnell, Myles 155 n57

Nutton, Vivian 80 Octavius Rufus 34 n1054–55 Olson, David 23 On Possessing and Collecting Books (Philo) 184 On the Avoidance of Grief (Galen) 87 n35 oratory in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 223 Quintilian’s training treatise 25–3159–60114123 n48162 n13 of Tacitus 63 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 64–72  See also recitation theme, in Pliny’s p. 225

Oxyrhynchus texts annotation uniformities 185–190191194–199 collecting/sharing of 180–185 uses of 190–192 paideia in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 158159164167–168 Pliny’s portrayal 38 Panegyricus (Pliny) 44 papyrus rolls, creation 18 paralinguistic information 24–25 paragraphos 20 Passenus Paulus 34 n10 people description approach, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 101102–109 Peregrinus Proteus 103 Persius 42–43 Pesely, George E. 182 n6 Petronius Mamertinus 139 n9143 Petrucci, on aristocrats 38 n17 Philo, in Lucian’s Symposium 175–178 Philostratus, in Gellius’s circle 103 physical activity, in Pliny’s Epistles 37–3840–4142 Pindar 186188 n25 Plato 29 n3660 n67118124 Plautus, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 118 Pliny the Elder 14323460–61117128 Pliny the Younger Gellius’s writings compared 106108 sociocultural context 32–35 and Tacitus 3334–356163–6472–73 on Thessalus 77 n7 on uncle’s reading habits 14  See also (Pliny) PLitLond 97 183–184 Plotinus, in silent reading debate 8 Plutarch 3336 n1344 n285978 n10 PMilVogl 11 183 poetry in Fronto’s letters 148–149 in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 109118

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Orpheus, in Tacitus’s Dialogus 70

in Pliny’s Epistles 373843–4650–515254–5572–73 Quintillian’s recommendation 37 n16 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 64–6670–72 Pollio, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180182 n6 Pompeius Saturninus 34 Pomponius Bassus 39 Pomponius Secundus 48 n4071–72 Porcius Licinus 118 Postumius Festus, M. 103106 POxy 30 17 n1 POxy 2452 190 PPetaus 30 184 praeterpropter, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 110–111127 preface, Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 99–101114117 proletarius discussion, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 127 Ptolemy 8189–190 punctuation 182022–2325201 Quintilian on apices 20 n7 on orator training techniques 25–3159–60114123 n48162 n13 and Pliny 3334 text circulation example 88 n37 writing advice 115–116 reading, overview community contexualization approach 14–16 de nitions 11 n20 instruction for 27–30 silence controversy reviewed 3–9 as sociocultural system 9–14202–206 as a system 200–202 dinner activity; Epistles (Pliny); Galen; Noctes Atticae (Gellius) p. 226

recitation theme, in Pliny’s Epistles as authorial choice 42–43 nugatory poetry 43–4652 publication relationship 52–56 public venues 4047–4951 n47 response requirement 49–52 Rhetorum praeceptor (Lucian) 162 Richter, Daniel 159 n8 Roadville children, in literacy study 9–10 Roberts, Colin H. 88 n37183 n8 Rolfe, Matthew 121 Roman Literary Culture (Fantham) 35 Saenger, Paul 7 Sallust, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 118124–126 Sappho 188 n25 Sappho (Antiphanes) 6 Sardius Lupus 146 Sardius Saturninus 143

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

POxy 2387 189–190

Saturae (Varro) 111113 Savorelli, Gabriella Messeri 188 n25 SB 11996 183 Scipio Africanus 121 scrolls  See bookrolls scriptio continua cultural acceptance factor 22–23201 in silent reading controversy 56–7 and syllable memorization 27–28 text layout 18–20 Seleucus, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 181182 Seneca 36 n1240 n2142–4344 n29117135–136 Sentius Augurinus 34 n104145 n3150–51 Sergius Paulus 79 Servilianus 103 sexual allusions, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 160161–163165 Sherwin-White, A. N. 39 n1944 n2952–53 silent reading debate, literature review 3–9 “Silent Reading in Antiquity” (Knox) 513–14 Silius Italicus 3440–4148 n40 Simonides 186188 n25 Sinnius Capito 131 Skeat, T. C. 88 n37 social activity in Galen’s work 75–7694–96 in Pliny’s Epistles 37–3940–4142 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 65–66  See also dinner activity Sophocles 186187188 n25 Sosius Senecio 33 n9 Sosa (Ennius) 155 Spaces between Words (Saenger) 7 Starr, Raymond 27 n2988 Stesichorus, in book lists 186 Stoicism 111112119176183 Street, Brian 10 Suetonius 3334102 n12 Sulpicius Apollinaris 102–103106–107113 Sulpicius Cornelius 144146148 Surrentum estate, Fronto’s 139–140 syllables, in reading instruction 27–28 Symposium (Lucian) 175–178 Symposium (Menippus) 175 n33 Symposium (Plato) 118124 Syrian  See (Lucian) Tacitus, Cornelius 3334–356163–73 Taurus  See Calvenus Taurus “Techniques of Reading in Classical Antiquity” (Gavrilov) 7–8 Telephus, as book collector 184

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Seleius Bassus 71

Temple of Peace 8789131 tenant complaints, in Pliny’s Epistles 42 Tenses/Metrics/Rhythms (Seleucus) 181 Terentius Scaurus 102 n12 Terentius Vanus 144 Theocritus 122128191 Theon, as book collector 183 Thersagorus, in Oxyrhynchus papyrus 180 p. 227

Thersites, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum

164165168

Thesmopolis, in Lucian’s Merc. Cond. 162 Thucydides, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 167 Timocles, in Lucian’s works 173 Titinius Capito 34 n1047 Titius Aristo, in Pliny’s Epistles 45 Titus, in Pliny’s Epistles 117 Trachiniai (Sophocles) 186 Trackton children, in literacy study 9–10 Trajan 32–334058–59 Turner, Eric 182185 n17 typicizing approach, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 101–109 typography as communication 24–25 Ummidius Quadratus 34 n1041 The Uses of the Parts of the Body (Galen) 87 Valerius Aedituus 118 Valette-Cagnac, Emmanuelle 31 n40 Van den Hout, Michael P. J. 138 n7145 Varro, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 110111113129–130 Vergil 41118122128135191 Vergilius Romanus 47 Verginius Rufus 3233 n53463 verse composition  See poetry Vestricius Spurinna 33 n536–40505158 Vibius Crispus 68–69 Vipstanus Messalla 64–6566–72 virility theme, in Lucian’s adversus Indoctum 161–163 Vitruvius, villa description 44 n28 “Voces paginarum” (Balogh) 4–5 “Voice and Virility in Rhetoric” (Gleason) 162 n13 Volumnius Quadratus 155 vowels, in writing systems 23 wealth Fronto’s 139–141147 Galen’s 78 n11 in Galen’s works 768093–94174 n31 Pliny’s 33 Seneca’s statement 40 n21 in Tacitus’s Dialogus 68–69 White, Peter 4749 n41129 n54186 n19

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023

Thessalus, as Galen rival 76–77

word games, in Gellius’s Noctes Atticae 104105149 writing advice, Quintilian’s 115–116 writing systems, evolutionary processes 22–25 Younger Pliny  See Pliny the Younger Zenothemis, in Lucian’s Symposium 176–177 Zosimus, in Pliny’s works 58 n6359

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/26943/chapter/196078885 by University of Oxford user on 24 May 2023