In the age of the ebook, none of us should need convincing of the multivalence of terms like ‘reading’ and ‘book’; and so the reappraisal to which this volume, the product of a 2006 conference, subjects a once-monolithic idea is timely indeed. Its title and pedigrees will have guaranteed its notice by specialists, to whom its merits will be clear, but classicists of all stripes will want to take notice of its panoptic approach, and may be surprised at the diversity of material it considers.
Opening is Thomas's finely-grained look at how the Athenian state depended on, promoted and reacted to different literacies. Synthesizing material evidence with rhetorical discussions, Thomas supplements traditional ideas like commercial literacy with ‘officials’ literacy' (41), mapping literacies both within and beyond the traditionally élite and showing their susceptibility to change. Complementing this is Woolf's discussion of Roman literacies in the latter two centuries b.c.e. He explores how Roman imperialism drove the ‘growth and elaboration’ of literacy, showing with deft synthesis the interlinked nature of private and public literacies in Rome, and how an expanding state adapted the former to the latter, leading to the text-heavy society we find in later evidence. Burrell takes on a different medium in a survey of structures from imperial Ephesos, offering a sensitive reading of how these texts-on-structures would have communicated with each other and their various audiences. The interplay of Greek and Latin is just one part of all the ways monumental text can be read by those who inhabit and pass through the spaces it oversees.
Underscoring the volume's productive arrangement, Goldhill next addresses the importance of anecdote to imperial culture, showing its liminal existence as narratives that came packaged and formalized in tighter and more miniature ways, so as to be more easily recalled from text and exchanged in speech. Goldhill also shows anecdote's implications for both thought and cultural politics. That ancients had a clear understanding of how anecdote worked reminds us how closely they themselves scrutinized the media of text and conversation. Habinek offers a survey of non-monumental epigraphic evidence — from tesserae to game boards — to identify other patterns of visual signification in Roman writing relating closely to acrostic games in poetry. Although the literary material here is wholly verse (as an approach to ‘orality’ based on song leaves little room for prose), the discussion is a helpful reminder of the many social interactions to which literate acts relate.
But it is the book that dominates this area of inquiry, and Dupont returns our attention to it, first reassessing Augustan book culture's Alexandrian book-values and then focusing on the book as an object imagined by the poet — one the poet imagines moving from one hand to another. Examination of the moves the book can make highlights the important rôle a Roman literary effort's material form plays in connecting the poet to a literary future imagined in Alexandrian terms. Farrell, on the other hand, zeroes in on Catullus' allusions to the physical book in the act of consumption. This excellent reminder of the vulnerability of material text in the Roman world shows how a Latin author might make use of and allude to those qualities to make the idea of publication a locus of anxiety. Vulnerable to corruptions of text and page, the book also faces the scrutiny of a patron-recipient who stands for successive audiences. Noteworthy is Parker's aggressive challenge to ‘orality’ at Rome, exhaustively chronicling the various evidence for book- and reading-focused attitudes. This forceful discussion is a much-needed reminder of the significance of evidence beyond Augustan poetry: ideology of recitation and song can be conflated with the recitatio in Roman literary production to elide the close physical relationship Romans had with books. The ‘exocitizing’ (191) of Roman reading is shown clearly to be a conceptual hazard.
Houston's analysis of booklists and book-collections in papyrological corpora takes a rare focus — tracing individual copies of various works — to show how we can understand these collections to have been assembled, preserved and modified. There is much detailed information here about specific collections, making for fascinating case studies in the actual practices of the literate élite. Adding to discussion of the ancient infrastructure is White's excellent examination of the Roman book trade. He synthesizes evidence in dynamic and productive ways: insights about booksellers in the urban landscape and in the conception of their élite customers come together in a pithy explication of bookstore encounters in literature. Ancient authors are well-situated ‘to discern connections between the commerce and the culture of the book’ (269), but, one suspects, also have strongly vested interest in not discerning some elements as well.
For helpful new social perspectives on Roman literacy, turn to Milnor on Vergilian graffiti in Pompeii, which deftly contextualizes uses (and abuses) of Aeneid lines to show what, beyond mere familiarity with the source, they might have signified. Milnor shows common tags to have ‘local’ significances responding to other graffiti or landmarks, and the graffito act itself to denote certain attitudes toward canon; also valuable is an appendix listing such tags. Johnson similarly breathes life into the discussion by bringing his productive sociological lens to bear on depictions of reading groups, examining how they are structured and conduct themselves and drawing out not only the strangeness but the distinctive priorities of such groups in Gellius' Noctes Atticae. Readers will find more of use along these lines in his 2010 volume (Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire). Johnson rightly reminds us of the extent to which authorial imagination filters the literary evidence for reading.
Werner's bibliographical essay takes this volume from valuable to invaluable: an introductory survey is followed by a thematically indexed bibliography, covering not just classical literacy but also valuable comparanda from non-classical cultures. Olson's thought-provoking epilogue is a helpful coda, arguing that the writing and reading of ideas depends on — and so promotes — a unique ability to conceptualize abstractly. It is thus a productive meditation on why literacy matters. Readers may not need to be told this, but if the volume proves anything it is the value of reappraisals and new approaches to old questions.
No firm thesis emerges, nor should one be expected. The topics and approaches it covers are as diverse as the kinds of activities and phenomena that must clearly be included under its titular heading. And questions remain: what might studies of poetic imaginings of books have to say of the social ramifications of library and commerce practices? Despite evidence to the contrary in this volume, genre and period distinctions within Latin literature still keep valuable evidence needlessly separated. And though several contributors note with admirable caution the problems of applying the more evidence-rich Roman period to classical Greece, clearly solving that methodological puzzle would be immensely valuable. Lest we neglect the obvious reflexivity of a book about books, editors and press should be commended for excellent production, proofreading, and indices and bibliography. The book as artifact more than lives up to its value as text. And any scholar of ancient texts with a glimmer of interest in context will find something of use within.
