InThe World of Roman Song, I argue that mastery of the ritualization of
speechintosongisanimportantmeans through whichtheagencyof thefree
elite male is established and reestablished within the Roman world.^31 The
masterof specialspeech—whether anorator, avates,ora poet—hasapower
that extends beyond the power to speak or sing well, an authority that
obtains even outside the immediate context of public verbal production.
We might now consider the possibility that writing extends the process of
ritualization and thus opens new avenues for mastery. Once writing is
available, it is potentially part of the process of production of special speech
or song. And indeed we know from rhetorical handbooks, poetic self-
reference, and so on that writing was used in the preparation of speech—
as indeed was the process of reading the writings of others.
32
Like the bird
ruffling its feathers, reading and writing are each aspects of speech produc-
tion that can come to signify the process as a whole. Mastery of literacy
practices thus creates new agencies within the realm of special speech or
song whose authority spills over into other areas of social interaction. To
inscribe a version of a eulogy, as in the third and second century Scipionic
epitaphs, or to textualize a speech—a practice that began at least as early
as Cato the Elder (seeORF8.173–5)—is not just to preserve a version for
possible future reperformance. It is also to demonstrate mastery of a ritual-
ized practice and thereby constitute an agency that extends beyond the
immediate context of reading, speaking, and writing.
The practice of writing other kinds of literary texts has similar effect.
The written version is not strictly speaking the telos of the process of
composition. Rather, reading and writing make more special the already
special practices of composing and reciting; they create—or attempt to
create—a further level of mastery beyond the mastery implicit in the
production of special speech. The problem, as already indicated, is that
reading and writing can never quite break free of their association with
embodiment, their slavishness, as it were, and thus do not destroy the
centrality of the voice and orality. Nonetheless, mastery of reading and
especially writing as ritualized practices constitutes an agency that has
validity in situations where the voice cannot be heard—namely across
time or space—and thus makes such practices available for the effective
assertion of status. Oddly enough, then, it is because of writing’s role in
the reproduction of oral culture at Rome that it becomes a means for
‘‘fix[ing] an individual’s place within history, society and the cosmos.’’
33
It
is both writing’s capacity to disambiguate the symbolism of art and
- Habinek 2005a, esp. 34 57.
- On the use of writing in the production of speech, see Cic.De Or.1.150(stilus optimus
et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister: ‘‘the pen is the best and most distinguished
improver and teacher of public speaking’’); QuintilianInst. Or. 10.3; Catull. 50; Hor.Serm.
1.4.129 39, 1.10.72 4. Small 1997, 177 80 collects examples of the use of written excerpts of
prior works in the production of new ones. - Woolf 1996, 29.
Situating Literacy at Rome 123