Livy, born 53 BC, died AD 17, wrote a history of Rome in 142 books. (These books were shorter than what we generally think of as books. Think books of the Bible instead. Back then, the term referred to the amount of writing which fit into a scroll.)
Of those 142 books, 35 have survived to our day: books 1-10 and 21-45. But we know a lot about what was written in the other 107 books: there is an anonymous 4th-century abridgment of 140 of the 142 books (136 & 137 are missing) referred to as the periochae of Livy. Altogether the periochae are about as long as one of Livy's books. Another anonymous abridgment, of books 37-40 (still extant in the entire form) and 48-55 (lost) was found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, and published in volume IV of the Oxyrhynchus Papryri in 1904. In addition, Julius Obsequens, who probably lived in the 3rd century AD, compiled a book of prodigies, or, as we might say, of wonders -- droughts, storms, ecplipses, swarms of bees, unexplained things seen in the sky, etc -- taken from Livy's history.
Also, the works of history written by Aurelius Victor, Florus and Eutropius consist to a great degree of abridgments of Livy.
In addition, there are fragments of Livy: a 1000-word passage from book 91 found in a 5th century palimpsest of a manuscript in the Vatican library in the 18th century; a piece of parchment containing a few words from book 11, written in the 5th century, found in the Fayum in Egypt in the 1980's.
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, in a famous letter from AD 401, says that his household is busily editing the whole of Livy's work.
And then there are the fragments which are the subject of this post: quotes from or other references to the lost books of Livy in the works of other authors, from the 1st to the 6th century AD. I have been able to identify the following references. Perhaps there are more. Perhaps some of these are spurious. In addition to these, I have found numerous references to the lost books in scholia (notes written inn the margins of manuscripts), for which I have as yet been able to determine neither an author not a date.
Servius, in the commentary on Vergil he wrote in the 4th century, refers to Livy's books 12, 13, 16, 19, 94, 99, 116, and 6 times to book 136.
Priscian, a 6th-century grammarian, refers to books 14, 17, 56, 112 (twice), and to 113, 118 and 136.
Censorius, a 3rd-century grammarian, refers to books 19 and 49.
Plutarch, in works written in Greek which cover some of the same ground as Livy, refers to books 77, 98 (twice), 111 and 116.
Valerius Maximus refers to book 18.
Augustine of Hippo refers to books 77 and 78.
Frontinus (c30-104) in his book on military strategy, refers to books 91 and 97.
Bishop Agrocius of Sens (5th cent) refers to book 102.
Josephus refers to book 102 in Antiquities of the Jews.
Serenus Sammonicus (d 212), in his book Res reconditae, refers to book 103.
Tacitus refers to book 105.
Jordanus (active mid-6th century) refers to book 105.)
Orosius (375 -- after 418) refers twice to book 109.
Appian refers to book 114.
Jerome refers to book 114.
Seneca refers to book 116 and 3 times to book 136.
Pliny the Elder refers twice to book 136.
Pope Gelasius refers to book 136 in AD 496.
Nonius Marcellus, writing in the 4th or 5th century, refers twice to book 136.
Quintilian refers twice to book 136.
The number of late citations by authors with connections to Africa is striking. (Pope Gelasius, for example, was a Berber.)
Showing posts with label lost books of livy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lost books of livy. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Monday, February 9, 2015
Dream Log: Surrounded By People Volunteering To Help Me Find Livy's Lost Books
I dreamed that some friends had invited me to their house. From outside the house looked like one of a row of not-particularly-remarkable single-family houses rowed close together in an urban residential district, with a sidewalk and small lawns in front, but inside it was filled with a surprising number of rather spacious rooms. It was also full of a large number of lively, intelligent people of all ages. This was not a party or some other special occasion; I gathered, on the contrary, that the house was usually full of the resident family's friends.
On a shelf in the living room I found a book which looked like a much-read volume from the 60's, a little worn but still intact. No dust jacket remaining. It was entitled Finding the Lost Books of Livy. I had never seen a book with a title like this, which referred to one of my favorite obsessions. More than merely referring to the search for Livy's lost texts, the title did so in a remarkably optimistic way: not just "looking for" the lost books, but "finding" them. I wondered how the book had been received by the author's colleagues, if he had been a Classicist. Whether they had laughed at him about it, to his face or behind his back.
I soon was quite absorbed in the book, which definitely had not been written for laypeople, with many long citations from Latin and Greek books, with no translations offered, the author obviously having assumed that his audience could read both Latin and Greek.
What with the lively flow of people in and out of the living room, my interest in the book had soon been noticed, and people talked to me and learned that I was especially interested in this book's topic, and soon both children and adults had volunteered to assist me in my search for Livy's lost books. I felt rather on the spot here, and I thought that I was too much of an amateur to lead an entire team on this Quixotic quest, but, as I knew of no pros actively participating in the search, I accepted the role of leader, and did my best to assign sensible tasks to my volunteers.
My leadership of the Livy team led people in the house to seek my leadership in other things as well. For example, although the weather had been conventionally pleasant when I'd arrived at the house, later that day a rainstorm with heavy winds was underway, and people were looking to me for instructions on how best to deal with things like a large, recently-transplanted tree being uprooted and moved away by the wind, its roots still contained in the transplant sack. I stood at the window in the comfort of the interior of the fine house and did my best to rise to the occasion, giving orders which were immediately carried out by all around me. It seemed that I was in charge, for better or worse.
On a shelf in the living room I found a book which looked like a much-read volume from the 60's, a little worn but still intact. No dust jacket remaining. It was entitled Finding the Lost Books of Livy. I had never seen a book with a title like this, which referred to one of my favorite obsessions. More than merely referring to the search for Livy's lost texts, the title did so in a remarkably optimistic way: not just "looking for" the lost books, but "finding" them. I wondered how the book had been received by the author's colleagues, if he had been a Classicist. Whether they had laughed at him about it, to his face or behind his back.
I soon was quite absorbed in the book, which definitely had not been written for laypeople, with many long citations from Latin and Greek books, with no translations offered, the author obviously having assumed that his audience could read both Latin and Greek.
What with the lively flow of people in and out of the living room, my interest in the book had soon been noticed, and people talked to me and learned that I was especially interested in this book's topic, and soon both children and adults had volunteered to assist me in my search for Livy's lost books. I felt rather on the spot here, and I thought that I was too much of an amateur to lead an entire team on this Quixotic quest, but, as I knew of no pros actively participating in the search, I accepted the role of leader, and did my best to assign sensible tasks to my volunteers.
My leadership of the Livy team led people in the house to seek my leadership in other things as well. For example, although the weather had been conventionally pleasant when I'd arrived at the house, later that day a rainstorm with heavy winds was underway, and people were looking to me for instructions on how best to deal with things like a large, recently-transplanted tree being uprooted and moved away by the wind, its roots still contained in the transplant sack. I stood at the window in the comfort of the interior of the fine house and did my best to rise to the occasion, giving orders which were immediately carried out by all around me. It seemed that I was in charge, for better or worse.
Friday, January 24, 2014
A Complete Ancient Edition Of Livy Will Probably Not Be Found In The Western Sahara Anytime Soon
Night before last I dreamed that somewhere in Tunesia or Algeria, somewhere around there, a large collection of papyrii had been found, including 14 codices containing all 142 books of Livy, copied out in the 3rd century. (AD.) (That would be 10 books per volume except 12 in the last volume. For the past couple of centuries it seems to have been most common to publish 5 books per volume. Earlier, 10 books per volume wasn't unusual. Lately it seems to be growing more common to publish 2 or 3, or even 1 per volume. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe many of the early printed editions contained ALL of the known books in one volume: 30 up until the 1520's, and then 35. I don't think very many people have any justification in grumbling about any supposed good old days, but classicists might be among those few. The trend toward less and less ancient text per volume affect all the classics, not just Livy. 35 books of Livy is about as many words as the Christian Bible or the collected works of Shakespeare, and you can get those for free or very cheap. Why do those guys have all the fun? Grumble, grumble.)
And so when I woke up I began to think about discoveries of ancient papyrii, and to wonder why I had heard of -- well, not of few major discoveries made west of Egypt, but actually of none.
You see, after Alexander conquered Egypt in the 4th century BC, up until the 7th century AD, Greek was a major written language in the area, and for great periods of time it was the predominant written language. This did not change when the Romans conquered Egypt in the 1st century BC. In Egypt, and in Greece itself and Asia Minor and Judea and Galilee and Syria, Greek was the major written language. As you moved west of Egypt into present-day Libya, Tunesia, Algeria and Morocco, Latin became more common. This had been the territory of the Carthaginians or Phoenicians, and after the Romans wiped them out in the Third Punic War, ending in the mid-2nd century BC, use of their language in those western regions declined very sharply, and Latin prevailed until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD. So while Greek is by far the predominant language of the ancient papyrii discovered in Egypt, texts on papyrii recovered in Tunesia or Algeria would be much more likely to be written in Latin.
And my main man Livy wrote in Latin, not Greek. And Livy was so popular in the Roman Empire that even among the papyrii recovered from overwhelmingly Greek-speaking Roman-era Egypt, a few scraps have been passages from Livy or summaries of parts of his work. Imagine how many Latin payrii await excavation in the western Sahara.
Except, no, there aren't. I was dreaming in more ways than one: only a few regions within Egypt, in or near Faiyum, and including Oxyrhynchus, have the climate required to preserve papyrus buried in the ground for thousands of years. Outside of those regions, it's much more likely to rot away and become dirt, unless a freak accident of preservation occurs. Or so it says on the webpage of the Papyrology Collection of the University of Michigan, and I can't think of a good reason to doubt those guys about that, or even a mediocre reason. For just a little while I thought I had a reason: the Dead Sea Scrolls, found hundreds of miles east of Faiyum. But, oops: I had mistakenly assumed that the Dead Sea Scrolls were papyrus. Only a small fraction of them are. They're mostly parchment.
And so it appears that the best chances of finding significant chunks of the lost text of Livy on ancient papyrus remain in Egypt. And those chances don't look great even to a cock-eyed ridiculous optimist like me. but hey, papyrology continues to be a miraculously wonderful thing for people studying ancient Greek, and to a somewhat lesser extent for those studying Coptic, and only to a much, much lesser extent when it comes to ancient Latin. But hey, good for those other guys. I've got nothing against them. On the contrary, they are partly us: our fields overlap. My horrible, horrible disappointment should not rain on their sunny parade.
It was a nice dream for a day or so. 3rd century, that was a very nice detail, I don't know whether there actually are any manuscripts of the major Latin classics which are that old. Probably a half-dozen or so, and probably some of them on papyrii which were discovered in Egypt. There's a 4th-century copy of a passage from book 1 of Livy found at Oxyrhynchus; the text goes something like: regiam uenire pastoribus ad regem impetum facit et a domo Numitoris alia comparata manu adiuuat Remus ita regem obtruncat Numitor inter primum tumultum hostes inuasisse urbem atque adortos regiam dictitans cum pubem Albanam in arcem praesidio armisque obtinendam auocasset postquam iuuenes perpetrata caede pergere ad se gratulantes uidit extemplo aduocato concilio scelera in se fratris originem nepotum ut geniti That's the oldest Livy MS I know of -- but don't take my word for that, because although I'm pretty smart in some areas, one of them is not following the convoluted descriptions of manuscripts delivered by some classicists who also, maddeningly, do not include dates of the MSS on their sigliae, which would compensate greatly for said convolutions. Also, expert opinions about the dates of old manuscripts do change occasionally. Apart from papyrii, I think that the oldest known MSS of Livy are 5th-century. But one more MS might be as old or older as that 4th-century fragment from book 1: many websites repeat the information that around 40 words of the otherwise-missing book 11 are on a piece of papyrus found in Egypt, whose text was published in 1986. But they don't tell you who published the text, or where they published it (I'm 98% sure or so that years ago I held the periodical in question in my hands and gazed upon the transcription), nor how old the copy is estimated to be, nor none of that useful stuff. After extensive googling I telephoned a professional papyrologist and asked for help. I'll stick a PS on here as soon as I know more.
PS, February 1, 2014: Thanks to the very kind help of Monica Tsuneishi, the University of Michigan's Papyrology Collection Manager, I now know more. I was wrong in several respects about that fragment of book 11: it was found in 1986, in Naqlun, near Fayum, Egypt. The text was first published in 1988. It's 5th-century, and it's not papyrus, it's parchment. And it's 2 fragments, two different episodes, on the front and the back of one piece of parchment. And I know now why everybody kept saying it contained "about" 40 words: because the writing is broken up to the point that at several different points there could be fewer long words or more numerous long words. And now I'm more than 99% sure I saw it once before in the Classical Quarterly, New Series, vol 53, no 1 (May 2003), p 248, in the library of the University of Alaska, Anchorage. And it goes something like this: [------ .e(m) [----- ing]ens [ei era]nt ha[u]t pro[cul G]abiis [u]rbe. cu[m] [Ga]uios nouos exer[cit]us indictus [e]sset ibique centuriati milites essent, cum duob(us)milib(us) pe[ {.} ]ditum profect[u]s in agru(m) suom cons[ul?] and g[-------] ar[------] se[d] reaps[a nega]tam eo [[e]]dicto f[acturum] quoa[d inuissu suo in pr[ovi(n)-] cia maneat, et [si] pergat dicto non parar[e], \[s]e/ [i]n praese(n)tem habiturum imper[i]um. Fabius, [acc]eptus mandatis-----]
Get it? Got it? Good. Keep an eye out for the PPS. (Oh yes, there will be more.)
PPS, 16 December 2017: Above, I wondered whether there were any manuscripts of Classical Latin literature as old as the 3rd century AD. Since writing this post, I have learned that a fragment of papyrus dated to the 1st century BC, containing the only surviving poetry, 9 lines' worth, of the highly-regarded ancient Roman poet Gallus, was excavated in Egypt in 1978. And also that a copy of the Carmen de bello Actiaco, an otherwise-unknown poem which may or may not be considered "Classical," was unearthed at Herculaneum in 1752 and unrolled in 1805, and must have been made between 31 BC, when the battle of Actium, which it describes, took place, and AD 79, when Vesuvius erupted and buried Herculaneum. And also that the Oxyrhynchus papyrus of Vergil known as P Oxy 1098, originally dated to the 4th century, may actually be as old as the 1st or second century AD. That's what is now known to me, as far as manuscripts made the 3rd century AD or earlier, and containing Latin literature, are concerned. I am not at all certain that there is no more known to anyone. Especially when P Oxy 1098 is only 1 of 17 papyri containing work by Vergil. And, as I say over and over on this blog: ancient manuscripts continue to be discovered. I very much doubt that we've already found 'em all.
And so when I woke up I began to think about discoveries of ancient papyrii, and to wonder why I had heard of -- well, not of few major discoveries made west of Egypt, but actually of none.
You see, after Alexander conquered Egypt in the 4th century BC, up until the 7th century AD, Greek was a major written language in the area, and for great periods of time it was the predominant written language. This did not change when the Romans conquered Egypt in the 1st century BC. In Egypt, and in Greece itself and Asia Minor and Judea and Galilee and Syria, Greek was the major written language. As you moved west of Egypt into present-day Libya, Tunesia, Algeria and Morocco, Latin became more common. This had been the territory of the Carthaginians or Phoenicians, and after the Romans wiped them out in the Third Punic War, ending in the mid-2nd century BC, use of their language in those western regions declined very sharply, and Latin prevailed until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD. So while Greek is by far the predominant language of the ancient papyrii discovered in Egypt, texts on papyrii recovered in Tunesia or Algeria would be much more likely to be written in Latin.
And my main man Livy wrote in Latin, not Greek. And Livy was so popular in the Roman Empire that even among the papyrii recovered from overwhelmingly Greek-speaking Roman-era Egypt, a few scraps have been passages from Livy or summaries of parts of his work. Imagine how many Latin payrii await excavation in the western Sahara.
Except, no, there aren't. I was dreaming in more ways than one: only a few regions within Egypt, in or near Faiyum, and including Oxyrhynchus, have the climate required to preserve papyrus buried in the ground for thousands of years. Outside of those regions, it's much more likely to rot away and become dirt, unless a freak accident of preservation occurs. Or so it says on the webpage of the Papyrology Collection of the University of Michigan, and I can't think of a good reason to doubt those guys about that, or even a mediocre reason. For just a little while I thought I had a reason: the Dead Sea Scrolls, found hundreds of miles east of Faiyum. But, oops: I had mistakenly assumed that the Dead Sea Scrolls were papyrus. Only a small fraction of them are. They're mostly parchment.
And so it appears that the best chances of finding significant chunks of the lost text of Livy on ancient papyrus remain in Egypt. And those chances don't look great even to a cock-eyed ridiculous optimist like me. but hey, papyrology continues to be a miraculously wonderful thing for people studying ancient Greek, and to a somewhat lesser extent for those studying Coptic, and only to a much, much lesser extent when it comes to ancient Latin. But hey, good for those other guys. I've got nothing against them. On the contrary, they are partly us: our fields overlap. My horrible, horrible disappointment should not rain on their sunny parade.
It was a nice dream for a day or so. 3rd century, that was a very nice detail, I don't know whether there actually are any manuscripts of the major Latin classics which are that old. Probably a half-dozen or so, and probably some of them on papyrii which were discovered in Egypt. There's a 4th-century copy of a passage from book 1 of Livy found at Oxyrhynchus; the text goes something like: regiam uenire pastoribus ad regem impetum facit et a domo Numitoris alia comparata manu adiuuat Remus ita regem obtruncat Numitor inter primum tumultum hostes inuasisse urbem atque adortos regiam dictitans cum pubem Albanam in arcem praesidio armisque obtinendam auocasset postquam iuuenes perpetrata caede pergere ad se gratulantes uidit extemplo aduocato concilio scelera in se fratris originem nepotum ut geniti That's the oldest Livy MS I know of -- but don't take my word for that, because although I'm pretty smart in some areas, one of them is not following the convoluted descriptions of manuscripts delivered by some classicists who also, maddeningly, do not include dates of the MSS on their sigliae, which would compensate greatly for said convolutions. Also, expert opinions about the dates of old manuscripts do change occasionally. Apart from papyrii, I think that the oldest known MSS of Livy are 5th-century. But one more MS might be as old or older as that 4th-century fragment from book 1: many websites repeat the information that around 40 words of the otherwise-missing book 11 are on a piece of papyrus found in Egypt, whose text was published in 1986. But they don't tell you who published the text, or where they published it (I'm 98% sure or so that years ago I held the periodical in question in my hands and gazed upon the transcription), nor how old the copy is estimated to be, nor none of that useful stuff. After extensive googling I telephoned a professional papyrologist and asked for help. I'll stick a PS on here as soon as I know more.
PS, February 1, 2014: Thanks to the very kind help of Monica Tsuneishi, the University of Michigan's Papyrology Collection Manager, I now know more. I was wrong in several respects about that fragment of book 11: it was found in 1986, in Naqlun, near Fayum, Egypt. The text was first published in 1988. It's 5th-century, and it's not papyrus, it's parchment. And it's 2 fragments, two different episodes, on the front and the back of one piece of parchment. And I know now why everybody kept saying it contained "about" 40 words: because the writing is broken up to the point that at several different points there could be fewer long words or more numerous long words. And now I'm more than 99% sure I saw it once before in the Classical Quarterly, New Series, vol 53, no 1 (May 2003), p 248, in the library of the University of Alaska, Anchorage. And it goes something like this: [------ .e(m) [----- ing]ens [ei era]nt ha[u]t pro[cul G]abiis [u]rbe. cu[m] [Ga]uios nouos exer[cit]us indictus [e]sset ibique centuriati milites essent, cum duob(us)milib(us) pe[ {.} ]ditum profect[u]s in agru(m) suom cons[ul?] and g[-------] ar[------] se[d] reaps[a nega]tam eo [[e]]dicto f[acturum] quoa[d inuissu suo in pr[ovi(n)-] cia maneat, et [si] pergat dicto non parar[e], \[s]e/ [i]n praese(n)tem habiturum imper[i]um. Fabius, [acc]eptus mandatis-----]
Get it? Got it? Good. Keep an eye out for the PPS. (Oh yes, there will be more.)
PPS, 16 December 2017: Above, I wondered whether there were any manuscripts of Classical Latin literature as old as the 3rd century AD. Since writing this post, I have learned that a fragment of papyrus dated to the 1st century BC, containing the only surviving poetry, 9 lines' worth, of the highly-regarded ancient Roman poet Gallus, was excavated in Egypt in 1978. And also that a copy of the Carmen de bello Actiaco, an otherwise-unknown poem which may or may not be considered "Classical," was unearthed at Herculaneum in 1752 and unrolled in 1805, and must have been made between 31 BC, when the battle of Actium, which it describes, took place, and AD 79, when Vesuvius erupted and buried Herculaneum. And also that the Oxyrhynchus papyrus of Vergil known as P Oxy 1098, originally dated to the 4th century, may actually be as old as the 1st or second century AD. That's what is now known to me, as far as manuscripts made the 3rd century AD or earlier, and containing Latin literature, are concerned. I am not at all certain that there is no more known to anyone. Especially when P Oxy 1098 is only 1 of 17 papyri containing work by Vergil. And, as I say over and over on this blog: ancient manuscripts continue to be discovered. I very much doubt that we've already found 'em all.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
An Example Of How I Won't Be Looking For The Lost Books Of Livy
From Philological Inquiries, an alarming random collection of stuff written by James Harris, who is perhaps not to be held solely to blame for it, as he lived from 1709 to 1780, and it was published in 1781. Pp 553-556:
Concerning the Manuscripts of Livy, in the Escurial Library.
It having been often asserted, that an intire and complete Copy of Livy was extant in the Escurial Library, I requested my Son, in the year 1771 (he being at that time Minister Penipotentiary to the Court of Madrid) to inquire for me, what Manuscripts of that Author were there to be found. He procured me the following accurate Detail from a learned Ecclesiastic, Don Juan de Pellegeros, Canon of Lerma, employed by Monsr. De Santander, his Catholic Majestiy's Librarian, to inspect for this purpose the Manuscripts of that valuable Library. The Detail was in Spanish, of which the following is a Translation.
Among the MSS. of the Escurial Library are the following Works of T. Livy.
1st. Three large Volumes, which contain many Decads, the 1st, 3d, and 4th (one Decad in each Volume) curiously written on Parchment, or fine Vellum, by Pedro de Middleburgh, or of Zeeland (as he stiles himself).
The Books are truly magnificent, and in the Title and Initials curiously illuminated. They bear the Arms of the House of Borgia, with a Cardinal's Cap, whence it appears that they belonged either to Pope Callixtus the third, or to Alexander the sixth, when Cardinals.
2d. Two other Volumes, written by the same Hand, one of the first Decad, the other of the third; of the same size, and beauty, as the former. Both have the fame Arms, and in the last is a Note, which recites : This Book belongs to D. Juan de Fonseca, Biship of Burgos.
3d. Another Volume of the same size, and something more antient, than the former (being of the beginning of the fifteenth Century) containing the third Decad entire. This is also well written on Parchment, tho' not so valuable as the former.
4th. Another of the first Decad, finely written on Vellum. At the end is written as follows — Ex centum voluminibus, quce ego indies vita mea magnis laboribus hactenus jcripfffe rnemini, has duos Titi Livii libros Anno Dni. 1441. Ego Joanes Andreas de
Colsnia feliciter, gratia Dei, absolvi — and at the end of each book — Emendavi Nuomaehus Fabianus.
In the last leaf of this Book is a Fragment either of Livy himself or of some Pen, capable of imitating him. It fills the whole leaf, and the Writer fays, it was in the Copy, from which he transcribed. It appears to be a Fragment of the latter times of the fecond Punic.War.
5th. Another large Volume in Parchment, well written, of the same Century, viz. the fifteenth containing three Decads — 1. De Urbis initis. 2. De Bella Punico. 3. De Bella Macedonia). In this last Decad is wanting a part of the Book., This Volume is
much esteemed, being full of Notes and various Readings in the hand of Hieronimo Zunita, its former possessor.
6th. Another very valuable Volume, containing the first Decad, equal to the former in the elegance of its Writing and Ornaments. This also belonged to Hieronimo Zunita; the age the same.
7th. Lastly, there is another of the first Decad also, written on Paper, at the beginning of the fifteenth Century. This contains nothing remarkable.
In all, there are ten Volumes, and all nearly of the same age.
Here ends the Account of the Escurial Manu- scripts, given us by this learned Spaniard, in which Manuscripts we see there appears no part of LiVY, but what was printed in the early Editions.
The other Parts of this Author, which Parts none of the Manuscripts here recited give us, were discovered and printed afterwards.
As to the Fragment mentioned in the fourth article, (all of which Fragment is there transcribed) it has, tho genuine, no peculiar rarity, as it is to be found in all the latter printed Editions. See particularly in Crevier's Edition of Livy, Paris, 1 7 36, Tome 2d, pages 716, 717, 718, beginning with the words Raro simulhominibus, and ending with the words increpatis
risum esse, which is the whole Extent of the Fragment here exhibited.
From this Detail it is evident, that no intire Copy of Livy is extant in the Escurial Library.
My first impulse is to laugh at these 18th century rumors of entire editions of Livy laying around cataloged in some great library or other. On second thought I must acknowledge that I have the benefit of hundreds of years' worth of hindsight, and as ridiculous as those rumors seem to us today, it was good of the Harrises, father and son, to go to the trouble of putting one of them to rest, and that although we chuckle over it today, it did us no harm when Lord Charlemont, visiting Constantinople in 1749, inquired as to whether the Seraglio library might by any chance have a complete copy of Livy lying around somewhere. See his Travels in Greece and Turkey, 1749,
p 179, n 1.
There seem to have been all sorts of wild imaginings about the contents of the Seraglio library in the 18th century. They remind me of some of the silly speculation today about the contents of the Vatican library.
No, I don't believe that all 142 books of Livy are sitting around, cataloged, in some great library or other, because someone would've noticed such a thing by now and informed the rest of us. It's somewhat more likely that some little pieces of the lost books may be hiding around somewhere, bound together in a volume with other things in the attic or study of some non-scholar, someone who has no idea what it is or how valuable it is, but I'm about as likely to stumble across such a thing as I am to win the Powerball jackpot. It's not impossible that some such fragments may be mis-cataloged in a library somewhere, but libraries big and small have been combed over for such finds and, in Livy's case, his missing texts have been hunted with extraordinary vigor for centuries now. It may well be that the last find in a great library was that palimpsest from book 91 found in the Vatican library just a little before Harris sent his son to inquire at the Escorial. The finds of Livy's texts since then have been dug up by archaeologists, little scraps of papyrus with a few words here, a few there, and I think that future finds will most likely resemble those more than the palimpsests, or our one copy of books 41-45 -- written in the 5th century, found on a shelf in a monastery in the 16th century. More finds like the latter would be nice, of course. In the same way that it would be nice if I won the MacArthur genius grant and the Nobel prize for literature and got engaged to Reese Witherspoon all within the next couple of years. Fingers crossed on all of the above, of course, but you should keep in mind not only that I expect future finds of Livy to be mostly or all scraps of a few words at a time, buried, covered with thousands or years' worth of dirt and/or halfway-decomposed, requiring the most careful and expert care in order to survive, but that many people who know about such things would consider me a nut for expecting even that much.
Concerning the Manuscripts of Livy, in the Escurial Library.
It having been often asserted, that an intire and complete Copy of Livy was extant in the Escurial Library, I requested my Son, in the year 1771 (he being at that time Minister Penipotentiary to the Court of Madrid) to inquire for me, what Manuscripts of that Author were there to be found. He procured me the following accurate Detail from a learned Ecclesiastic, Don Juan de Pellegeros, Canon of Lerma, employed by Monsr. De Santander, his Catholic Majestiy's Librarian, to inspect for this purpose the Manuscripts of that valuable Library. The Detail was in Spanish, of which the following is a Translation.
Among the MSS. of the Escurial Library are the following Works of T. Livy.
1st. Three large Volumes, which contain many Decads, the 1st, 3d, and 4th (one Decad in each Volume) curiously written on Parchment, or fine Vellum, by Pedro de Middleburgh, or of Zeeland (as he stiles himself).
The Books are truly magnificent, and in the Title and Initials curiously illuminated. They bear the Arms of the House of Borgia, with a Cardinal's Cap, whence it appears that they belonged either to Pope Callixtus the third, or to Alexander the sixth, when Cardinals.
2d. Two other Volumes, written by the same Hand, one of the first Decad, the other of the third; of the same size, and beauty, as the former. Both have the fame Arms, and in the last is a Note, which recites : This Book belongs to D. Juan de Fonseca, Biship of Burgos.
3d. Another Volume of the same size, and something more antient, than the former (being of the beginning of the fifteenth Century) containing the third Decad entire. This is also well written on Parchment, tho' not so valuable as the former.
4th. Another of the first Decad, finely written on Vellum. At the end is written as follows — Ex centum voluminibus, quce ego indies vita mea magnis laboribus hactenus jcripfffe rnemini, has duos Titi Livii libros Anno Dni. 1441. Ego Joanes Andreas de
Colsnia feliciter, gratia Dei, absolvi — and at the end of each book — Emendavi Nuomaehus Fabianus.
In the last leaf of this Book is a Fragment either of Livy himself or of some Pen, capable of imitating him. It fills the whole leaf, and the Writer fays, it was in the Copy, from which he transcribed. It appears to be a Fragment of the latter times of the fecond Punic.War.
5th. Another large Volume in Parchment, well written, of the same Century, viz. the fifteenth containing three Decads — 1. De Urbis initis. 2. De Bella Punico. 3. De Bella Macedonia). In this last Decad is wanting a part of the Book., This Volume is
much esteemed, being full of Notes and various Readings in the hand of Hieronimo Zunita, its former possessor.
6th. Another very valuable Volume, containing the first Decad, equal to the former in the elegance of its Writing and Ornaments. This also belonged to Hieronimo Zunita; the age the same.
7th. Lastly, there is another of the first Decad also, written on Paper, at the beginning of the fifteenth Century. This contains nothing remarkable.
In all, there are ten Volumes, and all nearly of the same age.
Here ends the Account of the Escurial Manu- scripts, given us by this learned Spaniard, in which Manuscripts we see there appears no part of LiVY, but what was printed in the early Editions.
The other Parts of this Author, which Parts none of the Manuscripts here recited give us, were discovered and printed afterwards.
As to the Fragment mentioned in the fourth article, (all of which Fragment is there transcribed) it has, tho genuine, no peculiar rarity, as it is to be found in all the latter printed Editions. See particularly in Crevier's Edition of Livy, Paris, 1 7 36, Tome 2d, pages 716, 717, 718, beginning with the words Raro simulhominibus, and ending with the words increpatis
risum esse, which is the whole Extent of the Fragment here exhibited.
From this Detail it is evident, that no intire Copy of Livy is extant in the Escurial Library.
My first impulse is to laugh at these 18th century rumors of entire editions of Livy laying around cataloged in some great library or other. On second thought I must acknowledge that I have the benefit of hundreds of years' worth of hindsight, and as ridiculous as those rumors seem to us today, it was good of the Harrises, father and son, to go to the trouble of putting one of them to rest, and that although we chuckle over it today, it did us no harm when Lord Charlemont, visiting Constantinople in 1749, inquired as to whether the Seraglio library might by any chance have a complete copy of Livy lying around somewhere. See his Travels in Greece and Turkey, 1749,
p 179, n 1.There seem to have been all sorts of wild imaginings about the contents of the Seraglio library in the 18th century. They remind me of some of the silly speculation today about the contents of the Vatican library.
No, I don't believe that all 142 books of Livy are sitting around, cataloged, in some great library or other, because someone would've noticed such a thing by now and informed the rest of us. It's somewhat more likely that some little pieces of the lost books may be hiding around somewhere, bound together in a volume with other things in the attic or study of some non-scholar, someone who has no idea what it is or how valuable it is, but I'm about as likely to stumble across such a thing as I am to win the Powerball jackpot. It's not impossible that some such fragments may be mis-cataloged in a library somewhere, but libraries big and small have been combed over for such finds and, in Livy's case, his missing texts have been hunted with extraordinary vigor for centuries now. It may well be that the last find in a great library was that palimpsest from book 91 found in the Vatican library just a little before Harris sent his son to inquire at the Escorial. The finds of Livy's texts since then have been dug up by archaeologists, little scraps of papyrus with a few words here, a few there, and I think that future finds will most likely resemble those more than the palimpsests, or our one copy of books 41-45 -- written in the 5th century, found on a shelf in a monastery in the 16th century. More finds like the latter would be nice, of course. In the same way that it would be nice if I won the MacArthur genius grant and the Nobel prize for literature and got engaged to Reese Witherspoon all within the next couple of years. Fingers crossed on all of the above, of course, but you should keep in mind not only that I expect future finds of Livy to be mostly or all scraps of a few words at a time, buried, covered with thousands or years' worth of dirt and/or halfway-decomposed, requiring the most careful and expert care in order to survive, but that many people who know about such things would consider me a nut for expecting even that much.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Manuscripts Of Livy In Romania And Moldova?
I don't know whether Romania and Moldova are good places to look for manuscripts of Livy. (At some point I really need to talk to some pros about how to do this Quixotic thing, searching for the lost books of Livy.) I don't know whether the area is a particularly good place to look for old manuscripts of any kind: much of its history, sadly, is a history of domination and occupation by foreign powers, and it's only since the 19th century that things such as the systematic collection of artifacts such as manuscripts has been allowed to thrive in public institutions belonging to Romania and Moldova themselves.
So why look there? (It's a twofold search, actually: looking for manuscripts which are currently in Romania and Moldova, and for evidence of manuscripts written there which now are somewhere else.) Because the area is unique in having a language based on Latin, but very few historical ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Dacia, the area of present-day Romania and Moldova, was abandoned by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, and when it was Christianized in the 9th century it became a part of the Orthodox Church. If manuscripts of Livy were made by Romans in Dacia, and/or later by Dacians who had retained the Latin language, and if the lost books were victims of a concerted campaign by Catholics to destroy them beginning in the 6th century, any manuscripts in Dacia-Romania/Moldova would've escaped the reach of that campaign.
It's an absurdly thin thread of a hope, but absurdly thin threads are all I have so far. Of course, if manuscripts of the lost books had already been found in Romania or Moldova, or if Romanian or Moldovan manuscripts had been found elsewhere, the whole world would have heard about it by now. What I'm trying to do now is find out whether there are any manuscripts of the known books which are believed to have been written there. Those could possibly turn out to be clues to the whereabouts of the lost texts.
And, of course, that's true of manuscripts of Livy written anywhere. And, of course, it's true of manuscripts of other ancient writers who read Livy, and of biographical information about those other writers. I badly need to find a list of Livy manuscripts which is somewhere close to comprehensive. A recent and very comprehensive list would be the best, of course, but even a list made in the 19th century which was only halfway-comprehensive back then would be a tremendous help. Also by now I probably should have read every single commentary on Livy
which has ever been published, but, for whatever reason, every single one of those commentaries I've seen is, quite frankly, ridiculously expensive.
It would also be a tremendous help if my reading skills in Romanian and Moldavian were a little better. (For things like reading Romanian and Moldovan library catalogs.) These are Latin-based languages, and so I have a leg up with my knowledge of Latin and French and Spanish and Italian, but because they were cut off from the other languages over 1800 years ago, more than a few differences have crept in, and that means that it's harder for me to read Romanian than, for example, Portugese or Provencal. I am given to understand that the influence of Slavic language in the formation of Romanian and Moldovan has been especially strong, and that in the modification of the original Latin the indiginous Dacian language, Hungarian, Greek and other languages have all played a part. Oh well. High time I started to get serious about learning Hungarian anyway.
So why look there? (It's a twofold search, actually: looking for manuscripts which are currently in Romania and Moldova, and for evidence of manuscripts written there which now are somewhere else.) Because the area is unique in having a language based on Latin, but very few historical ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Dacia, the area of present-day Romania and Moldova, was abandoned by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, and when it was Christianized in the 9th century it became a part of the Orthodox Church. If manuscripts of Livy were made by Romans in Dacia, and/or later by Dacians who had retained the Latin language, and if the lost books were victims of a concerted campaign by Catholics to destroy them beginning in the 6th century, any manuscripts in Dacia-Romania/Moldova would've escaped the reach of that campaign.
It's an absurdly thin thread of a hope, but absurdly thin threads are all I have so far. Of course, if manuscripts of the lost books had already been found in Romania or Moldova, or if Romanian or Moldovan manuscripts had been found elsewhere, the whole world would have heard about it by now. What I'm trying to do now is find out whether there are any manuscripts of the known books which are believed to have been written there. Those could possibly turn out to be clues to the whereabouts of the lost texts.
And, of course, that's true of manuscripts of Livy written anywhere. And, of course, it's true of manuscripts of other ancient writers who read Livy, and of biographical information about those other writers. I badly need to find a list of Livy manuscripts which is somewhere close to comprehensive. A recent and very comprehensive list would be the best, of course, but even a list made in the 19th century which was only halfway-comprehensive back then would be a tremendous help. Also by now I probably should have read every single commentary on Livy
which has ever been published, but, for whatever reason, every single one of those commentaries I've seen is, quite frankly, ridiculously expensive.It would also be a tremendous help if my reading skills in Romanian and Moldavian were a little better. (For things like reading Romanian and Moldovan library catalogs.) These are Latin-based languages, and so I have a leg up with my knowledge of Latin and French and Spanish and Italian, but because they were cut off from the other languages over 1800 years ago, more than a few differences have crept in, and that means that it's harder for me to read Romanian than, for example, Portugese or Provencal. I am given to understand that the influence of Slavic language in the formation of Romanian and Moldovan has been especially strong, and that in the modification of the original Latin the indiginous Dacian language, Hungarian, Greek and other languages have all played a part. Oh well. High time I started to get serious about learning Hungarian anyway.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
My Search For The Lost Books Of Livy
[Edited 25. February 2015]
Some scholars of the Classics reading the title of this post, assuming that any such scholar ever will, might well laugh and wonder whether I'm joking or simpleminded. I hope I'm neither, but I myself smiled as I chose that title, and I know that the Classical scholars who would hear of such a search with anything other than derision might be few or non-existent. That's okay. I'm quite used to being sneered at and made fun of by Biblical scholars because they haven't convinced me yet that Jesus existed, and so being made fun of because I'm not convinced that those 107 lost books of Livy don't still exist somewhere wouldn't be an entirely new experience for me. In fact, in a way I can understand such derision, because how are academics supposed to be able to tell me apart at first glance from a fan of popular contemporary mythicists (as those who are unconvinced that Jesus existed are called) like Carrier, Price, Doherty and/or of the "History Channel"? I feel that I'm pretty unique among the non-mainstream, that I resemble an academic in many ways and that my lack of an academic career is due to my autism and not because I can't keep up with what the pros are talking about. It seems that way to me, but have I done anything so far to prove to the pros that I'm someone to be taken seriously in the field of ancient history? I have not. On the contrary, the autism, the lack of credentials, the complete lack of peer-reviewed papers, the eccentric views on Jesus and Livy's lost books are all red flags. I know this, and it's okay.
I think I respect the academic mainstream more than do most of the most popular contemporary mythicists. I don't know if there's a term corresponding to "mythicist" to describe someone looking for Livy's lost books. In fact, I don't know of anyone else at all besides me who's currently looking. And the less-than-admiring opinion of such an undertaking on the part of the academic mainstream does give me pause. I would just say to the deriders and head-shakers: a searcher doesn't have to find what he's looking for in order for his search to have been worthwhile. Successful or not, if he searches well, he will find all sorts of things he wasn't looking for.
But I must make clear, and this isn't false modesty, it's accurate, that my search for the lost books so far has been feeble and entirely amateurish. I hope that may change eventually.
The trail of the lost books goes cold in the late 6th century. There is fragmentary evidence of them up until that time:
A condensed version of the entire work, all 142 books, known as the periochae. A volume edited by Otto Jahn in the 19th century contains the periochae, 106 pages in this edition, probably about 1% as many words as the original, and then, 29 pages long, the so-called prodigies of Julius Obsequens: mentions of comets, earthquakes, famines, swarms of bees and other unusual things occuring in Livy's work. Obsequens' work itself does not survive whole: we have only his descriptions of the prodigies in Livy's books 56 through 132. Both the author of the periochae and Obsequens are thought to have worked in the 4th century.
Then there is Florus, whose history of Rome, about as long as the periochae, focusing mainly on military matters, is drawn mostly from Livy, and rarely studied today for any other reason than to learn about Livy.
11 pages of fragments from the lost books were collected and included in an out-of-print edition of books 41-45, edited by William Weissenborn and Moritz Mueller, published by Teubner.
Those 5 books, 41-45, are now known to us from a single manuscript, which was written in the 5th century, circulated for a while and then was discovered collecting dust on a shelf in a monastery in Switzerland in the 16th century. It seems that this manuscript was originally only half of a manuscript containing books 41-50. 46-50 are currently at large.
In a very famous letter from the year 401, on p 239 of the MGH edition of his works, ISBN 3-921575-19-2, the Roman patrician Quintus Aurelius Symmachus informs his friend Valerian that his entire household is engaged in an edition of Livy's works.
These are some of the clues we have to the possible whereabouts of those missing 107 books. Symmachus owned quite a number of villas in Italy. Recently an ancient villa thought possibly to be the one where that edition of Livy was made has been excavated along with its surroundings, leading to some speculation about the possibility of coming across interesting texts.
An enormous amount of writing on ancient papyrus, as well as some on parchment, has been found in Egypt since the 19th century, and some continues to be found, mostly in Egypt but some to the east. Finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic Gospels make a lot of headlines, but they're a tiny fraction of all of the ancient texts found. Most of the texts are in Greek, the dominant language of the eastern Roman Empire, but some are Latin. A couple of the finds were a few dozen words each of Livy, 1 from book 1 (known) and 1 from book 11 (lost!) and a third was a condensed version of books 37-40 (known) and 48-55 (lost!).
So you see, we actually are finding parts of the lost books. There's that codex containing books 41-45 recovered in the 16th century. The most spectacular find since then is a palimpsest of about 1000 words from book 91, contained among those fragments in Weissenborn and Mueller's volume mentioned above. The most spectacular find since then was that parchment containing several dozen words of book 11. That was found in the 1980's. The deriders would say that I, along with anyone else like me, in case there is anyone else like me on this subject, am ignoring a pattern of drastically diminishing returns. I would respond that they're displaying a can't-do attitude.
What can we do? We can take all of the things I have listed above and use them as clues as to where to look for more. We can think about the time when the trail went cold, the late 6th century. The darkest part of the Dark Ages in Western Europe. The reign of Pope Gregory the Great -- not so great from the point of view of Classical scholars. Did he order the destruction of the works of Livy? If so, what we possess is what survived a deliberate destruction, and we need to think about where the books currently lost may have been hidden to escape Gregory's troops. If Gregory had nothing to do with the loss, if the books disappeared from view in the general random chaos of the wars of the time, where would they have been most well-protected from all that chaos? (Just as in the hypothetical case of an anti-Livy campaign by Gregory, so too in the general-chaos hypothesis, the lost books could have been hidden by design, or merely happened to be in the right place, away from danger.) The authors who included fragments of Livy in their works, the last people we know to have possessed the lost books -- what can we learn about their lives, about their surroundings, about what could have happened to their possessions including the books they owned? What can that palimpsest of those 1000 words from book 91 tell us about where to look for similar palimpsests? Weissenborn and Mueller included another palimpsest text, which they say comes from book 136. Most scholars today say it's not from Livy at all but a passage written by Sallust. Who's right? How many libraries and monasteries and attics and studies remain in a state sufficiently disorganized to warrant their being combed through for what we're looking for?
So. If you see me with a look on my face like I'm a million miles away, chances are good that this is the sort of thing I'm turning over in my mind. This is actually much more interesting to me than whether or not Jesus existed.
Some scholars of the Classics reading the title of this post, assuming that any such scholar ever will, might well laugh and wonder whether I'm joking or simpleminded. I hope I'm neither, but I myself smiled as I chose that title, and I know that the Classical scholars who would hear of such a search with anything other than derision might be few or non-existent. That's okay. I'm quite used to being sneered at and made fun of by Biblical scholars because they haven't convinced me yet that Jesus existed, and so being made fun of because I'm not convinced that those 107 lost books of Livy don't still exist somewhere wouldn't be an entirely new experience for me. In fact, in a way I can understand such derision, because how are academics supposed to be able to tell me apart at first glance from a fan of popular contemporary mythicists (as those who are unconvinced that Jesus existed are called) like Carrier, Price, Doherty and/or of the "History Channel"? I feel that I'm pretty unique among the non-mainstream, that I resemble an academic in many ways and that my lack of an academic career is due to my autism and not because I can't keep up with what the pros are talking about. It seems that way to me, but have I done anything so far to prove to the pros that I'm someone to be taken seriously in the field of ancient history? I have not. On the contrary, the autism, the lack of credentials, the complete lack of peer-reviewed papers, the eccentric views on Jesus and Livy's lost books are all red flags. I know this, and it's okay.
I think I respect the academic mainstream more than do most of the most popular contemporary mythicists. I don't know if there's a term corresponding to "mythicist" to describe someone looking for Livy's lost books. In fact, I don't know of anyone else at all besides me who's currently looking. And the less-than-admiring opinion of such an undertaking on the part of the academic mainstream does give me pause. I would just say to the deriders and head-shakers: a searcher doesn't have to find what he's looking for in order for his search to have been worthwhile. Successful or not, if he searches well, he will find all sorts of things he wasn't looking for.
But I must make clear, and this isn't false modesty, it's accurate, that my search for the lost books so far has been feeble and entirely amateurish. I hope that may change eventually.
The trail of the lost books goes cold in the late 6th century. There is fragmentary evidence of them up until that time:
A condensed version of the entire work, all 142 books, known as the periochae. A volume edited by Otto Jahn in the 19th century contains the periochae, 106 pages in this edition, probably about 1% as many words as the original, and then, 29 pages long, the so-called prodigies of Julius Obsequens: mentions of comets, earthquakes, famines, swarms of bees and other unusual things occuring in Livy's work. Obsequens' work itself does not survive whole: we have only his descriptions of the prodigies in Livy's books 56 through 132. Both the author of the periochae and Obsequens are thought to have worked in the 4th century.
Then there is Florus, whose history of Rome, about as long as the periochae, focusing mainly on military matters, is drawn mostly from Livy, and rarely studied today for any other reason than to learn about Livy.
11 pages of fragments from the lost books were collected and included in an out-of-print edition of books 41-45, edited by William Weissenborn and Moritz Mueller, published by Teubner.
Those 5 books, 41-45, are now known to us from a single manuscript, which was written in the 5th century, circulated for a while and then was discovered collecting dust on a shelf in a monastery in Switzerland in the 16th century. It seems that this manuscript was originally only half of a manuscript containing books 41-50. 46-50 are currently at large.
In a very famous letter from the year 401, on p 239 of the MGH edition of his works, ISBN 3-921575-19-2, the Roman patrician Quintus Aurelius Symmachus informs his friend Valerian that his entire household is engaged in an edition of Livy's works.
These are some of the clues we have to the possible whereabouts of those missing 107 books. Symmachus owned quite a number of villas in Italy. Recently an ancient villa thought possibly to be the one where that edition of Livy was made has been excavated along with its surroundings, leading to some speculation about the possibility of coming across interesting texts.
An enormous amount of writing on ancient papyrus, as well as some on parchment, has been found in Egypt since the 19th century, and some continues to be found, mostly in Egypt but some to the east. Finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic Gospels make a lot of headlines, but they're a tiny fraction of all of the ancient texts found. Most of the texts are in Greek, the dominant language of the eastern Roman Empire, but some are Latin. A couple of the finds were a few dozen words each of Livy, 1 from book 1 (known) and 1 from book 11 (lost!) and a third was a condensed version of books 37-40 (known) and 48-55 (lost!).
So you see, we actually are finding parts of the lost books. There's that codex containing books 41-45 recovered in the 16th century. The most spectacular find since then is a palimpsest of about 1000 words from book 91, contained among those fragments in Weissenborn and Mueller's volume mentioned above. The most spectacular find since then was that parchment containing several dozen words of book 11. That was found in the 1980's. The deriders would say that I, along with anyone else like me, in case there is anyone else like me on this subject, am ignoring a pattern of drastically diminishing returns. I would respond that they're displaying a can't-do attitude.
What can we do? We can take all of the things I have listed above and use them as clues as to where to look for more. We can think about the time when the trail went cold, the late 6th century. The darkest part of the Dark Ages in Western Europe. The reign of Pope Gregory the Great -- not so great from the point of view of Classical scholars. Did he order the destruction of the works of Livy? If so, what we possess is what survived a deliberate destruction, and we need to think about where the books currently lost may have been hidden to escape Gregory's troops. If Gregory had nothing to do with the loss, if the books disappeared from view in the general random chaos of the wars of the time, where would they have been most well-protected from all that chaos? (Just as in the hypothetical case of an anti-Livy campaign by Gregory, so too in the general-chaos hypothesis, the lost books could have been hidden by design, or merely happened to be in the right place, away from danger.) The authors who included fragments of Livy in their works, the last people we know to have possessed the lost books -- what can we learn about their lives, about their surroundings, about what could have happened to their possessions including the books they owned? What can that palimpsest of those 1000 words from book 91 tell us about where to look for similar palimpsests? Weissenborn and Mueller included another palimpsest text, which they say comes from book 136. Most scholars today say it's not from Livy at all but a passage written by Sallust. Who's right? How many libraries and monasteries and attics and studies remain in a state sufficiently disorganized to warrant their being combed through for what we're looking for?
So. If you see me with a look on my face like I'm a million miles away, chances are good that this is the sort of thing I'm turning over in my mind. This is actually much more interesting to me than whether or not Jesus existed.
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