Although the view that the Romans were constrained to read aloud is
untenable, it is, as the quotations above show, the most important founda-
tion for the view that Roman literature had to be performed in order to exist.
The question I am interested in, however, is different. I am less con-
cerned withhowthe Romans read, that is, whether they realized the
words of the books before them silently, by moving their lips, muttering
under their breath, reading aloud, or making the welkin ring. What I am
concerned with (and by) is the now dominant view that because Romans
sometimes read the words in front of them in an audible voice, it some-
how follows that recitations and other forms of performance before
a group were the usual or indeed the only way in which Romans experi-
enced poetry.
There is still considerable confusion over what are three rather basic
points. First, oral composition, oral communication, and oral transmission
are three quite different things.
17
Second, silent/aloud and private/public are two quite different con-
trasts, and none necessarily implies any other. One can read silently and
privately (what we take to be the unmarked case). One can also read
aloud and privately (rehearsing lines, memorizing or savoring a poem).
One can read aloud and publicly (an academic lecture, an author’s book
tour), or silently and communally (everyone reading the same passage in a
classroom or a church, a group of people looking up at a monumental
inscription, the news crawl in Times Square, or movie subtitles).^18
Third, most poetry—except parts of Ezra Pound—is better read aloud.
That is, poetry has anauralelement (sound patterning). This does not
make itoral(properly understood and defined).^19 Further, the claim that
all Greek and Roman poetry was intended for the ear is demonstrably
false: there are poems intended only for the eye—acrostics, picture
poems, and the like—from Nicander onward. Poems in the shape of
eggs or wings, in which one has to read inward (first verse, then last,
then second, then second to last, etc.), cannot be read aloud.^20
- See Finnegan 1977, 16 24; Gentili 1988, 4 5; Rosalind Thomas 1992, 6.
- See the remarks of Chartier 1994, 17 18.
- This is a common mistake. For example, Skinner 1993, 63, says rightly that some
poems ‘‘cry out for oral delivery.’’ But so do Lindsey’s ‘‘The Congo,’’ Noyes’s ‘‘The Barrel
Organ,’’ and Fearing’s ‘‘Dirge.’’ Skinner 2001, 65, insists that in Cat. 10, ‘‘the dialogic quality
of the narrative... indicates that the poem must have been composed for performance.’’ But
Frost’s ‘‘The Death of the Hired Man,’’ is more dialogic still. - See Habinek, ch. 6, in this volume. For Roman examples: ‘‘Q. ENNIUS FECIT’’ as an
acrostic in a poem by Ennius (Cic.Div. 2.111); the first and last eight lines (with 1,056 in
between) ofIlias Latina(Neronian or Julian) spelling out ITALICUS SCRIPSIT; a poem
in the shape of wings by Laevius (22 FPL Bla ̈nsdorf, imitating Simias,AP15.24). See
Lombardo 1989, Courtney 1990, Ernst 1991;OCD^3 s.v. ‘‘acrostic’’ (the promised article
on ‘‘pattern poetry’’ will be found instead under ‘‘technopaignia’’).
192 Books and Texts