by people who happened to have been present at some distantrecitatio
or mime adaptation at Rome. It arrived in the form of a written text.^121
A Textual Society
Literate Rome was a textual society. A few further examples from Pliny
the Younger, so frequently trotted out as chief witness to the domination
of therecitatioand the oral dissemination of literature, reveal how much.
.There are people waiting for Pliny’s speeches, first to hear them and then to
read them (4.16.3).
.It is not the case that the written text is considered a copy or record of the
oral presentation. Pliny explicitly states that the opposite is true: the written
text is the model and archetype for the speech as actually delivered.^122
.Poetry is read out of books. If you take the elegies of Passenus Paulus
(descendent of Propertius) in hand, you will read a polished work.^123
.Poetry exists in books, which an individual reader picks up; parts can be
memorized after the book is read.^124
.Pliny will gather his hendecasyllables into a book, which he will label and
send to his friend (4.14); later the book is being read and copied, andeven
performed (legitur,describitur, cantatur etiam: 7.4.9). Notice the force of
etiam: being read and being copied are the proofs of popularity; performance
is an unexpected bonus.
.Pliny is proud his books are on sale in Lyon (9.11).
.A man in from the provinces has read Pliny out there (4.7).
.The Spaniard who came to Rome just to catch a glimpse of Livy came
because atextof Livy had made it out to Cadiz (2.3).
.Pliny urges a poet to publish his works: recitations are all very well, and
individual poems may circulate without the author’s permission, but only
publication will allow them to spread as far as the Roman language has
spread.^125- So, too, prose. Cic.Sulla42 43: the testimony of the Catilinarian witnesses is
copied and sent throughout the world (‘‘Itaque dico locum in orbe terrarum esse nullum,
quo in loco populi Romani nomen sit, quin eodem perscriptum hoc indicium pervenerit’’).
PlinyHN35.11: even so difficult a work as Varro’s group of 700 portraits a difficult work
to read aloud was distributed ‘‘in omnes terras.’’ Pliny 4.7: Regulus recites a life of his son,
then has a thousand (mille) copies transcribed and sent throughout Italy and the rest of the
Empire with a request to have it read to the people there. - 1.20.9: ‘‘est enim oratio [the text] actionis [the delivered speech] exemplar et quasi
IæåÝôıðïí...:sequitur ergo, ut actio sit absolutissima, quae maxime orationis similitudinem
accipiat.’’ - 9.22.2: ‘‘Si elegos eiusin manus sumpseris, leges opus tersum molle iucundum, et
plane in Properti domo scriptum.’’ No lector, no audience; a reader with a book in his hands. - 3.21.4: ‘‘quaeris qui sint versiculi, quibus gratiam rettuli. remitterem te ad ipsum
volumen, nisi quosdam tenerem. tu, si placuerint hi, ceteros inlibrorequires.’’ Cf. 9.22. - 2.10.1: ‘‘hominem te patientem vel potius durum ac paene crudelem, qui tam
insigneslibrostam diu teneas! Quousque et tibi et nobis invidebis, tibi maxima laude, nobis
Books and Reading Latin Poetry 215