The question I wish to pose is not, ‘‘Did the Romans read silently?’’—of
course they did^12 —but how theyconstructedthe significance of the cir-
cumstances in which reading took place. The Romans no doubt read
silently and alone in a variety of circumstances, but the circumstance
this author chooses to remark upon is, as we have seen, the lucubration
or vigilation, that idea of reading and writing by lamplight, an image that
instantiates the virtuous and productive Roman who, like Lucretia in the
paradigmatic folktale,^13 works hard even inotiumwhile other aristocrats
indulge in debauchery. The scholarly reading necessary to be a validated
member of the exclusionary group is therebyconstructednot simply as
entertainment, or as an expedient to intellectual or social advancement,
but as an upright behavior important to the moral underpinnings of the
society.
Similarly, I do not here pose the question of whether Romans read and
otherwise made use of literary texts in groups—again, of course they did—
though I am interested in the social mechanics of how that happens,
and we have seen along the way that in Gellius’s world texts are used
in a variety of group circumstances that distinguish the society broadly
from our own. Thus, the habit ofrereadinga text aloud to one another, the
habits of interrogating the text, of locating an advocate for the text, of
using the text as a springboard to discussion but returning to it as an
arbiter—all these are characteristic of this community. More essentially,
though, I am interested in the ways in which texts are central to the self-
construction and self-validation of the group: these texts areconstructedas
‘‘classic’’ texts that can be used to guide speech and thought and behavior,
and thus require authoritative voices to direct others in their interpret-
ation; thisconstructed need for authoritythen drives many of the group
behaviors.
Lurking underneath all this is a Big Question: why is literature import-
ant to the elite in this society in a way that it is not in others? It is easy to
observe that literature was important to the wealthy and powerful in
antiquity in a way that it is not to today’s political or economic elite.
But in trying to address the question of the social functioning of literature,
we should avoid stepping too swiftly toward generalization; we need to be
careful not, say, to toss together fifth-century Athens and Antonine
Rome, six hundred years removed. The goal, as I see it, is a more thorough
exploration of the richvarietyof ways that literature can function within
societies.
In any case, I think we have to start with particulars. In that strange
place that I have called ‘‘Gellius’s World,’’ which reflects at least in part
- See Johnson 2000 and bibliography collected there, especially Gavrilov 1997 and
Burnyeat 1997. - Livy 1.57. Further at Ker 2004, 222 4.
328 Institutions and Communities