reading, or in the exact period at which this particular piece of 
information was written down, equally little did he expect his 
future readers to be interested in himself.” (p. 114) In the 
same way we do not concern ourselves with the authors of the 
multiplication table or with the personal lives of natural 
scientists. And so it was also when the student undertook to 
“imitate” the style of ancient writers.

     Perhaps enough has been said about the nature of 
manuscript culture to illuminate the drastic changes in the 
relation of author to author and of author to reader in the 
Gutenberg years ahead. When the “higher critics” began to 
explain the nature of manuscript culture to the Bible-reading 
public in the later nineteenth century, it seemed to many 
educated people that the Bible was finished. But these people 
had lived mainly with the illusions of the Bible produced by print