The Lost Texts of the Ancient World: A Literary Tragedy
As lovers of ancient history, we often find ourselves captivated by Greek tragedies. However, there's one tragedy that we struggle to come to terms with: the lost texts of the ancient world. The plays, poems, histories, stories, and myths we'll never get to read haunt us with their absence. This loss represents a significant gap in our understanding of ancient cultures and literature.
The Scope of the Loss
The extent of what we've lost is staggering. Hundreds of poets, playwrights, and historians have had their works reduced to mere fragments, if not completely erased from history. Sometimes, we know what we've lost due to references and intertextual allusions in surviving writings. But in most cases, we will never know what we're missing.
This loss is not just a matter of missing entertainment; it represents thousands of years of cultural and historical context that we can never fully recover. It's as if we're trying to piece together a massive puzzle with most of the pieces missing.
The Epic Cycle: A Case Study in Loss
One of the most significant losses in ancient literature is the Epic Cycle, a collection of ancient Greek epic poems that, together with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, told the complete story of the Trojan War. The study of these lost Trojan epics is so extensive that Martin West's research on the topic spans over half a century.
It's crucial to understand that the Iliad and the Odyssey, while monumental works in their own right, are just two poems within a larger Trojan saga. This saga stretches long before and after the events depicted in these famous works.
Lost Epics of the Trojan Cycle
The Cypria: A prequel to the Iliad, detailing events leading up to the Trojan War. It consisted of eleven books, but only 22 fragments remain.
The Aethiopis: Picking up where the Iliad left off, it told of the arrival of the Amazon queen. Only three fragments of its five books survive.
The Little Iliad: This work detailed the deaths of Ajax the Great and Paris, as well as the famed Trojan horse. We have only fourteen fragments remaining.
Iliupersis (The Sack of Ilium): As the name suggests, this two-book epic detailed the sacking of Troy. Ten fragments survive.
Nostoi (The Returns): This five-book epic was the first to detail events after the war. Only 6-7 fragments remain.
The Telegony: A two-book poem detailing the death of Odysseus. Only two to three fragments survive.
Our knowledge of these poems primarily comes through other writers, such as the second-century CE writer Proclus and the anonymous author of "The Library," often called Apollodorus. Additionally, Virgil summarized The Sack of Troy in the second book of the Aeneid, and we owe much to references by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The Theban Cycle: Another Lost Saga
The Theban cycle, or the Theban saga, is another collection of lost epics related to the mythical history of the city of Thebes. Composed in dactylic hexameter verse between 750 and 500 BCE, this cycle included:
The Oidipodeia: Attributed to Kinaithon, it told the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx.
The Thebaid: Of uncertain authorship, it narrated the war between Oedipus' sons.
The Epigonoi: A continuation of the Thebaid, detailing the next generation's attack on Thebes.
The Alkmeonis: The story of Alcmaeon's matricide.
Our knowledge of these myths largely comes from the surviving Theban plays.
Other Lost Epics
Beyond the Trojan and Theban cycles, we've lost numerous other epics. Aristotle, in his Poetics, criticizes "all those poets who have composed a Heracleis, a Theseis, and poems of that kind." These works, focusing on the careers of Heracles and Theseus, respectively, are now lost to us.
One particularly significant loss is Panyassis' Heraclea, an extensive work of some 9,000 lines divided into fourteen books. It was the longest of pre-Alexandrian epics after the Iliad, Odyssey, and Antimachus' Thebaid. Today, we must rely on Apollodorus' narrative as a guide in ordering the remaining fragments.
The Case of Sappho: A Poetic Mystery
Sappho of Lesbos, often referred to as the "tenth Muse," presents a particularly intriguing case of lost literature. Despite being one of the most highly regarded Greek lyric poets in antiquity, only one complete poem of hers survives: the Ode to Aphrodite. Out of the nine volumes of poetry she wrote, we have no more than 700 fragmented lines in total.
The loss of Sappho's work has been the subject of much speculation. Some have suggested Christian censorship as the culprit, claiming her poetry was too sexually explicit or openly homosexual. However, this theory lacks substantial evidence. In fact, the Roman poet Martial, whose work was far more sexually explicit, saw much of his work preserved.
The more likely reason for the loss of Sappho's poetry is far less sensational. Sappho wrote in the Aeolic dialect of Greek, which gradually died out between the third and first centuries BCE. As the dialect became less common, fewer people could read and understand her work, leading to fewer copies being made. The shift from papyrus scrolls to parchment codices in late antiquity, and the Early Middle Ages further contributed to the loss, as texts not copied onto the new medium were often lost.
The Impact of Lost Texts
The loss of these ancient texts represents more than just missing stories or poems. It's a loss of cultural heritage, historical context, and literary evolution. These works could have provided invaluable insights into ancient societies, their values, beliefs, and daily lives. They could have illuminated the development of literary techniques and themes that continue to influence modern literature.
Moreover, the fragmentary nature of what remains often leaves us with tantalizing glimpses of larger narratives we can never fully reconstruct. It's like trying to understand a complex tapestry by looking at a few loose threads.
Preserving What Remains
In light of these losses, the importance of preserving and studying the texts that do survive becomes even more crucial. Every fragment, every reference in a surviving work, becomes a precious link to this lost literary world.
Modern technology and digital archiving methods offer new hope for preserving what remains and potentially recovering lost texts. Advanced imaging techniques have allowed scholars to read previously illegible papyri, and large-scale digitization projects are making ancient texts more accessible than ever before.
Conclusion
The lost texts of the ancient world represent a literary tragedy of immense proportions. While we may never recover most of what has been lost, we can honour these lost works by cherishing and studying what remains and by continuing to explore the rich tapestry of ancient literature that has survived.
As we reflect on these lost works, we're reminded of the fragility of human knowledge and the importance of preservation. Each text we lose is a voice from the past silenced forever. Yet, in the fragments that remain and in our continued study of the ancient world, these lost voices still echo, reminding us of the enduring power of literature to connect us across the millennia.
Resources:
Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Edited and translated by Martin L. West. Loeb Classical Library 497. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Wright, Matthew. In The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy: Volume 1: Neglected Authors. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
SEGAL, CHARLES. “Lament and Recognition: A Reconsideration of the Ending of the ‘Bacchae.’” Illinois Classical Studies 24/25 (1999): 273–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23065372.
“Epic Cycle - Livius.” Livius.org. 2020. https://www.livius.org/sources/content/epic-cycle/.
S. J. Gąsiorowski. “A Fragment of a Greek Illustrated Papyrus from Antinoë.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 17, no. 1/2 (1931): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.2307/3854814.
