13
Constructing Elite Reading Communities
in the High Empire
William A. Johnson
A reading community in Antonine Rome is described in some detail by
Aulus Gellius in his sole surviving work, theAttic Nights. Gellius’s work is
one of those from antiquity that is more often cited than studied, so a few
introductory remarks are in order. TheAttic Nightsis a miscellany, in the
sense that it is a series of about four hundred short essays—often no more
than a page or so—on miscellaneous topics. The storytelling varies in its
narrative aims and strategies, but the twin ideas of ‘‘fun stories’’ and ‘‘fun
facts to know and tell’’ is by far the dominant mode. The miscellany gains
coherence through consistency in the topics of interest: the fun facts
and fun stories, as it happens, are mostly about words, their etymology
and meaning and proper usage; or exempla culled from literature, espe-
cially that ‘‘archaic’’ literature of the Republic.
But this sober summary doesn’t do justice to the work, which describes
a very unusual—one wants to say perfectly insane—community. Or at
least I think most people who are not scholars would judge it so.
In Gellius’s world, we the readers are trained to think nothing of even
absurdly esoteric discussions. At 1.7, for example, it is natural that a
learned friend, when presented with an unusual reading in a Tironian
manuscript(!) of Cicero’sin Verrem, not only has a strong opinion about
that reading, but also is able to adduce in support of his opinion an
obscure speech of Gaius Gracchus, parallel constructions in Greek, the
Annalesof Claudius Quadrigarius and of Valerius Antias, theCasinaof
Plautus, theGemelliof Laberius, and a minor speech of Cicero himself.
And, of course, the friend is able to give this evidence off the cuff.
As readers of Gellius, we acclimate even to the idea that in a public square
a youth in Gellius’s group can make a comment on the antiquity of the
wordspartum(‘‘Spanish broom’’) that is then challenged by a couple of
the half-educated men (themale litterati) who hang around the squares. In
argument, thesemale litteratiquote Homer with an ease of learning
almost inconceivable today and laugh at the youth’s reply, and ‘‘they
would have only laughed more at him’’ (we are told, 17.3) had he not