as an extension of the master’s power or in this case credit, but they do so
through the medium of writing.
As it turns out, writing is also routinely associated with slaves in other
contexts in the Roman world, sometimes in the practical sense that a slave
will function as copyist or amanuensis; but also ideologically in that
writing is associated with the body, with submission to an externally
imposed system of constraints, and thus treated as socially inferior to
the free exercise of the voice. Horace’s association of his book of poems
with a cultivated slave (Epl. 1.20.1–2 etc.) is just one manifestation of this
widespread phenomenon.
27
But there’s a certain paradox in the associ-
ation of writing with slavery, because writing, at least in the sense of
composing, can also serve to authorize the agency of the writer.
To explain this latter process we can draw upon a large body of
theoretical work on the practices of ritualization. The termritualization
is borrowed from scholars of religion, such as Catherine Bell, who in turn
have borrowed it from ethologists, or students of animal behavior.
28
In
the case of animal behavior, ritualization refers to the process whereby
part of a natural sequence of actions comes to stand for the whole of the
sequence and, eventually, for something else entirely.^29 Thus the ruffling
of feathers that naturally precedes a bird’s flight comes to signify a need to
fly, as in a warning sign, but also to signify ability to fly as in a mating
dance. Perceptual iconicity, as it is sometimes called, is thus the founda-
tion of semiotics.^30 When applied to human behavior, ritualization refers
to the making special of otherwise everyday activities through the styl-
ization, intensification, or repetition of some natural aspect of the activity.
Thus bodily movement can be ritualized into dance (ludus), a meal
ritualized into a sacred banquet (epula) or a dinner party (convivium),
everyday speech (locutio) ritualized into prayer, poetry, or song (carmen).
As with animal ritualization, so with human, the signifying power of the
ritualized act can be dislodged and carry over into other spheres of activity
besides that in which it originated. For Bell, this tendency for the power of
ritualization to ‘‘spill over’’ into other contexts explains how it is that
ritualization generates agency—a mastery of certain patterns of action or
speech that obtains beyond the immediate ritual sphere, as, for example,
when a priest’s authority extends beyond the confines of a liturgy or a
skilled speaker’s charisma and influence have an impact beyond the
immediate occasion of speech making.
- For further discussion and examples see Habinek 2005a, 146 9; Habinek 2005b.
More generally on slavery in the Roman literary imagination, see Fitzgerald 2000. - See Bell 1992, 88 9 on the history of the term. The transfer from ethology to
religious studies is marked by the essays gathered inPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society, series B, 251 (1966). Ritualization is also a key concept in discussions of the origin of
language: see Wilcox 1999. - For example, Wilson 1975, 594.
- Brandon 1996, 85 105.
122 Situating Literacies