We are faced with an unmistakable fact. Recitations and private readings
could be counted on to supply only fragments of a poet’s work.^92
- There seem to be no recorded instances of a restaging of a recitation.
Pliny, for example, goes to many such but each one is for a single author,
for a single work, for a single time. Poets never seem to present the same
work (or same section of a work) twice in a series of recitations. A
recitation is a strictly one-off performance.
- There are no recorded instances of a public recitation of the ancient
Greek poets.^93 We do, however, hear of a few occasions on which Greek
poetry was performed at Roman banquets by professional entertainers.
94
- There was no Dead Poets Society. Living authors read their own
works, but there seem to have been almost no opportunities for hearing
the poetry of any previous generation.
95
One of the few examples de-
serves to be examined closely because it has been misused. Quinn (1982,
- claims that books were read only by ‘‘professionals,’’ that everyone
else got their poetry by listening to others read (publicly or privately), and
that ‘‘those who were not in some way professionals probably consulted a
text only to clear up a particular point, or to get a better impression of a
work which they had heard performed.’’ The following incident is cited as
proof.
- As indeed they would have to. It is difficult to imagine (and more to the point, there
are no records of) a twelve day recital for theAeneidat a book a day, fifteen days for the
Metamorphoses, or an eighteen day marathon for Ennius’sAnnales. - Contrast Cicero’s contemporary, Philodemus; Cic.Pis. 70 71: ‘‘multa a multis et
lecta et audita’’; that is, both studied (lecta) and lectured on (audita). - Plut.Mor. 622c, 711b, Gell. 19.9.1 5, all mention Anacreon and Sappho, and
Gellius adds other more recent erotic elegies; Gell. 2.22.1 2: ‘‘vetus carmen melici poetae.’’
An example of bad behavior: Sen.Ep. 27.5 8, Calvisius Sabinus, the ignorant freedman, who
has eleven slaves, nine assigned to memorize each of the lyric poets plus two more for Homer
and Hesiod. He occasionally exhibits them to the annoyance of his guests. Luc.Adv. Indoc.
should be compared throughout. - Suet.Gram. 2.3 mentions two activities of the early grammarians who followed
Crates of Mallos: making commentaries, and popularizing through recitation: ‘‘ut carmina
parum adhuc divulgata vel defunctorum amicorum vel si quorum aliorum probassent,
diligentius retractarent ac legendo commentandoque etiam ceteris nota facerent’’ (‘‘They
carefully went over poems that had not yet circulated widely either of dead friends or others
of whom they approved, and by reading and commenting they made them known to
others’’). As an example of reading to an audience, Suetonius mentions only ‘‘ut postea Q.
VargunteiusAnnalesEnnii, quos certis diebus in magna frequentia pronuntiabat’’ (‘‘Q.
Vargunteius read aloud theAnnalesof Ennius on fixed days to a large audience’’). Even here,
note that for Suetonius the grammarians’ activities center on a written text: ‘‘ut C. Octavius
Lampadio Naevii Punicum bellum, quod uno volumine et continenti scriptura expositum
divisit in septem libros. .. ut Laelius Archelaus Vettiasque Philocomus Lucilii saturas
familiaris sui, quas legisse se apud Archelaum Pompeius Lenaeus, apud Philocomum
Valerius Cato praedicant.’’ The product was also a written text: Suet.Gramm.8
(M. Pompilus Andronicus on Ennius), 14 (Curtius Nicias on Lucilius), 18 (Crassicius on
Cinna), 24 (Probus on the early poets). See Kaster 1995, 60, 63 7.
210 Books and Texts