Who preserved Greek literature? (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Who preserved Greek literature? (2020)

kiwihellenist.blogspot.com

78 pointsjorgesborges24 comments

> Back in December I wrote about the myth that ancient Greek texts only survived by being preserved in the mediaeval Islamic world. ... But first, I’d better repeat that it is a myth. ... Only in a tiny number of cases do we rely on translations for ancient Greek texts

But the second statement of the myth they are trying to deflate doesn't contradict the first statement at all. Ancient Greek texts could have survived by being preserved in the medieval Islamic world in Greek (not in translation). I'm not saying they were (I don't know) but it's a bit of a bait-and-switch argument.

> Greek texts were primarily preserved and transmitted in Greek-speaking regions of the empire, that is (initially) in Greece, Anatolia, greater Syria, and Egypt.

Okay, but Greater Syria and Egypt were lost to the Byzantine Empire during the Islamic expansion of the 7th century, And the whole "Muslim scholars preserved the ancient greek tradition" narrative is obviously about that later time period, so those don't seem relevant.

>> Greek texts were primarily preserved and transmitted in Greek-speaking regions of the empire, that is (initially) in Greece, Anatolia, greater Syria, and Egypt.

> Okay, but Greater Syria and Egypt were lost to the Byzantine Empire during the Islamic expansion of the 7th century, And the whole "Muslim scholars preserved the ancient greek tradition" narrative is obviously about that later time period, so those don't seem relevant.

That doesn't mean the Greeks in those areas disappeared or became Islamic.

I am not sure who the author is addressing here, and I find many of these "common myths" quite baffling. Ancient Greek works were widely known amongst mediaeval Islamic scholars, and translations into Arabic were made, but this is the first time that I've seen someone claim (to refute the claim, but still) that these Arabic translations are the "only reason" why these ancient works survived.

The big reveal seems to be that, surprise surprise, Greek texts survived in their original form in the area of Europe where Greek was the lingua franca, and Latin text survived in areas where Latin had that role. Also, the fact that books were copied is, apparently, another big revelation.

Honestly, as interesting as the subject is, the writing style and the bizarre arguments the author makes are off-putting, to say the least.

I assumed most of it stayed in Greek in the Byzantine empire, and then came to Europe after the Fall of Byzantium to the Turks.

That seems to be the common theory for the source of the Greek texts, but before that the Greek philosophy, maths and science seems to have been translated into Latin via Arabic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelard_of_Bath

> The oldest surviving Latin translation of Euclid's Elements is a 12th-century translation by Adelard from an Arabic version.

But he also translated original Arabic work, introducing algebra.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Cl...

It's a complicated enough tale that lots of people get credit over the centuries for keeping the past alive and adding their own layer.

It has been a while since I read this, but I believe that until the late 13th Century the Latin versions of Aristotle were translated from Arabic versions, not from Greek.

No knowledge. But we’re told that translation from Arabic is where https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance is started. Not detail in wiki though.

“ The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were also major conduits of culture and knowledge. The recovery of lost Greek classics brought to Italy by refugee Byzantine scholars who migrated during and following the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century were important in sparking the new linguistic studies of the Renaissance, in newly created academies in Florence and Venice. Humanist scholars searched monastic libraries for ancient manuscripts and recovered Tacitus and other Latin authors. The rediscovery of Vitruvius meant that the architectural principles of Antiquity could be observed once more, and Renaissance artists were encouraged, in the …”

I'm a bit nonplussed by the lack of distinction of 'Greek literature' into periods. The (~non-fiction) works of many of the important 'proto-scientist' authors of the Classical period (490–323 BC) are completely missing, and we only know about them only from discussions in later texts. (Included are ideas/data from Babylon, early thoughts about the nature of reality, the motion of the planets and geo/heliocentricity.)

(The era & topic - including what's missing - are covered in detail in an excellent long-going podcast here: [https://songofurania.com/ )

Related discussion here from 9 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28662809]

the writing style of this (and the preceding) article is extremely unpleasant. the author can't seem to move past a point without retracing it 3 times. interesting subject matter though

It's poorly written, and the subject matter is interesting, but it's only worth reading if you can also trust it.

Take a look at the screenshot https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YoT5zTT4p9Y/XuGVBfGPpaI/AAAAAAAAP... the author describes as

> According to this widely used textbook for learning ancient Greek, published by Oxford University Press, slavery was benign, and enslaved people were ‘lively and cheeky characters’. (Balme and Lawall, Athenaze, 3rd edition 2016, ch. 2)

Do you think this is anything even remotely close to a reasonable paraphrase, or rather, brazenly lying to the reader? As I am not a classicist, that means I can't trust anything else he says either. (At least HN now lets me retract my upvotes for articles.)

I think the Cambridge Latin Course just updated their textbooks and one of the changes was to change the treatment of slaves to make them less objectified, so this bit seems plausible to me.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-cambridge-latin-cour...

> Enslaved characters were, in earlier editions, sometimes depicted in simplistic terms: as “happy”, “hard-working” or “lazy”. In the new edition, slavery is now depicted through the eyes of its victims, focusing on their anxieties and gruelling lives.

The citation is exactly the edition from 2016, presumably it is or isn't the updated one. From looking at your link, the update was 2022.

I agree that the author's style is not the best, but I think that what you describe as a paraphrase was meant more as a polemic. That is why the author quotes the whole textbook passage. I do not think he meant to imply that the textbook was making a specifically false statement, but that by its general approach it illustrates a tendency to portray slavery as not as bad as it actually was. Whether this is broadly the case with such textbooks would, of course, need to be demonstrated in much greater detail. However, the author links a more detailed critique above the quoted textbook passage.

Slaves didn't have time to write books.

Typically true, but we know of a few prominent freedmen from the ancient world that wrote books: Aesop and his translator Phadrus, Epictetus, Phaedo of Elis and Marcus Tullius Tiro, the secretary of Cicero.

AIUI, Epictetus also discusses the matter quite directly and is under no illusion about his relative "downtrodden" status, so the contrary remark found in the textbook looks like naïve, groundless speculation. Slaves may have been personally "lively" and had complex stories - Epictetus certainly did - but this is a different matter altogether.

I have not read this article but what fascinates me in this context is that it is very difficult to estimate how many works have survived time at all and how many are lost? Most historians assume only ~1% has survived. Written works are better conserved than music and everyday language.

I stumbled over this information in the book "Offline!" by Thomas Grüter, a highly recommended read, by the way. Among others, it tackles the question if future historians will know more about our time than we know about the past.

Epistemology in ancient history is hard, but we know enough to make good estimates of the survival rate of ancient Greek and Latin literary texts

http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2009/10/26/reference-for-... Roger S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams" https://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/28263 https://historyforatheists.com/2017/10/lost-books-photios-bi...

Makes sense that books and learning are preserved in times of peace and lost at times of war. Probably also kept/lost based on the fundamentalism of the ruling elite, as much was preserved through Muslim Spain before the reconquista. This is a lesson for modern times, in that we should care for the digital records - they will be harder to preserve and read in the future than papyrus and clay unless we piggyback technology forward.

This article would tend to lead one to suppose that more Latin than Greek texts have been preserved from the classical period, because it describes better conditions for preservation in the West than in the East, but I've heard that the opposite is true.

If you read the post, it says that Ottoman and European imperialism disrupted the institutions which had preserved pagan Greek literature until then. This part is really really ugly, because it was in the 15th century, after doing everything they could to pick apart the East Roman Empire for hundreds of years and creating the situation which let the Ottomans take over, that Italians decided that actually the pagan Greek classics were cool and started collecting manuscripts, learning Classical Greek, and making their own copies and eventually printed editions. It was rather like how anthropologists emerged in the the early 20th century to 'preserve' the indigenous cultures which the anthropologists' relatives had been taking apart.

Catholic Europeans did a lot to preserve pagan Greek literature (mainly after 1400), and Catholic Europeans destroyed a lot of pagan Greek literature (mainly before 1453), and that is not a story which many people want to hear.

Orthodox monks preserved a part of it. How much? I do not have numbers.

I wish I could make a living through my handwriting.

Calligraphy is a thing. People pay for customized wedding invitations and such.

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