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Page 128
scape; see Sherwin-Withe 1966: 372375). Even when he arrives at Pomponianus's home in Stabiae, he is still unaware of the proportions of the disaster, understanding neither its format nor its definitive effects. He says with nonchalance that the flames raging on the mountain are only bonfires left by the peasants. It is true that, according to the Younger's interpretation, he says so in order to allay the fears of his companions; but afterward he really goes to sleep without realizing that he was risking burial by ashes had somebody not awakened him. When he finally understands that there is no escape and that the situation is really dramatic, it is too late. He dies as quickly as possible, because he was also asthmatic, as some commentators suggest.
When one carefully reconsiders the bare fabula, one gets the impression of reading the story of a very narcissistic and narrow-minded Roman admiral, completely unable to cope with the situation (in short, this efficient rescuer not only did not help anybody but also succeeded in depriving the fleet of its commander in chief, just when some efficiency was needed from the local military authority). Pliny the Younger does not conceal anything; if Tacitus had wished, he could have extrapolated the real story (perhaps he did) precisely as we are now doing. The Tacitus we are interested in, however, is not the "real" Tacitus; it is the planned addressee of Pliny's letter, that is, what I have elsewhere called the Model Reader of a text (Eco 1979a).
Pliny's letter is a text which, as any other text, is not empirically addressed to an empirical addressee: it builds up, by a discursive strategy, the type of reader who is supposed to cooperate in order to actualize the text such as the Model Author (that is, the objective textual strategy) wants it to be. We can refuse to play the role of the Model Reader, as we are presently doing; but we must recognize the kind of reader that the text not only presupposes but also produces through the use of given linguistic strategies.
To read the discursive maneuvers of the Younger at a metatextual level means to acknowledge the way in which the text gives its Model Reader the appropriate instructions as to how to realize a certain persuasive effect. This letter not only aims at saying something "true" (in an assertive mode); it also wants to make Tacitus (or every other possible reader) believe that the Elder was a hero, as well as wanting Tacitus to write that the Elder was one. Greimas would speak of modalities: faire croire and faire faire. Or, how to do things with words.
In order to produce the "right" cooperation of his Model Reader, Pliny the Younger plays upon a complicated gamut of discursive opera-

 
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