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from Part IV - Reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2008
“POET O anxieties of mankind! O how great is the emptiness in matter! / BYSTANDER Who will read this? / POET Are you talking to me? No one, by Hercules. / BYSTANDER No one? / POET One or two people, or no one. / BYSTANDER A shameful and wretched outcome.” (Persius, Satires 1.1-3) / 'Who read this?' is a question which scholars of the ancient novel, perhaps more than those engaged with any other Greek or Roman literary form, have persistently and anxiously posed. The opening of Persius' first Satire, a poem that may close with one of the very few references in literature of the high classical period to one of the extant Greek novels, ought to make us ask 'Does it matter?' We might, however, first consider why the Greek (in particular) novel has attracted this special anxiety about readership - and why it does indeed matter.
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