Reading and Writing Gellius: the Act of Composition in the Attic Nights by Austin Chapman M.A

Reading and Writing Gellius: The Act of Composition in the Attic Nights by Austin Chapman M.A. (Classics, University of Cincinnati) B.A. (History, Furman University) A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CLASSICS) Committee Chair: Holt Parker, Ph.D. September 2015 Abstract Here I argue that Gellius uses the loose design of his Attic Nights to interact both playfully and instructively with his reader, and that he does so in such a way that the purpose of the Nights is found to be reproductive, replicating the activities of its author (Gellius) in the minds and, ideally, the activities of its readers. To demonstrate how Gellius creates this unique author-reader relationship as the ordo of the text unfolds, I read the Nights sequentially. In close readings of three books of the Attic Nights (Books 1, 2, and 14), I explore how Gellius develops themes over the course of each book and uses those themes to articulate his relationship with the reader. In order to pick out sequences that supply meaning to a sequential reading of such an apparently disordered text, I take advantage, at least initially, of the approach of Gibson and Morello (2012) to the Letters of Pliny the Younger, where a multitude of units (epistles, in Pliny’s case) are placed so as to appear well-mixed but also create sequences in which certain patterns emerge, suggesting a loose design. Following Gibson and Morello’s model, I begin by noticing a more-or-less obvious pattern in Book 2 and “re-read” the book with that pattern in mind; through that re-reading, I discover that Gellius highlights a father-son relationship as an analogue for the relationship between himself and his reader. In Book 14, I follow a sequence, sustained through the entire book, that serves as a reflection on the nature of the miscellany-genre and on Gellius’s evolution from reader to author. Finally, returning to Book 1 to begin a re-reading of the Attic Nights as a whole, I observe how Gellius uses the structure of that book to represent a seemingly infinite expansion of knowledge. ii iii Table of Contents Abstract ii I. Introduction: How to Read the Attic Nights. 1 A. Thesis. 1 B. Approaches to the Gellian ordo. 3 C. Gellius’s approach to his ordo: The Praefatio. 16 1. Prefatorial comments (Praefatio 1-24). 17 2. The Book of Books: Gellius’s Capita Rerum (§§25ff.). 33 II. Finding a Pattern: Reading and Re-reading Book 2. 41 A. Building a reading (2.21-30). 41 1. Noticing a pattern (2.21-22). 41 2. Noticing a series (2.23). 44 3. Interlude (2.24-25). 46 4. Shades of comparison (2.26-28). 49 5. An unexpected ending (2.30). 55 B. Building a re-reading (2.1-20, 29). 59 1. The Attic Nights (2.2-3). 59 2. Fathers and progeny (2.7). 62 3. Interlude II (2.8-9). 64 4. Children (2.13, 15, 16, 18). 67 5. An ersatz ending (2.29). 73 C. A post-reading analysis. 77 III. A New and Miscellanized History of Gellius: The Narrative of Book 14 of the 83 Noctes Atticae. A. Introduction. 83 B. Ignorance (14.1 and 14.2). 84 iv C. Critical Thinking (14.3 and 14.4). 92 D. Reflections on the Utility of the Noctes Atticae (14.5 and 14.6). 107 E. Procedure (14.7 and 14.8). 116 IV. The Attic Nights, waxing: Proportionality in Book 1. 124 A. A new beginning, a new ending (1.1 and 1.26). 124 B. Order (1.9 and 1.10). 134 C. Silence and Order (1.9, 10, 11, 15, 2, 23). 145 D. Ordered expansion (1.19 and 1.20). 156 V. Recapitulation 163 A. The unity of the Gellian book. 163 B. Adscript. 165 1. The end of Book 3. 165 2. The end of the Attic Nights (as we know it). 168 Bibliography 171 v I. Introduction: How to Read the Attic Nights. A. Thesis. Aulus Gellius, born in the 120s AD and composing his Noctes Atticae in its final form probably in the 170s or 180s,1 spent the intervening decades reading books, listening to teachers, and most importantly, taking notes.2 These notes (annotationes), refined into essays (commentarii), comprise the chapters of the NA. Their arrangement, Gellius claims, is governed by chance (Usi autem sumus ordine rerum fortuito..., Preface 2). This statement has led the great majority of scholars to assume that the NA was thrown together haphazardly, or was at least deliberately made to appear to have been thus heaped up.3 But ordine fortuito plays antecedent to a disquieting relative clause: quem antea in excerpendo feceramus – “I employed for my material the chance arrangement that I had made earlier when taking excerpts.” He continues: Nam proinde ut librum quemque in manus ceperam seu Graecum seu Latinum vel quid memoratu dignum audieram, ita quae libitum erat, cuius generis cumque erant, indistincte atque promisce annotabam... (Pref. 2). The ordo fortuitus goes all the way back to the books and teachers from which he obtained his material. He took books into his hands and listened for memorable sayings; then, in exactly the same way (proinde ut ... ita), he made notes on them, with no regard for types or distinctions; finally, his excerpts became the commentarii which we 1 See Holford-Strevens 2003, 16-21, for the dates – according to Holford-Strevens’s calculations, Gellius published the NA sometime between 170 and 192. 2 He was also a judge in Rome (e.g., 13.13.1, 14.2.1), but Gellius scarcely ever writes of his negotium, the NA being a product of his otium. 3 The basic assumption of classicists in general has mirrored the view of Nettleship (1883) that the order of chapters in the NA is truly haphazard. Marache (1967, xvi-xvii, with n. 2) marks a great difference of opinion on this subject, arguing, with Maréchal and against Mercklin and Faider, that Gellius’s assertion of disorder is genuine. I fall on the side of those, such as Faider (1927, 200-201: “Les Nuits Attiques ont ... été ‘composées’”), who take the plethora of remarkable juxtapositions in the NA as evidence that some kind of design (the extent of which is debatable) is at work. See below (I.B.) for a summary of the most significant modern approaches to Gellius’s ordo fortuitus. 1 now read in our 20th-century editions, original ordo fortuitus faithfully preserved.4 Thus, on the face of it, to read the NA in the order in which it is presented is to perceive its construction. But, given the breadth of his reading, Gellius cannot have been ignorant of the centuries of collection-literature lying before him. From the Hellenistic poetry anthologies to Horace’s Odes to Pliny’s Letters, the acts of composing and arranging are, in themselves, arts.5 And, like these forebears, the NA is also a work of literary ambition, if the genre-grumblings and Greek-quoting pretensions of Gellius’s Preface are any indication – which is to say that the NA is, despite Gellius’s overt protestations, more than a useful compendium of useful knowledge. It is this, of course, but it is also, constantly and from the very beginning of the Preface, a text that actively interacts with readers, often teasing them with suggestions of design. The contention of this dissertation is that Gellius uses the loose design of his NA to interact both playfully and instructively with his reader, and that he does so in such a way that the purpose of the NA is found to be reproductive, replicating the activities of its author (Gellius) in the minds and, ideally, the activities of its readers. To demonstrate how Gellius creates this unique author-reader relationship as the ordo of the NA unfolds, I read the Nights sequentially. In close readings of three books of the NA (1, 2, and 14), I explore how Gellius develops themes over the course of each book and uses those themes to articulate his relationship with the reader. In order to pick 4 The manuscript tradition of the NA is not without problems; but the placement of the Praefatio at the front (not the back), the position of the chapter headings at the tail of the Preface (not distributed throughout the books), and the correct order of Books 6 and 7 have all been restored, leaving us with Gellius’s original design mostly intact. See Holford-Strevens 2003, 333-53. 5 Krevans 1984 is an excellent inquiry into the ways in which ancient authors and editors (who were sometimes one and the same person) created unity in the diversity of their poems. The same questions that she regards as central to understanding a poetry book’s structure may be applied just as easily to the structure of Gellius’s books: “Which aspects of the collection tend to unite the poems? Which tend to distinguish them? What is the resulting tendency of the book as a whole?” (p. 10) She gives examples of the different kinds of unity that poets such as Callimachus, Horace, Vergil, and Propertius achieve in their collections. When we compare with Gellius, we find that the kind of unity in the NA has some commonalities with these poetic unities; for example, as I discuss in chapter IV, Book 1 holds itself together with a numerological unity, although not to the degree of consistency that Vergil achieves in his 2 out sequences that supply meaning to a sequential reading of such an apparently disordered text, I take advantage, at least initially, of the approach of Gibson and Morello (2012) to the Letters of Pliny the Younger, where a multitude of units (epistles, in Pliny’s case) are placed so as to appear well-mixed but also create sequences in which certain patterns emerge, suggesting a loose design.

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