The Gellian context

To the frustration of those who would study the history of reading and literacy, literate cultures have not always left us with evidence, in the form of specific descriptions or reflections, of their own reading habits. Indeed, we might say that throughout history, there is an ebb and flow to literate cultures’ interest in actively discussing and theorising not just the act of reading, but the particular qualities I have found in these examples: a concern for reflective caution, analytical procedure, and the formation of self-aware, independent judgments.80 _{An increase in such active theorising can often be identified}

with some larger cultural phenomenon or anxiety around literary culture, whether it is particular social groups becoming newly literate, or emerging concerns about the place of reading in society at large. Larger social phenomena that may prompt Gellius’s turn toward this kind of writing-about-reading are beyond the scope of this thesis, although he may be responding to not only the spread but the specialisation of literacy in the empire — what Woolf has called the “elaboration. . . of reading and writing practices”.81

For the moment, though, we must concern ourselves with Gellius’s assumptions, as an elite Roman, about the role and use of reading. So: what are the cultural politics of Gellian reading?

Roman reading was extremely public. Romans often read socially, as an entertain- 79_{K¨onig 2007 discusses various social and cultural implications of Plutarch’s reading model.} 80_{For a survey of writing-about-reading in cultural context throughout post-antique Western history,}

see the Appendix of this thesis. For reasons of space, other Imperial authors with equally interesting ideas about reading have not been discussed here. One such is Seneca, for whom see Rust 2009: 145-198; another is Galen, whose writing is full of less explicit but no less forceful rhetoric about and prescriptions for reading, discussed below p179 and W. A. Johnson 2010: 74-97.

ment component of a dinner party, or simply to pass the time among friends.82 _{They got}

together to hear new texts and very old ones.Literate, elite community was formed in part around the social reception of text, even if for some members it was only a matter of appearances. But even Roman reading that was not done in social groups could still be termed public: a reader reading alone might well have had a lector, whom some Ro- mans perceived as an audience of sorts.83_{. A conservative strain in Roman educational}

thought, with roots in Cicero’sde Oratore and manifest later in Quintilian, connected private, personally directed reading to the reader’s ability to function in the civic elite: reading informed and exercised the orator’s forensic ability. A Roman practicing as a judge or advocate might well consult texts in private for guidance in those duties. Personal reading could also be shared in correspondence with literate peers in a sort of elongated form of reading at a social gathering, as we see in the letters of Fronto. Most significantly, private reading of the most ideal sort, carried out at night and in leisure time, could well be directed toward a very public service, to the extent that it became a powerful literary motif.84 _{Pliny the Elder is the clearest example of this phenomenon,}

but the shelves Gellius haunts are littered with commentarii and other compiled work which, though framed in terms of privatehypomnemata, were published for public use.85 Even private reading, at Rome, directly informed or produced public life. Romans thus almost always read with an audience, responding to text as their peers watched.86 To read, or to be seen to read, was to affirm one’s place in elite community.

As a comparative example of a Roman whose private reading was a public service, 82_{W. A. Johnson 2000, W. A. Johnson 2009, W. A. Johnson 2010; and Parker 2009 for a nuanced}

exploration of textual and oral habits around poetry, and a generally forceful demonstration that the logistical aspects of Roman reading — in a group, alone, silently, aloud — were as varied as they are today. Besides Gellius, see e.g. PlinyEp3.1.

83_{Parker 2009: 196-8 On lectores Starr 1991.}

84_{Ker 2004 describes the Roman values of time-use surrounding the motif oflucubratio.}

85_{Gellius encounters them frequently, including one he notes clearly was not intended for publication.} 86_{Konstan 2009 emphasises the way ancient readers responded to text in social groups, indicating}

and of a Roman whose public persona was crafted around his reading, and as an author of interest to Gellius himself, I will take Pliny the Elder and hisHN as a reference point. As seen above, the HN presents its reading as imperial service. Pliny’s auctoritas, after his death, was shored up by his nephew, who contributed to the literary record further details of his uncle as consummate reader. Gellius himself is fixated on Pliny, including his title among the rival works of the Noctes’s preface.87 _{He also cites Pliny}

a number of times, and Pliny is unique among Roman miscellanists Gellius reads in that we can compare these citations to a surviving text: the HN. Scholars continue to disagree on the nature of the relationship between Gellius and Pliny. There is of course ongoing disagreement over how to read Pliny’s HN, and whether the modern conception of “encyclopedia” applies in the ancient context.88 How Pliny conceived of the work is a question distinct from how Gellius perceived it; and there are various ways of understanding not only whether they should be classified together but what Gellius’s purpose is in treating Pliny the way he does.89 _{I hope in this chapter to go some way to}

resolving at least these latter questions. My approach offers several potential benefits: It focuses on Gellius’s narratives of reading at their most interesting, and where we can compare them (as much as is ever possible) to his “actual reading.” It also offers new insight into the ancient reception of the HN, of which Gellius constitutes the largest and most explicit body. And an examination of Gellius making much of his reading of a text which in turn makes much of its own reading offers perhaps the most fruitful opportunity to explore how Gellius’s narratives of reading live up to the priorities laid out in the Preface, what cultural values he attaches to reading, and what role this serves in his overall programme for theNoctes.

87_{Rust 2009: 111-117, and Astarita 1993: 32-34 on the relationship between the two.}

88_{Doody 2009 makes a compelling case for distancing Pliny’s HN from both ancient “enkyklios}

paideia” (pp10-17) and modern encyclopedism (pp17-21), contra Carey 2003 and T. Murphy 2004 (but T. Murphy 2004: 11 acknowledges the risks of anachronism).

89_{For a provocative suggestion of another miscellanist being treated harshly in subsequent literature}

Gellius’s peculiar approach to relating the act of reading can be best understood in the context of the public nature of Roman reading. I have suggested that a writer’s decision to narrate and construct reading in terms of a personal cognitive activity can often be identified as having some socially influenced concern for how reading is being done.90 _{While public reading in the medieval monasteries allowed interpretive}

norms to be maintained, at Rome, especially for a Roman influenced by philosophy’s concern for self-improvement through critical reading, public reading posed a potential threat: reading could be overly influenced by social demands, causing readers to react to text superficially in order to seek social recognition, and so fail to focus critically on it.91 Competition or fashions among readers might shift their priorities from actually reading to appearing to read: a performance without substance that, unchecked, might confer unearned authority. Gellius’s narratives of reading focus on the moment of encounter with text, the moment before the public performance of that encounter, challenging the reader to reflect on his or her own individual relationship with the text. Reading will be performed for an audience, but it must first be performed for the self, a reflexive approach Gellius enacts by self-consciously recalling his own reading. Gellius’s mode of reading is a mix of Quintilian’s obsession with context and Plutarch’s concern for philosophical self-improvement; it is also a rejection of what he casts as Pliny’s superficiality in reading. Gellius raises the stakes for the marginalised personal reaction to text. In a culture where text was frequently handled in the presence of others, Gellius works with his reader to exclude that audience, modelling instead an approach to text that is, at least in the interpretive moment, critical, self-aware, and solitary.

90_{See Langlands 2008 on reading Valerius Maximus.}

91_{Examples in Gellius have been discussed in previous chapters; the Younger Pliny is concerned with}