ESTÁNDARES DE CALIDAD DEL SOFTWARE A NIVEL PRODUCTO

Several themes have thus emerged in the development of dialogue in the Imperial period. We can see the increasing importance, particularly in Plutarch, of the way the course of a conversation contributes a critical deliberative layer: the narrative of the discourse is an essential part of what the text has to offer. That deliberation is also increasingly veristic, modelled on “real” or gently idealised modes of conversation as a way of including the reader. The sympotic context adds a democratic cast to that discourse, inviting and allowing readerly participation and contribution. We can also see, for dialogic authors concerned about the societal context of the ideas they discuss, how narrative contexts such as political crisis points or even just the rhythms of civic life can add an important dimension to what occurs in a dialogue. Finally, we can 39_{Cf Branham 1989: 90 on other capacities of Lucianic dialogue, and 103 on how insight emerges}

see the tightening of dialogic narrators’ focus on individual characters’ embodiment of particular intellectual qualities or approaches.40 _{And as the focus becomes narrower,}

shorter narrative forms become more effective: Plutarch especially indicates a trend toward episode narrative in dialogue, where brief encounters are strung together into a larger work.

I will now very briefly look at a dialogic passage in which Gellius closely guides the reader in evaluating interlocutors’ authority by way of their speech. Noctes 5.21 relates an argument over whether the obscure archaism pluria is acceptable Latin.41 _Gellius

is a silent observer to the conversation, in which an anonymous good friend has used the word and is challenged on it by a bystander. Although the passage is advertised in the Table of Contents as containing evidence for the word’s validity, the narrative that plays out — the deeper value Gellius offers to a careful reader who was enticed by the surface appeal of that evidence — is a case study in scrutinising authority figures.42

The narrative of this scene depends entirely on Gellius guiding his reader’s opinions of the interlocutors. We learn that the amicus was very learned (adprime doctus, 5.21.1), and that he happened to say pluria in conversation.43 _{Gellius tells us it was}

not in the man’s character to be ostentatious with archaisms, but surmises — modelling for us an interpretive lens for speech — that the man’s fondness for reading ancient literature had put the word into the man’s mind.

sed, opinor, assidua ueterum scriptorum tractatione inoleverat linguae illius uox, quam in libris saepe offenderat.

But, I think, from thorough handling of ancient writers, the manner of their speech, which he had often come across in their books, had grown on his tongue. (5.21.3)

40_{This is the function of the emphasis on non-visual characterisation identified by Holford-Strevens}

1997.

41_{On this passage Springer 1958: 123, Holford-Strevens 2003: 179, Gunderson 2009: 123-5, Rust}

2009: 51-5. Cf 7.15, 15.9.

42_{cap.5.21: “Pluria” qui dicat et “compluria” et “compluriens”, non barbare dicere, sed Latine. Cf}

Henry 1994: 1926.

By contrast, the other person present had read very little, and poorly.

aderat, cum ille hoc dicit, reprehensor audaculus verborum, qui perpauca eadem- que a uolgo protrita legerat habebatque nonnullas disciplinae grammaticae inaudi- tiunculas partim rudes inchoatasque partim non probas easque quasi puluerem ob oculos, cum adortus quemque fuerat, adspergebat.

There was there, when he said that, an impudent censurer of words, who had read very little and commonplace things at that, and who had some brief little lessons in the grammatical arts, some of them rough and sketchy, some of them untested, and these he scattered before people’s eyes when he had accosted them. (5.21.4)

This is not especially sophisticated dialogic narrative, but it is effective. Before the interlocutors have even opened their mouths, the narrator has prepared us with know- ledge of each one’s intellectual character, as well as having given immediate, tangible force to the manners of their speech. The reader is thus primed to make a connection between private reading habits and general disposition, and how each man conducts himself in conversation.

The two spar: thereprehensorboldly accuses theamicus of having no authorities for his usage (5.21.5), and the friend, remaining civil in tone yet confident in his superior knowledge, smiles and cites a handful of such authorities (5.21.6). The reprehensor retorts that the authorities are antiquated, and cites a doctrine of verbal formation (5.21.9), only to have the amicus direct him to various primary texts in a library that could prove the rule wrong (5.21.10).44 This exchange plays out distinguishing values that are critical throughout Gellius’s encounters with problematic exponents of the grammatical discipline: over-reliance on doctrine, incivility, and not being sufficiently widely read (more on which below).

Several elements are typical of Gellius’s dialogues. For one, its narrative framework is heavily Roman, with its constant nods to the amicus’s busy civic life, and to the infrastructure of the city. The question that triggers it — whetherpluria is good Latin

— arises by accident, and the subsequent struggle over who has the authority to allow or reject its usage is played out so as to understand each interlocutor’s speech in the context of his private mental life and character.45 Gellius as narrator guides us with a heavy hand to approve of the overworked amateur (reminiscent of the text’s imagined reader in Pr.22) and to reject the reprehensor. The course of the dialogue is far from complex, but its rendering as a dialogue has no possible alternatives: for Gellius to illustrate the passage’s deeper point about the nature of expert claims to authority, and the standards to which they should be held, no form but the dialogue would do.

Gellius, as silent viewer and narrator, implies his learning from the encounter by including it in the Noctes at all. This is one model for the reader’s response: silently observe and make your own judgment. Above, we saw how the evenness of the sympotic form, even with a forceful agonistic undertone, allows for the reader’s participation. Gellius’s dialogues, by and large, lack this safe quality (indeed, that sort of sympotic encounter is rare, and mostly located in his student days at Athens). Instead, they are aggressive and confrontational in how they are conducted, not to mention unpredictable and emergent in how they come to pass. The reader is not so much invited to participate in a Gellian dialogue as challenged to be ready. The roving eye of intellectual scrutiny may fall on anyone: the reader is equally prompted to defend himself or herself against it, or redirect it against another. 5.21 thus shows the key elements of the Gellian dialogic scene that contribute to a larger programme by modelling the scrutiny of superficial qualities for clues to deeper value, whether it is people and their speech, or texts and their stories.

Sometimes very little at all has to be said for a Gellian dialogue to illustrate colour- fully an encounter of intellects. 11.16 is an encounter related to illustrate a phenomenon Gellius has “frequently observed” (adiecimus saepe animum, 11.16.1): the difficulty of

rendering certain Greek words effectively into Latin. When a Greekless Roman asks him what the Plutarchan title περί πολυπραγμοσύνης means, the drama that follows

plays out as much silently in Gellius’s mind, as he grapples with the difficulties of the translation, as it does in the brief verbal exchange that follows, as the man persists in his Greekless ignorance. The point of the scene is the cognitive limitations suffered by those who lack Greek knowledge:46 _{the narrator’s silent internal reflection demonstrates}

one aspect of the problem, and the dialogic exchange, another. On other occasions, such as 1.2, the text’s first dialogic scene, Gellius does not participate at all, instead serving only as (Platonic) reporter: he “reads” the scene as he would a literary dialogue. The blurring of lines between narrator and interlocutor, a clear point of contact with Plut- arch’s approach in the QC, blurs, for the reader, the twin ideas of reading a dialogue and listening to a conversation. To understand the implications of this phenomenon, we must briefly examine Gellius’s understanding of the cognitive aspects of didactic fiction.