Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae by J.A. Howley (review)

When Leofranc Holford-Strevens's Aulus Gellius appeared in late 1988 (Duckworth; republished by Oxford University Press in 2004 as Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement), it was the first comprehensive study of this author in English. Composed with wide-ranging erudition in a relentlessly compressed style, it left one in doubt whether another 'definitive' book on Gellius would ever be written. As it happened, however, Holford-Strevens initiated a many-sided re-appraisal of the Noctes Atticae (hereafter, NA) and its somewhat elusive author. Thirty years later, we may welcome another seminal contribution to Gellian scholarship, which grapples with its central problem: 'What kind of a thing is the NA' (p. 4), at least in the mind of its author? Joseph Howley suggests that the key to Gellius is to read him as a reader who can teach us about reading.

In a prefatory chapter (pp. 1–18), Howley announces his intention to help scholars and students understand the NA 'as a text, rather than merely as a source' (p. 4). He is particularly concerned with the 'dark matter' of Gellius' work, 'the frames and rhetorics and discursive modes that introduce, coordinate, evaluate, and condition' the 'primary' material for which the NA has traditionally been mined (p. 5). To appreciate these framing devices, modern readers must re-train themselves to see the literary text 'that is hiding in plain sight' (ibid.). To this end, a detachable first chapter, entitled 'How to read the Noctes Atticae' (pp. 19–65), offers three case studies in Gellius' literary method. The reader who can penetrate the veil of the NA will perceive that it is not a disorganized and mechanical work of reference, but a literary artifact with a definite program and surprising affinities with classical poetry and philosophy. The second chapter ('Gellius in the history of writing about reading', pp. 66–111) locates the NA within the genre of books about reading, distinguishing Gellius' practices from those of Plutarch, Quintilian, and the elder Pliny. The last author, celebrated for his sleepless hoarding of knowledge, appears in Chapter Three ('Gellius on Pliny: fashioning the miscellanist and his readerly lifestyle', pp. 112–56) as a foil for Gellius, the discriminating collector who knows when to step away from his books. In the fourth chapter ('Encounters with tradition in Gellian research', pp. 157–203), we see how Gellius grappled with the complexity of the classical tradition, in which familiar texts were mediated by now-forgotten commentaries and works of erudition. To exemplify the shortcomings of these subsidia, Gellius examines Marcus Tullius Tiro, the freedman who punched above his weight by 'censuring' the elder Cato (p. 184; NA 6.3). In contrast, Gellius' essay on pregnancy (NA 3.16) is appreciated as a tour de force in the critical use of sources, weaving its way through medical, philosophical, literary, and legal evidence to reach a satisfactory, if provisional, conclusion. The fifth chapter ('Favorinus, fiction, and dialogue at the limits of expertise', pp. 204–52) deals with Gellius' anecdotes and dialogues involving grammarians, jurists, rhetors, and philosophers. Every profession has its comic failures and impressive authorities, but Gellius inclines to the more inclusive perspective, consummately represented by the idiosyncratic – and to some extent, artificially reconstructed – Favorinus of Arles. Nevertheless, ideal readers of the NA must, like the author, endeavor to free themselves from the seduction (inlecebra) of over-hyped books and spell-binding teachers; critical autonomy is the essence of intellectual maturity (p. 248).

Howley's book contains so many original and thought-provoking insights that it is impossible to do it justice. Suffice it to say that he not only advances the project initiated by Holford-Strevens, but arguably solves some of its recurrent difficulties. How, for example, does one account for the moralizing tone of the NA, which has favorably impressed...