Searching for Lost Ancient Latin Texts

A great many Classical ancient Latin texts went missing in the middle of the Dark Ages; that is: until the late sixth or early seventh centuries, we have evidence that people still read them, and then we have no more evidence that they were familiar to anyone later than that, and they are still missing. So we need to scour the Dark Ages to learn more about how and when and where the texts disappeared from our present-day view. We must learn all we can about these Dark Age people who mention, or, in more fortunate cases, quote the now-missing texts. If the lost ancient texts are mentioned or quoted in letters, as is very often the case, we must learn all we can about the people to whom the letters were addressed.

Encyclopaediac works (that's our word for them today) written in the ancient world and Dark Ages are tresure-troves of these mentions and quotes: works by Flavius Maximus, Gellius, Octavian, Servius, Isidore. We must know these encyclopaediac works thoroughly for clues about what happened to those texts, when and where and how they went missing, to gain clues about where and how we might find then again.

It's assumed that many Classical Latin texts were lost in Dark Age wars, when Germanic tribes and Huns invaded the late Western Roman Empire and carved it up into empires of their own, Visigoth and Ostrogoth and Frankish and Lombard realms. We must know all we can about those wars, in order to imagine as exactly as possible what happened to those lost texts -- were they hidden from the invaders and their fire? Where would they be hidden? Are some of them still in those hiding places, having been lost track of by those who hid them?

We must shake off a prejudice toward thinking of these Germanic conquerors as illiterate; literacy rates may have decreased compared to those of the Roman Empire, but much scholarship was supported by Dark Age Goths and other tribes. They did not completely despise scholarship, far from it. Benedict, Cassidorius, Isidore, justly celebrated as preservers as ancient Latin literature, as bright lights in the darkness, they all thrived under the rule of these "barbarian" tribes.

We do not know for certain how much ancient literature was lost by the violence of Dark Age wars. We do know that many ancient manuscripts were re-used in the Dark and Middle Ages, the Classical works scraped off and Christian works written where they had been. We know this because we have found the Classical works on those ancient pieces of papyrus, we have found ways in which we can still read then even though they were scraped away so long ago. We can read the indentations left by the ancient pens, they're called palimpsests. We have found many of these ancient Latin palimpsests, we must find the rest!

This is not the only way in which ancient parchment was re-used; it was also made into a material called cartonnage, which resembles cardboard in appearance and hardness, and was used to make book covers and to wrap mummies. By methods which are far over my head, modern wizards have recovered many of the ancient texts preserved in these pieces of cartonnage. We must find the rest.

Vast amounts of of previously-lost ancient Greek texts are being re-discovered in ancient pieces of papyrus, and occasionally of parchment or other materials, in the Mideast, mostly in Egypt. Now and then among these bits and pieces, amongst vast amounts of ancient Greek, an ancient object written in some other language is found. We Latinists get lucky now and then this way.

Medieval Western European archives are full of records written in Latin; Medievalists are hurrying to preserve and record as much of it as they can, and are worried that much of the material, written on parchment, will rot away before they can get to it. They want more students to become Medievalists! Among these Latin records of the business of Medieval communities, here and there, now and then, all sort of others written artifacts turn up.

Ancient inscriptions keep being found. Most of them are not what we would call literature; rather, they are things like brief memorials on tombstones, and brief boasts of long-forgotten statesmen. But now and then they contain more.

And there are public libraries and private collections which contain manuscripts which have been very, very carefully searched through in some cases, and less thoroughly in others.

Please tell me what I've missed and what other places we can look for lost ancient Latin texts!

Preservers of Texts and Destroyers of Manuscripts

On p 124 of the second edition (1974) of Scribes & Scholars. A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature, LD Reynolds and NG Wilson state what I had begun to strongly suspect after I had begun, roused to indignation by Stephen Greenblatt, to study the career of Poggio Bracciolini: after pages of praise for Poggio and his fellow 15th-century Italian humanists for their many discoveries of ancient Latin texts, Reynolds and Wilson add:

"The humanists also had a capacity for losing manuscripts. Once they had carefully copied a text, they were liable to have little interest in the manuscript which had preserved it."

Would we have more Classical Latin manuscripts written before the 15th century if Poggio had gone into another line of work -- say, painting? It's probably impossible to say. We value manuscripts, especially old manuscripts, much more highly today, and, all other things being equal, we tend to value them more the older they are. It causes us great pain, in case after case, reading about the discoveries of the humanists, to read that familiar description of a manuscript discovered by Poggio or one of his colleagues: "now lost." "deperditus"

Reynolds and Wilson go on, ibid:

"In the sixteenth century the situation was worse; many fine codices went along the one-way road to the printing press."

That is to say: a Classical Latin text was printed, and the manuscript or manuscripts which had been used to make the printed version were lost. In some cases, the printed editions are all that is left of the texts.

Obviously, this unfortunate process wasn't universal, or else we would have no manuscripts of the Latin Classics today. Angelo Poliziano, another 15th-century humanist, sounds much more modern than many of his time in his emphasis upon preserving and consulting old manuscripts, the older the better (Reynolds and Wilson, 127-129. They even say that the way Poliziano valued age in manuscripts was "too sweeping"). Poliziano was neither the first to recognize the value of old manuscripts; nor did his emphatic defense of their value change the practices of Classical scholars all at once. He planted the seed of the idea, as did others before and after him. Gradually it took root.

There are a great many 15th-century manuscripts of the Latin Classics still existing today, probably many more than those produced in any other century. Is this because there was an explosion of interest in these ancient texts, or because the idea was gradually taking hold that it was good to preserve manuscripts, or simply because the 15th century is the most recent one before printed books replaced manuscripts? I'm sure that all three factors played a role; I'm not going to guess how much of a role was played by each.

Like the 15th century, the 9th is represented by far more Classical Latin manuscripts than any previous century. Charlemagne saw to that with his immense program of revival of education. The total number of Latin manuscripts made before the 9th century, not just Classical but also Christian, mostly Christian, all noted in the Codices Latini Antiquiores,

the great work of EA Lowe and his followers after his death, comes to about 2000. In the 9th century alone there are far many more manuscripts than 2000. How many, exactly? We don't know, because there are so many that so far no-one has found it worth the tremendous effort of seeking them all out and listing them all. Suddenly, in the 9th century, Latin manuscripts are no longer nearly as rare. Counting just 9th-century Classical manuscripts, do we currently possess 2000 of them? I don't know. I don't know whether anyone knows for sure. Might well be.

And yet, all of the 9th-century Classical manuscripts are copies of older manuscripts. And, just like in the 15th-century, the processes of discovery and preservation were partly also processes of destruction: once those older manuscripts had been copied in the 9th century, many of them tended to be lost. The difference is that we don't know nearly as many of the details of these 9th-century losses, because we have far fewer letters and other items which would inform us from the 9th century, than from the 15th. We have, however, recovered some of those pre-9th-century manuscripts which were written over or made into book covers.

The 15th and 16th centuries was the great age of re-discovery of the Latin Classics. It was a river, and what has been re-discovered since then has been a trickle. But however many more Classical texts may still be discovered, there remains very much to do in investigating the processes of textual transmission. Between greater historical understanding, continued technological progress and the blessed dogged persistence of humanity, I remain optimistic that great discoveries of Classical Latin are still to come.