This book examines Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae (NA) as a complex literary work of art and a sophisticated guide to critical reading. The days are over when the miscellaneous potpourri of the NA was dismissed as a mere anthology. Since the turn of the millennium there have been an increasing number of monographs that attempt to open up reading paths through the jungle of the approximately 400 commentarii – arranged in a deliberately random order – across the 20 books of Gellius’ work. The chapters’ diversity in content and form forces readers to focus and select, which is one of the reasons why individual studies place very different emphases in their interpretation of the work as a whole. Is Gellius primarily concerned with positioning himself as a cultural authority (W. Keulen, Gellius the Satirist [2009])? Are the NA intended as a representation of literary and cultural ‘memory’ (C. Heusch, Die Macht der memoria [2011])? Should they be read as an ‘interactive narrative’ by an ‘incommensurable narrator’ (B. Beer, Aulus Gellius und die Noctes Atticae [2020])? Are we expected to consume the books in a linear fashion (Beer) or according to our own idiosyncratic preferences (E. Gunderson, Nox philologiae [2009])? Do they teach ‘facts’, social practices or rather ‘methods’? Is it Gellius’ intention to construct an ideal educated elite, or does he, on the contrary, deconstruct any holistic and, in particular, ‘philological’ approach to reading and understanding (Gunderson)? Or should we primarily understand the NA as a demonstration of how to read and process knowledge (J.A. Howley, Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture [2018])?
D.’s book, in a good part based on the same set of ‘metapoetic’ commentarii, builds on these studies and their conflicting views, finding its own original solution. While also being interested in the ‘ways of reading’ and the NA as an intellectual and aesthetic project, D. emphasises the plurality of those ways. In his eyes the main objective of the NA is to invite the audience to recognise, compare and evaluate the different possible approaches to this text and to texts and authorities in general. At the end readers should have internalised a proposed best model of critical reading that defines the vir civiliter eruditus referred to by Gellius in the preface (NA praef. 13). The aim of D.’s book is to examine those ‘ways of reading’ and to ‘reapply’ them to his philological reading of the NA (pp. 11–18).
In the introduction D. names the most important strategies for guiding readers that he has identified, including ‘material framing devices, focal characters, recurrent citations that are placed into dialogue with one another, and allusive references to other near-contemporary works’ (p. 2). They define the basic framework of the book’s following seven chapters.
Chapter 1 traces the numerous ‘implicit readings and reworkings’ (p. 24) of concealed canonical predecessors within the NA on the basis of common discourses and topics. Attentive readers, D. argues, will recognise these thematic echoes and thus will learn about the position Gellius confidently ascribes to himself as an author and critic alongside Pliny the Younger and Quintilian against Pliny the Elder and Seneca.
Chapter 2 explores, with the title Noctes Atticae and the ‘table of contents’ (or capita rerum, NA praef. 25), a first set of paratexts. Both come into tension with the text after just a few chapters, as a substantial part of the commentarii is not set in Attica and in Gellius’ youth, but later in Rome, and the list of capita rerum, contrary to what is claimed in the praefatio, rarely provides an accurate summary of the content. According to D.’s interpretation, readers who solve this puzzle become sensitive to the different contexts in which the author persona Gellius operates and are encouraged to read attentively and slowly.
Chapter 3 is devoted to Gellius’ praefatio and its explicit and implicit reading programme. Again D. points to an interesting paradox: on the one hand, this preface positions itself in the tradition of ancient miscellaneous works (Seneca, Pliny the Elder and others); but on the other hand, the theory of critical reading that it establishes and its intertextual allusions to Aristophanes, Horace and Plutarch prescribe a literary and aesthetic mode of reception that is fully distinct from encyclopaedic utility. Thus, the preface, according to D., invites readers to harmonise these different suggestions when they start reading the commentarii.
In Chapter 4 D. uses the example of several ‘clusters’ of commentarii in NA 2 to study the relationship between varietas and coherence and also the different ways in which semantic bridges can be built in the colourful collection of the NA. These can be deictic markers (supra, id quoque), similar topics and excerpts from the same source, but also characters (Fronto, Herodes Atticus) and recurring or interrelated quotations. For readers who follow these clues and connect commentarii with each other ‘conceptual units’ emerge that help them resolve the dissonances that repeatedly arise between the individual parts of the text.
In the next chapter D. develops another ‘way of reading’, inscribed through parallels and allusions to Catullus and Horace, namely to understand the NA as a poetic book. He analyses the introductory passage NA 1.1–10 as ‘parade-commentarii’, which demonstrate Gellius’ ‘prose poetics’ in reference to Horace’s ‘parade-Odes’ and teach readers how to recognise patterns within a sequence of chapters.
Chapter 6 expands this idea and explores both the method of continuous reading and the book as a compositional unit, using NA 3 as an example. D. convincingly demonstrates the results that can be achieved by combining different ways of reading and linking commentarii. Through cross-references and thematic sequences that emerge when the book is read repeatedly and from changing perspectives, it becomes – in D.’s interpretation – a coherent discussion of Roman identity, masculinity, textual and educational authority, and critical reading.
A seventh and last chapter examines the reception of Gellius’ ‘miscellanistic aesthetics’ in subsequent periods of literary history.
D. interprets the NA and its miscellaneous composition as a kind of guided reading exercise. As a reader following the paths laid out by D., this reviewer has gained many surprising insights. Among the most fascinating was how D.’s book highlights the contradictions and irritations inherent in the NA and resolves them on a higher level through his ‘polyphonic’ approach. In D.’s view Gellius is a ‘strong author’ (p. 8) who controls the text and leaves nothing to chance. Similarities that earlier interpreters regarded as ‘parallels’ thus readily become intentional allusions. The reader who is able to discover them is also the ideal reader, who consumes the text in the way intended by the author. This is courageous and enlightening (e.g. the relationships with Horace, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch), even if it carries the risk of overlooking the many gaps that were filled for real readers of the second century with works that we no longer know today (Varro, Fronto, Favorinus, among others).
Like others before him, D. must limit himself to a selection of commentarii, and, likewise, his focus on the act of reading largely excludes the approach that ensured the survival of Gellius’ work, namely the interest in the contents of the commentarii. But why should we not assume that all those quotations, findings and anecdotes are also intended to present valuable information – instead of only being a means to an ‘higher’ didactic end? However, to do full justice to this would be a task better suited to an – urgently needed – comprehensive modern commentary on the NA. In the meantime, we owe D.’s book a new readable, intelligent and thought-provoking guide through the enigmatic universe of the Attic Nights.
