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Page 135
Thus it is very easy for P1 (always acting as P2) to say that, since Rectina is "terrified," the Elder "vertit . . . consilium and quod studioso animo incohaverat obit maximo" (the translator, caught in the trap displayed by the text, emphasizes, and writes ''as a hero"). One can suspect that, from the moment the Elder receives Rectina's message, he already knows that cRv. In any case, he does not know that vRe. But the text is shameless: the Elder "rectumque cursum recta gubernacula in periculum tenet adeo sloutus metu," hurries to the danger (his own danger!), steering his course straight, entirely fearless (fearless of his incumbent death!). The same Elder who, according to P1, after his arrival, goes peacefully to bed! The Model Reader, confused by a double flickering mirror where two epistemic worlds collide and vanish one into another, may now admire the sublime decision of the hero: fortes fortuna iuvat, let us proceed, I don't care about my death!
In a hiccup of honesty, P2 cannot avoid telling the truth: "quamquam nondum periculo appropinquante," the Elder does not feel himself in any immediate danger, Pomponianus's spot where the Elder lands is still relatively safe. . . . But the Reader knows that this spot is exactly the one where the Elder will lose his life. The Elder has sailed from WNct-3 toward W0t0 as if he knew everything about the furniture of that world, as if he were Ulysses crossing the Pillars of Hercules.
This story of temporal shiftings-in and -out is also a story of rapid switchings in focalization. It happens as if a moving light spot were throwing its rays, alternately, on two different epistemic worlds so that, by a sort of optical effect, one never realizes which world is being focused on; or as happens in so-called three-card monte, where the trickster maneuvers his cards at such a speed that the victim can no longer understand which card is where. A paramount example of discursive manipulation determining the extrapolation of the fabula's level. Really Pliny the Younger (or his text) is doing things with words.
The last instruction of Tacitus (after having again shifted in at t0; see §3) is a masterpiece of hypocrisy. "Finem faciam," "I stop representing P2 and the Elder in t-3 as I did until now (what a supreme lie!), let me come back to the present, notice, my dear Tacitus, that until now we were in another world, let us return to our own which has never interfered with that one" (such is indeed the rhetorical function of finem faciam). "What I, P1, have said until now is only what I have witnessed at that time, what I knew at that time, what I believed along with my uncle at that time, what I have heard from my firsthand informants" (who obviously, let me add, knew a little more than the Elder knew at t-3). "Now, Tacitus, it is you who must transform my honest report into

 
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