ABSTRACT
About the time that Seneca was advising Lucilius on the use of books, when Cornutus and Persius were hunched over their writing tables, while the slaves at the Villa of the Papyri saw to the maintenance and expansion of the soon-to-be-buried library at Herculaneum, other groups in Rome were also busy appropriating texts. Christians and Jews in their small conventicles scattered around the city of Rome and elsewhere around the Mediterranean were, like members of philosophical schools, consumers of texts. In all these gatherings, large and small, public and private, written texts were part of the everyday business of teaching and learning. We have a vivid representation of one such occasion in a grave relief from Ostia, found on page vi of the prelims of this volume. Elevated above his audience, the speaker raises his right hand in a teaching gesture, while holding a closed bookroll in his left. The beard and bookroll suggest a philosopher rather than a rhetorician. 1 Indeed, the presence of a written text is probably not a prop that would be favored by orators, who prized ex tempore utterance and freedom from any reliance on script. 2 In a standing position, he is at a disadvantage for reading, since most readers preferred to sit when handling a roll. 3 The rapt attention of the figures to the teacher's right, and the apparent debate prompted by his remarks among those on his left testify to the effect of his speech on the hearers. Here we have a person who through his mastery of texts has integrated the wisdom of previous thinkers and who produces on his own authority a synthesis of his knowledge. Still, a book is present, even if closed. Strikingly, while this teacher has moved beyond reliance on texts, he is in the process of becoming a text himself: in the foreground, two scribes busily commit the words of the speaker to tablets.
