Spurinna’s use of a lectordoes not, of course, mean that he was
unaccustomed to the sight of a book. Indeed, Pliny tells us that Spurinna
spends the first hour of the day reading by himself.^47 Pliny’s account
allows us to see exactly what thelectorwas for. Thelectorfills in those
periods when it would be inconvenient or impossible for the master to
read by himself. Spurinna’slectorreads to him while the master is trotting
round the walking path, and during the rest break after the walk and
the bath. This desire to improve the shining hour with literature marks
Spurinna as a man of exceptional culture.^48
The role of thelectorhas sometimes been misunderstood. The use of a
lectorwas not in place of reading by oneself; it was in addition to reading
by oneself. Pliny makes this point clear. He has an eye infection and is
confined to bed in a dark room: ‘‘Here I’m abstaining not only from the
pen but even from reading—with difficulty, but I’m doing it—and I’m
studying with ears alone.’’ In other words, Pliny considers solitary reading
the norm; alectoris handy when he cannot read by himself.
49
Thelector
was part of the entertainment staff of great households, but the presence
of alectorno more indicates that upper-class Romans were incapable/
unwilling/unaccustomed (the exact claim is often not clear) to read
for themselves than the presence of secretaries shows that they were
incapable/unwilling/unaccustomed to write for themselves.^50
Places for Hearing Poetry
Romans could both read poetry for themselves and have it read to them.
The question now is which was more important. Did the people who
- Rightly Westcott 1898, 174, ‘‘studies on his reading couch’’; Sherwin White 1985,
206: ‘‘So too Pliny who keeps to his room studying much longer than Spurinna, ix.36.2.’’ Cf.
Hor.Sat. 1.6.122 23, quoted above (n. 34). Later in the day, Spurinna retires to compose
Greek and Latin poetry, which as Catullus and Ovid show, cannot be divorced from reading
(see n. 105). The two are frequently conjoined understudia(see n. 37). - Pliny the Elder used thelectorprecisely to fill in all those moments when he could not
read himself (cf. PlinyEp. 3.5.8, 14); see Horsfall 1995, 52. What is ‘‘evidently unusual’’
(rightly Johnson 2000, 605) is his mania about wasting time. - 7.21.1: ‘‘hic non stilo modo verum etiam lectionibus difficulter sed abstineo, solisque
auribus studeo.’’ Rightly Nauta 2002, 137. - For the use of secretaries and readers, see Horsfall 1995. Forlectoresat dinner parties,
see below. Further, in the effort to co opt the presence oflectoresto make Rome into an oral
culture, there is a tendency on the part of some scholars to exaggerate the difficulties of
reading a manuscript (e.g., Quinn 1982, 82, 91; Starr 1991, 343). In fact, everyone did quite
well with manuscripts for thousands of years, and even today all of us routinely read letters
scrawled in a wide variety of hands, without the need of ‘‘professional’’ readers. Nor does
anyone comment on the lack of professional readers among the Greeks, who did without
word divisions, or the Semites, who did without vowels. In short, unless one is prepared to
claim that Cicero, for example, wasn’t ‘‘much of a hand at reading writing hand,’’ and found
the task of making out a book written in his native language simply too difficult to undertake
without the assistance of trained slaves, it is best to drop this particular line of argument.
200 Books and Texts