Netting the wolf-fish: Gaius Titius in Macrobius and Cicero

This chapter offers a close reading of a single oratorical fragment, a passage ascribed to the second-century BC orator C. Titius quoted by Macrobius (Sat. 3.16.15?16). The chapter explores the range of contexts we can use as readers to try to make sense of the passage, suggesting that quotation practices can illuminate aspects of the quoted text we miss if we concentrate simply on the testimonia to Titius' activity as an orator as traditionally understood. In this particular case, attention to Macrobius' concern with luxury and consumption, and the emblematic wolf-fish, also points towards a more general understanding of the use of fragments in antiquity as material for the quoting author to digest and transform.