Yet another example of why formal literacy is an always moving target, something one can strive for for a lifetime but only approach: I just discovered “Noctes Atticae” — “Attic Nights” — (“Attic” here referring to the nature of the tales contained in the 2nd Century volume of fables, since they were or were based on old Grecian folk tales, fables, and myths). It’s a good example of the “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, silences, impalpabilities and the like” in my own literacy. Specifically, I was reminded last night of the fable of “Androcles and the Lion” (similar in plot and moral to Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse”), but I did not know until I reviewed the fable today that the first known statement of the fable was in Aulus Gellius’s “Noctes Atticus.”
Now, I feel a need to read Gellius’s collection to see that else I have missed. Unfortunately, since I only have the little Latin I have gleaned through other readings and via interpolations from other languages largely derived from Latin, I’ll be best served to read one of the available translations. *shrugs* I don’t think I can effectively manage to shoehorn Latin lessons into my “scattergun” autodidact program, now.
I’ll never have read enough to achieve formal literacy that satisfies me. . . or, it seems, closely approximates the literacy of some I have known.