Vintage canada edition, 1998 Copyright 1996 by Alberto Manguel

Cognitive Psychology 6, London, 1974.
32. Wittrock, “Reading Comprehension”.
33. E.B. Huey, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading (New York, 1908), quoted in Kolers, “Reading”.
34. Quoted in Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler.
THE SILENT READERS
1. Saint Augustine, Confessions (Paris, 1959), V, 12.
2. Donald Attwater, “Ambrose”, in A Dictionary of Saints (London, 1965).
3. W. Ellwood Post, Saints, Signs and Symbols (Harrisburg, Penn., 1962).
4. Saint Augustine, Confessions, VI, 3.
5. In 1927, in an article titled “Voces Paginarum” (Philologus 82) the Hungarian scholar Josef Balogh tried
to prove that silent reading was almost completely unknown in the ancient world. Forty-one years later, in
1968, Bernard M.W. Knox (“Silent Reading in Antiquity”, in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 9/4
[Winter 1968]) argued against Balogh that “ancient books were normally read aloud, but there is nothing
to show that silent reading of books was anything extraordinary.” And yet the examples Knox gives
(several of which I quote) seem to me too weak to support his thesis, and appear to be exceptions to
reading out loud, rather than the rule.
6. Knox, “Silent Reading in Antiquity”.
7. Plutarch, “On the Fortune of Alexander”, Fragment 340a, in Moralia, Vol. IV, ed. Frank Cole Babbitt
(Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1972): “In fact it is recorded that once, when he had broken the seal of a
confidential letter from his mother and was reading it silently to himself, Hephaestion quietly put his head
beside Alexander’s and read the letter with him; Alexander could not bear to stop him, but took off his

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ring and placed the seal on Hephaestion’s lips.”
8. Claudius Ptolemy, On the Criterion, discussed in The Criterion of Truth, ed. Pamela Huby & Gordon
Neal (Oxford, 1952).
9. Plutarch, “Brutus”, V, in The Parallel Lives, ed. B. Perrin (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1970). It
doesn’t seem odd that Caesar should have read this note silently. In the first place, he may not have
wanted a love-letter overheard; secondly, it may have been part of his plan to irritate his enemy, Cato, and
lead him to suspect a conspiracy — which is exactly what happened, according to Plutarch. Caesar was
forced to show the note and Cato was ridiculed.
10. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Vol. I, trans. L.P. McCauley & A.A.
Stephenson (Washington, 1968).
11. Seneca, Epistulae Morales, ed. R.M. Gummere (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1968), Letter 56.
12. The refrain tolle, lege doesn’t appear in any ancient children’s game known to us today. Pierre
Courcelle suggests that the formula is one used in divination and quotes Marc le Diacre’s Life of
Porphyrus, in which the formula is uttered by a figure in a dream, to induce consultation of the Bible for
divinatory purposes. See Pierre Courcelle, “L’Enfant et les ‘sortes bibliques’ ”, in Vigiliae Christianae, Vol.
7 (Nîmes, 1953).
13. Saint Augustine, Confessions, IV, 3.
14. Saint Augustine, “Concerning the Trinity”, XV, 10: 19, in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, ed.
Whitney J. Oates (London, 1948).
15. Martial, Epigrams, trans. J.A. Pott & F.A. Wright (London, 1924), I. 38.
16. Cf. Henri Jean Martin, “Pour une histoire de la lecture”, Revue française d’histoire du livre 46, Paris,
1977. According to Martin, Sumerian (not Aramaic) and Hebrew lack a specific verb meaning “to read”.
17. Ilse Lichtenstadter, Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature (New York, 1974).
18. Quoted in Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern (New Haven & London, 1992).
19. Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Princeton, 1976).
20. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, ed. J.E. King (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1952), Disputation V.
21. Albertine Gaur, A History of Writing (London, 1984).
22. William Shepard Walsh, A Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities (Philadelphia, 1892).
23. Quoted in M.B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West
(Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1993).
24. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ed. J.C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1970).
25. T. Birt, Aus dem Leben der Antike (Leipzig, 1922).
26. Gaur, A History of Writing.
27. Pierre Riché, Les Écoles et l’enseignement dans l’Occident chrétien de la fin du V siècle au milieu du