Pliny on Why One Should Read Aloud to a Private Audience

Pliny the Younger, Epist. 7.17 (To Caecilius Celer; LCL, B. Radice)

Everyone has his own reasons for reading his work aloud; my own, as I have often said, is to be told of the slips I know I am sure to have made. So I am all the more surprised to read in your letter that there were people who criticized me for giving any reading of my speeches at all: unless they think that this is the only kind of writing which never needs correction. I should like to ask them why they allow (if they do allow) readings of history, whose authors aim at truth and accuracy rather than at displaying their talents, and tragedy, which needs a stage and actors rather than a lecture-room, and lyric poetry, which calls for a chorus and a lyre instead of a reader. They say that such readings are an established custom. Then is their originator to be blamed? Besides, there have been readings of speeches before, by some of our own orators as well as by the Greeks.
    “But it is unnecessary to read a speech already delivered.” It would be if the audience and the speech were exactly the same, and you read the speech immediately after delivery; but if you make many additions and alterations, if you invite new people along with those who heard you before, and after a certain interval, why should it be less suitable to read a speech than to publish it?
    “It is difficult for reading a speech to be satisfactory.” That depends on the efforts of the reader and is no reason for not reading at all. Personally. I do not seek praise for my speech when it is read aloud, but when the text can be read after publication, and consequently I employ every possible method of correction.
    (1) First of all, I go through the work myself;
    (2) next, I read it to two or three friends and send it to others for comment.
    (3) If I have any doubts about their criticisms, I go over them again with one or two people, and
    (4) Finally I read the work to a larger audience; And that is the moment when I make my severest corrections, for my anxiety makes me concentrate all the more carefully.
    Respect for an audience, modesty and anxiety are the best critics.
    Look at it in this way: if you are going to talk to a single individual, however well informed, won’t you be less nervous than you are before large numbers who may be quite ignorant? When you rise to plead in court, isn’t that the moment when you have least confidence in yourself, when you wish you could alter most of your speech or indeed the whole? Especially if the scene is imposing and the assembly large, for even the sight of dirty working clothes can be intimidating.
    If you feel that your opening words are badly received, don’t you falter and break down? I imagine it is because there is some sort of sound collective wisdom in mere numbers, so that, though individual judgments may be poor, when combined they carry weight. Thus it was that Pomponius Secundus, the author of tragedies, if one of his close friends happened to think that some passage should be deleted when he wished to keep it, used to say that he “appealed to the people”; and according to the people’s silence or applause he would act on his own judgment or that of his friend. Such was his faith in public opinion, whether rightly or wrongly it is not for me to say.
    For I do not invite the general public, but a select and limited audience of persons whom I admire and trust, whom I observe individually and fear as a whole; see that I apply to fear what Cicero said about the practice of writing (de Orat. 1.150). Fear is the sternest corrective—the prospect of giving a reading, our entry into the lecture-room, our white faces, our trembling, and our nervous glances, all prompt us to correct our work.
    Consequently I do not regret my practice; experience has taught me its great advantages…Nothing can satisfy my desire for perfection; I can never forget the importance of putting anything into the hands of the public and I am positive that any work must be revised more than once and read to a number of people if it is intended to give permanent and universal satisfaction.