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Roman scrolls as old as these being extremely rare, this could alter significantly our understanding of ancient texts and their transmission across centuries.
by wazoox 11y ago
Roman scrolls as old as these being extremely rare, this could alter significantly our understanding of ancient texts and their transmission across centuries.
- gadders 11y agoI hope they find some works that were mentioned in antiquity but are lost to us now. EG Some of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world
- sramsay 11y agoSome of those would be absolutely staggering. Epicureanism and Stoicism, for example, were among the most popular philosophies of the ancient world, but our written record of them is extremely fragmentary relative to what we know was written. Same goes for drama. Discovering any additional ancient play would be completely staggering. We possess only one complete trilogy (Aeschylus' Oresteia) and only one complete satyr play -- an important genre, since it may represent a holdover from earlier forms of the worship of Dionysius that led to what we think of as ancient drama. It's an awfully good time to be a classicist!
- gadders 11y agoWhilst googling this topic, I read that there is a missing first book from Homer called Margites. Imagine finding that?