No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavo

No. Aristotle, Herodotus, Plato, Sappho, etc. were considered important reading in their time, among others. Copying manuscripts was an extremely costly endeavor, so things that had many surviving copies could be inferred as having been regarded as important, even if we did not have any other indicators. I have no idea where the author gets this idea.