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Introduction
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Introduction Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounts an anecdote that he describes as well known to all those who are fond of learning. It tells of how, following the death of Plato, the philosopher’s writing tablets were found. On them, it was discovered, he had jotted down the first sentence of his Republic in numerous versions, each time adjusting the word order in a different way (πα σι γρ δ που τοι ς φιλολγοις γνριµα τ περ τη ς φιλοπονας τνδρς στοροµενα τ τε λλα κα δ κα τ περ τν δλτον, !ν τελ- ευτ σαντος α"του λγουσιν ε#ρεθη ναι ποικλως µετακειµνην τν ρχν τη ς Πολιτεας (χουσαν τ νδε Κατβην χθ+ς ε,ς Πειραια µετ Γλακωνος του /Αρστωνος, Dionys. Hal. De comp. 25, p. 208 Reiske: cf. Diog. Laert. 3.37; Quint. 8.6.64). Dionysius goes on to describe Plato’s φιλοπονα, that is, his painstaking, even fussy manner with his text’s composition; and he does so wittily, in terms taken from hairstyling: The philosopher is pictured as the writerly equivalent of some elderly dandy standing before a mirror, primping and making sure that each last strand of hair is perfectly in place, for even when he turned eighty, “Plato never stopped combing his dialogues, dressing them out and braiding them in every conceivable way” (Πλτων το1ς 2αυτου διαλγους κτενζων κα βοστρυχζων κα πντα τρπον ναπλκων ο" διλειπεν 4γδο κοντα γεγον5ς). Of course, this passage dwells on the moment of composition, the process whereby the writer creates his text. But at the same time, it implies a manner of reading—initially that of the author himself as the first link in his own reception. Here the reader carefully scans what stands before him on the page (or, as in this case, lies etched in the wax of a writing tablet), 2 The Scroll and the Marble mulls over every clause, weighs each word on the tongue to measure its impact in relation to every other. This anecdote presumes a particularly intense engagement with a text, one that transpires not in the context of oral performance, as one might have expected given Socrates’ emphasis on the primacy of the spoken word in Plato’s Phaedrus, but, rather, through a written medium. That medium facilitates not only the play of permutation in the act of composition but also a multifaceted, reflective, and unhurried encounter with the text in the act of reading. Here the reader may pause over a given sentence, look back to another, juxtapose it with one elsewhere in the text, and reread them all if so inclined. Precisely such a scene of readerly reception is dramatized in Plato’s Phaedrus when Socrates requests multiple re-readings of the start of Lysias’ speech (262d–e, 263e– 264a), each followed by a nuanced interpretation. Contrast a work’s reception in performance (as with a play at a theater, an epic or choral lyric at a festival), which unfolds serially in time and so offers far less scope for exacting , word-by-word contemplation. In the Hellenistic age, poets writing for the social elite became concerned as never before with the act of reading itself and with the impact of the written word, as artifact and medium, on the reception of their work (see, e.g., Meyer 2005). Their texts—inasmuch as they translate onto the written page traditional poetic genres earlier experienced mainly as part of large civic occasions, such as religious festivals (thus epic, choral lyric, tragedy, and comedy), or at smaller private occasions, such as symposia (the home of such genres as lyric monody and elegy)—invite readers to ponder their experience of a given poem and to ask how it differs from performance-oriented reception. The essays gathered together in this volume take up that invitation and focus largely on the question, What is entailed in the act of reading? More specifically, in what ways do the texts themselves reflect a new awareness of their written form and, indeed, of the diverse types of written media available to authors? How do the poets construct their readership in relation to each of these media? Do the texts envision various sorts of readers, accommodate different modes of readerly experience? Though numerous kinds of material object could serve as the vehicle of poetic communication (e.g., writing tablets, or deltoi, as in the earlier example of Plato; papyrus letters containing just one or two poems; wooden tablets, or pinakes), this book’s title draws attention to two in particular, the chief media in which the writtenness of poetry was experienced at this time: the papyrus scroll and inscriptions in stone. Two poets of the third century b.c. may be seen as representing, respectively, these two media and are at [3.238.57.9] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:26 GMT) Introduction 3 the same time the clearest embodiments of the...