Once performed, its life was over. That is one of the reasons we do not
have any texts of Roman mimes, except precisely for the ‘‘literary’’ mimes
of Liberius and Syrius.^115
The Romans read aloud to each other. That is not in dispute. However,
as the examples from English literary culture make clear, reading aloud
does not take the place of other forms of reading. No one is (or at least
should be) arguing that theonlybooks were the luxury display items
ridiculed by Catullus, Seneca, and Lucian;^116 that books could be brought
out only at recitations or parties; that any time Romans wanted to read
poetry they had to hire a hall or invite friends over for dinner.
117
In sum,
even as Cicero did not owe his detailed knowledge of Latin drama solely
to attending plays,
118
so the occasional performance of poems on the
stage, at recitations, and parties was not the vehicle for the circulation
of Latin verse, and cannot account for the detailed knowledge of previous
Greek and Latin poetry that educated Romans evinced and that the
understanding of contemporary Latin poetry demanded.
119
I want to draw attention away from the figure that currently seems to
fascinate us—the performer—to the book he held in his hand. What hap-
pened to a book of poetry once it reached theultimos Britannos—read
silently or aloud to oneself, read aloud by a professionallector,readaloud
to a small group of friends, read aloud to a vast crowd—is not as important
as the fact that it had first to reach Britain.^120 And it did not get there
through the medium of wandering bards, nor by repetitions from memory
- Again, a comparison with modern society may be illuminating. It is easy to buy a
novel, a book of poetry, even many plays. However, only a very few movie scripts (generally
classics) are published, primarily to be studied by professionals. This is because moviesare
meant only for performance. - Cat. 22, Sen.Tranq. 9.4 7, Luc. 31 (Adv. Indoc. ‘‘The Ignorant Book Collector’’).
As Johnson shows (2000, 614 15), one of Lucian’s complaints is precisely that the man
treats reading (reading aloud at banquets) solely as an occasion for showing off and does not
read the texts by himself with any understanding (2, 3, 18, 20, 28). Cf. Seneca’s story about
Calvisius Sabinus (Ep. 27.5 8). - Though certain scholarly formulations seem headed in this direction.
- Wright 1931, 31 79;Brut. 71: The plays of Livius Andronicus are not worth
rereading. - Thus theHomeristaecan ‘‘stage’’ Homer, yet no one asserts that such performances
can account for the detailed knowledge of all forty eight books of Homer evidenced by
Roman writers (seeRE Suppl. 3 [1918], 1158). Equally, the tasteless vogue at Rome (decried
by Plut.Mor. 711c) for turning some of Plato’s dialogues into little plays was not the way in
which most Romans learned Plato. - See Fantham 1996, 10; Starr 1987, 213 16. Milesian tales are carried in the baggage
of the Romans killed at Carrhae in 53B.C. (Plut.Crass. 32); Gallus’s elegies are in Egypt by
round 20B.C. For literature at the ends of the world: Vergil (Aen. 9.473) is at Vindolanda
(Tab. Vindol. II.118); Catullus might have been copied, too (Tab. Vindol. II.119);librosin a
fragmentary context (Tab. Vindol. II.333). See Bowman 1994, 91 2; Bowman at al. 1994,
65 8, 315: ‘‘There is no reason to doubt the availability of books.’’ By the first century Vergil
is in Egypt and atop Masada: Gallazzi 1982; Cotton and Geiger 1989, 31 5 (no. 721);
Bowman 1994, 92; Bowman et al. 1994, 66.
214 Books and Texts