Don't Call it my "Grail," it's Much Cooler than That

When it comes to recovering lost texts of Classical Greek and Latin, there are those who are looking everywhere, scouring specialized journals and general news outlets for finds and for clues to possible finds, who are very optimistic and excited about the chances for great recoveries, convinced that the era of great discoveries begun during the "Renaissance" in no way has to be regarded as closed. -- and then there are those who snicker and point at the first group. I'm way over on the optimistic fringe of the first group. I don't mind the snickering. I still get along just fine with the second group, and everyone in the second group agrees that the first group has included experts of the first degree. Still, just know that when I go on about such things, I do not have a broad consensus of experts behind me.

But I personally think it would be absurd to assume that there will be no more major discoveries of Livy.He was THE historian of ancient Rome, the one whom Tacitus, Suetoniusand Ammianusall felt they were following, writing, as it were, only appendices and updates to his work. The work of PaterculusandFlorusand others was in major respects no more than excerpts and paraphrases of Livy's work, everybody from his time through Late Antiquity and the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to today who ever quoted a lot of ancient Roman authors has quoted a lot of him, there are beaucoup 5th-century manuscripts of the surviving 35 books, and you, you snickerers and pointers, you're going to sit and snickeringly opine that the other 107 books are just gone, forever? I'm sorry, but that just makes no sense to me.

They say that it is unproven that Gregory the Greatordered destroyed all copies of Livy's work upon which hands could be laid. They also say that he was convinced that the end of the world was at hand and that volcanos, several of which were active in Italy at the time, were gateways to Hell, which was full to bursting with all of the souls it held.

That sounds like a book-burner to me. I'm not saying I know for sure that Gregory did indeed try to wipe Livy's life work off of the face of the Earth. But I am saying that the time when he reigned as Pope, from 590 to 604, fits well into the timeline of the damned strange state of the known remains of the text of Livy's history, with so many 5th-century manuscripts of books 1 through 10 and 21 through 40 surviving, and the rest gone except for a couple of scraps, and one 5th-century copy of books 41-45 which turned up on the shelf of a monastery in 1527, looking very much like it was originally a copy of books 41-50. You snickerers, you honestly expect us optimists to stop looking for the other half of that volume? You want us to cease looking at the notes written in the margins of that manuscript and others as clues in a glorious treasure-hunt? Who's being absurd here?

Back to Gregory. Look for crypto-pagans of his time (there were no other kinds of pagans left) and ask yourself where they hid books 11-20 and 46-142. (It's not strange at all to picture books 1-10, the partly-mythical tale of Rome's founding and early growth, being hidden before any of the others, as soon as people got word that the Papal troops were coming and looking for heathen books, and books 21-30, the tale of Rome's struggle with Hannibal, being hidden next.) Ask yourself where the cellar or attic or hollow tree was where they would hide books 7-12 of Ovid's Fasti.No, with no disrespect to the abundant genius and deep learning on your side, snickerers, I really don't think I'm the one who's being ridiculous.

We, I should say. We aren't the ones. Yes, Professor Conway, who edited several volumes of Livy for Oxford in the early 20th century, was taken in by perhaps the biggest hoax in classical studies of his time: a young professor in Naples claimed to have found all 142 volumes of Livy written out in one ancient hand. But then he went into hiding, with friends claiming that he was naive in the ways of business and that they were merely trying to guarantee that whatever library or museum purchased the spectacular find from him paid him fairly, and it was front-page news day after day in Naples, with one newspaper backed by the Fascists saying it was all a hoax, and another newspaper aligned with another political party and with the great Benedetto Crocesaying no, no, it was all true! and back in England Professor Conway wrote excitedly and credulously about it, and it happened that someone was digging outside of his apartment, the water department perhaps, and overnight some wag put a big sign on the rope cordoning off the hole which read "DANGER: EXCAVATIONS FOR LOST BOOKS OF LIVY," and yes, that was funny.

But Professor Conway was not a fool for hoping. And those like him and me are much cooler than the searchers for the Grail or for Bigfoot, because however much you may choose to believe that our search is pointless, there is absolutely no doubt that what we seek did once exist.

"The Many Fine Augustan Chroniclers..."

As the regular readers of this blog know, I am often exasperated by what I see as the logical shortcomings in the arguments of religious people against atheists and agnostics, their tendency to ignore scientific and/or historical and archaeological evidence which does not harmonize with their preconceived notions, or to make things up and then present them as valid arguments.

Lately, in a part of the Internet where many people come and discuss religious topics, I have encountered many atheists who are doing exactly the same things. Or maybe it's only a few who seem like many because of the great frequency and mindless monotony of their comments. One of these atheists is the author of the quote which is the title of this blog post: in the writings of "the many fine Augustan chroniclers" who were contemporary with Jesus, according to a comment recently posted by this particular atheist, there is no mention of Him or His miracles.

There are a few problems with that statement, as I see it. The word "chronicler" is used more often to describe medieval historians, then ancient ones. But that's a bit nit-picking on my part: strictly speaking, any history which describes events in a strict chronological order may be termed a chronicle, and many ancient historians fit this bill. Also, if Jesus was born around 4 BC, which seems to be the current consensus among those who believe He existed, then he would have been around 18 years old when Augustus died. Most of the events for which He is famous are alleged to have occurred in the reign of Tiberius -- but let's let that go, too. The main problem, as I see it, in speaking about "the many fine Augustan chroniclers" contemporary with Jesus is the word "many."

Who are these many people? Livy died around AD 18, earlier than all of the most widely-noted alleged events of Jesus' adult life, and anyway his ab urbe condita is said have to ended with events of the year 9 BC. (Only about a quarter of it survives, books 1-10 and 21-45 of a total of 142, plus a few fragments.) The next prominent Roman historian, Tacitus, was born in the 60's AD, after Jesus alleged death. Velleius Paterculus lived until AD 31, but his history only goes until the death of Augustus.

It's frustrating, this comment about "the many fine Augustan chroniclers" and the supposedly suspicious absence of any mention of Jesus in their writings, this and many similar comments. Frustrating, because it seems to indicate that the people who present such pseudo-arguments, although like me they have rejected some religious nonsense and do not believe in things like miracles, are, just like the religious people they are debating against, more interested in defending preconceived notions than in making sense. The plain truth is that there is NOT a wealth of contemporary descriptions of the time of Jesus so great that His absence in them would be suspicious.

Adventures in Google Books, Pt 1

Last night I was looking at a lot of different public-domain editions of Velleius Paterculuson Google Books. (Yeah, that's right, I'm a wild man, tearin' it up on Saturday night.) (Velleius Paterculus was an ancient Roman who wrote a history of Rome.) And it was really fascinating. Mostly 19th-century editions, many 18th- and 17th-, the oldest one I've seen so far is from 1590. The 18th-centiry editions tend to have very fanciful etchings on or near the title pages. I wish I could link a couple of them here but I haven't figured out how to link Google Book pages.

And I take back what I said about extremely-long critical apparatus and prefaces and on and on being a recent sign of doom. Some currently-published editions of Latin classics may have a lot of non-text in them compared to your typical one from the early 20th or late 19th century -- that'd been my main point of comparison up until now -- but they've got nothing on some 18th-century editions, in which prefaces follow each other like clowns getting out of a tiny car, more and more of them while you wonder When o when merciful Lord will it stop? followed by the main text which is one-fifth main text on an average page and four-fifths footnotes, followed by huge appendices and incredibly useless commentaries which just. Don't. End.

I was having big fun looking at all these different editions when suddenly Google Books ended my fun: every time I tried to take a look at another book I got an automated message informing me that Google suspected that my computer was sending automated requests.

It seems Google just can't imagine that an actual human being would do anything like that for fun.

And you still can't search for pages, or books, written in Latin on Google. There are over 1,000 hits for a Google Book search for public domain books written by Velleius Paterculus, a relatively obscure author, most of them in Latin, untranslated. You can do a search in Icelandic or freakin Esperanto -- Esperanto?! You know what? I hope not -- but not in Latin.

Anyway, for the moment Google is back to not suspecting me of -- doing what, exactly? Last night it began refusing my requests to search in public-domain material -- so I'm back to looking at different editions of Velleius Paterculus.