If you could exhume one Greek and/or one Latin text in good shape, what would you choose? Here’s my choice:
Greek: a complete Sappho
Latin: an intact Propertius
In Greek, however, I’m torn between Sappho and Callimachus. Callimachus was one of the most important Greek poets, and his influence on Latin poetry seems to have been enormous. There are many other Greek authors worthy of exhumation: we’d like to have more Archilochus (not just fragments), more tragedy, more comedy (and some examples of old comedy other than Aristophanes–but lots more of him, too!), history (Theopompus, Cratinus).
In Latin, more LIvy, particularly the later books, more Tacitus. I don’t think there’s a major Latin poet who has been lost except perhaps Gallus (and maybe we would want him only so that we could better trace the development of Roman elegy). We might like to have some of the archaic poets, but quite a lot of Ennius–maybe enough–has survived in Servius and elsewhere.
What would you give up, if you had to, to obtain these works?
Greek: Xenophon’s Cyropedia, maybe? Or Aelian Aristides (but not the Sacred Dreams).
Greek: Panyassis, the rest of the cycle. Peisandros. Aeschylus’ Akhilleis triad. Stesichorus…
Latin: Ennius (!), more Livy, the rest of Lucillius (Let’s see his bite!), more Cato. I suppose Ovid’s Medea because not including this would be like not including Callimachus for Greek.
Will stop there before I risk making a massive catalogue… what am I willing to give up?
Greek: most Euripides frankly. A lot of the late stuff like bloody Nonnos.
Latin: Fortunatus. Sidonius definitely. I know I know…I’m cheating, you mean from the Classics. Erm…some of Seneca’s essays. Some Terrence.
But, Qimmik, this way madness lies friend. You’ll soon find yourself mulling over all sorts of lost and fragmentary works in your mind. I mean god imagine if we had MORE western Greek texts!? Or more Pacuvius…
Simonides, no question. If I can’t have him, Stesichorus. In Latin I have enough: it’s Greek we’re short of. I’d be more than happy to swap some Cicero and all of Valerius Flaccus for a play by Cratinus.
Yes, more Steisichorus, and a lot more Pindar–all the lost works.
I’d probably be willing to exchange Manilius for a complete Satyricon and the rest of Tacitus.
I hope I don’t offend the manes of G.P. Goold, by writing that. I took a number of courses from him as an undergraduate, including Petronius. He was a great scholar and a wonderful teacher.
Maybe Lycophron’s Alexandra could be surrendered for more Callimachus and Xenophanes.
For Greek I’d probably take one of the pre-socratics, having a whole Parmenides or Empedocles would be great. (I thought about Heraclitus, but in general lines there’d probably nothing there that we can’t already guess from what we have.) Also some non-Aristophanes comedy — someone must have played this game earlier last century and got Menander for it, with mixed results.
If we could drop something, and assuming we don’t cheat by dropping Nonnus , I think Aristotle’s Poetics would be a fine way to start. Also extremely ethical of our part.
For Latin it’s more difficult. Off the top of my head I think I’d really like to have more of Cato the Elder besides On Agriculture, which doesn’t quite make it to the top in spite of what the ancients tell about him. If not Cato, I’d probably second Scribo’s Ovid’s Medea, or more from Varro or Sallust’s Histories.
I’d be prepared to drop handfuls of Livy if I could get any of the above. Also Caesar, with the added benefit of making scores of schoolboys grateful forever.
Funny thing, my first thought was exactly the same as Scribo’s: Panyassis.
(But Scribo, you are cheating… You were supposed to pick ONE! )
I would definitely have a third early epic, and from what little we have, Panyassis looks very nice. Probably a much better work in its own right than the lost epics of the Trojan cycle. The rest of the Trojan cycle, it seems to me, would teach us more about the Iliad and the Odyssey, but probably we wouldn’t read them for their own sake. No, I want a nice, action-packed Heracles epic!
As to what I’d give in exchange… Well, take any Latin literature you like, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, whatever, take it all if you like, and give me something nice in Greek in exchange!
Paul, you’re not allowed to exchange a Roman text for a Greek one: the rules are, Greek for Greek, Latin for Latin. Besides, have you read much Vergil? I would never voluntarily give up Vergil for anything–especially his Georgics.
Hey, this is not fair! Why must I follow the rules but Scribo doesn’t need to!?
I have read Caesar (a little of it in the original), but never a word of Cicero. As for Veirgil, I have read a little over the first half of the Aeneid, and that was in translation. It was excruciatingly dull. Of course, I reckon that Vyrgil is probably utterly untranslatable and can’t really be judged on the basis of a translation. I am, naturally, judging these authors merely on the basis of my prejudices… The thing is that I have, until now, been unable to motivate myself to learn Latin properly – I just don’t see enough of a reward waiting for me. Probably, if I did know Latin, I would prove my prejudice wrong, but I’d have to learn Latin first for that!
So, I’m not allowed to give up Latin texts for Greek ones… It becomes more difficult then. I don’t really have an opinion on Latin texts, so you can keep your Viergil. As for the Greek ones, I’ve never really read a Greek text I could give up just like that. There’s nothing I’ve read that I think would deserved to go. I haven’t read that much, of course. But if we have to start burning books, maybe some Euripides, like Scribo? Bacchae is nice, I wouldn’t give up that. Perhaps I could give up Trojan Women for Panyassis? I didn’t get the point of that play – and that’s just the reason why people usually start throwing books into the fire!
“Hey, this is not fair! Why must I follow the rules but Scribo doesn’t need to!”
The rules just changed. If you don’t know Latin well enough to read Vergil in the original, you’re not allowed to trade Latin for Greek, and if you don’t know Greek well enough to read Pindar in the original, you’re not allowed to trade Greek for Latin. Otherwise, it’s ok to trade one for the other.
Well, I must accept the rules. However, I’ll note that the rules themselves are against the order of nature. Books are usually burnt out of ignorance, not the other way round. Purging books in full knowledge, what a fearful thought!
I thought about Apollonius Rhodius. He’s not that different from Vergil, in some respects (recycling old epic material in a very literary style), and I enjoyed reading him in the original. But I see little point in reading him in translation. So that’s it probably with Vergil too.
Ha my swagacious avatar means I can avoid (some of) the rules . I jest.
I’m glad someone else went for Panyassis. There are some interesting answers here. Would the Sayricon make more sense if we had all of it? what we have is seemingly erratic in its narrative: our heroes are fleeing? what from? they’ve offended Priapus? they’re fighting over a shirt? now they’re in an orgy, now at dinner, now they argue over their sexslave/boytoy and now we’re in a gallery with an overly loquacious poet. Oh, they’re throwing rocks, out out…we’re on a boat!..we’re… and so on. It’s amazing but disconcerting. Is the fragmentary status of the text responsible? within the cena itself there are some random and abrupt moments as it stands so…
My favourite Petronian moment was when I realised that frater/fratellus could be used to mean like a sex partner and not just a biological brother. You can imagine my surprise when…well you know what happens.
I know far too little of Latin literature I feel. But then it’s just so much more difficult than Greek.
I should say though that Virgil is worth the entrance price of Latin alone. I’m dull in that way: my friends who really get down and dirty with Latin all love Lucanus for his rhetorically charged Latin, Ovid seems to always get the popular vote (Certainly insanely influential) and so on but for me, it must be Virgil. Don’t get me wrong, Latin has A LOT of gems (Ovid’s Fasti, all of Juvenal, Persius etc) but there’s something about the Aeneid.
Vergil’s poetry is inextricably bound up with the language in which he wrote. Reading Latin hexameter poetry, and especially Vergil, is a special skill that has to be learned–it’s almost a different language than Latin prose. Assonance and sound patterns, the complex patterning of adjectives and nouns in the individual verse, the interplay of meter and word accent, and, in Vergil’s case, the use of ordinary words in extraordinary–and unforgettable–ways are some of the things that make reading Vergil in Latin an unparalleled aesthetic experience.
Add to that his engagement with so much of Greek and Roman literature that preceded him–Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Theocritus, Ennius, Lucretius–and his transmutation of their poetry into his own (what used to be called “imitation”; the current term is “intertextuality”).
In the case of the Aeneid, he manages to encapsulate the whole of Roman history (as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey), culminating in Augustus. It’s a testimony to his ability to embrace the whole of human experience that no one can agree whether the propagandistic teleology of the Aeneid is exclusively optimistic or more darkly colored.
I think that’s a fair reading, and one of the reasons why I re-read it now and then. Even as my ears become sharper and sharper to his language, I’m aware of how incapable I am of some of the allusions. It’s funny in a way, my background is somewhat backwards cf to most students reading the Aeneid: I know my Greek backwards and forwards and my early republican fragments too, but I really struggle with catching allusions to Catullus and Lucretius.
My partner gave me a copy of Lucretius a while back, like 4 months or so, I’ve been able to get through it. I just can’t get into it.
Your comment on immitation becoming intertextuality is interesting. As you might surmise, roughly, from my age I was kind of brought up on intertextuality as an undergraduate - it was all Fowler and Hinds - so I’ve never thought of it in those terms. I do, personally, like using immitatio/mimesis as we’ve inherited them from Aristotle and Dionysius though - I think it’s a shame how little the latter is consulting when it comes to the Augustans. I mean the best work I’ve read on him was concerned with the second sophistic! (something by Whitmarsh…)
Which reminds me. Second sophistic, novels. Chuck them. Give me Berossos and Manetho in toto.
You’re not a Longus man? I can understand Chaerephon and the like, but Daphnis & Chloe has for me the weird effect of being the clear before the cliché.
I seem to remember taking Scribo to task before for his wholesale trashing of the novels, urging the merits of the delectable Longus and the incomparable Heliodorus.
I am still at a loss to comprehend how, with multitudes of goodies to choose from, we should have had not one but two votes for Panyassis. Sure it would good to have him, but he’d be way down my list of resurrection-worthy epicists. I’d much rather have 5th-4th-cent. epic experimenters—Antimachus’ Thebaid or even epic-is-dead Choerilus. I’d trade Statius’ Silvae (but certainly not his epics; if I have to trade a Latin epic it would unhesitatingly be Valerius Flaccus, than whom there is no duller poet). I’m glad to have support for Stesichorus (to whom I’ve devoted more hours of my life than I care to think), but how come Simonides is not at the top of everyone’s list?
Agreed there’s absolutely no point in reading either Apollonius of Rhodes or Virgil in translation—the former for the riffs on Homer, the latter, well, what Qimmik said.
A pub is really the only place to play this sort of game, with beer on tap.
We don’t need any more long hexameter poems, in Greek or in Latin. In Latin we already have too many of these cacata charta.
Another archaic Greek poet we could use more of: Alcman. All we have are some infuriatingly tantalizing fragments, with a large chunk of just one poem preserved on papyrus.
I’d like the missing end of Book VII of Diogenes Laertius (further Stoic biographies), plus a complete work by Democritus. In exchange I’d offer up the letters of St Paul.
Ha, MWH your speech was rousing. I picked up Chariton again. I got to book two before giving up. Sorry. I think in part I’m just reacting against the odd obsession these little penny dreadfulls enjoy in the modern academy.
Qimmik I must disagree, hexameter is amazing and the more early stuff the better. I voted Panyassis not just because I think it would be interesting to read but because I want more early epic samples in terms of language and narrative and he enjoyed a good reputation in the ancient world.
Actually, this is a problem: making choices based on a) personal taste b) academic purposes and c) curiosity. I voted Ovid’s Medea earlier. It’s immensely important, sure. But if we had it I’d never read it, I know that. I can just see its import. Meanwhile I’m forced to admit that if we widened this from texts into data more generally…well then I’d give someone else’s right arm for the full machinery of Roman religion. All those books the pontifexes and flamenes consulted, the list of taboos and so on… Imagine having that! Instead of having to read Augustine’s odd book, 4-7, searching for Varro like a moth lost in a bath without a ladder.
Ok, here’s one: the book on Gynaecology. Domitianic period. Soranus?
P.S must disagree on the beer, constant exposure to awful Greek beer has left me with a pathological fear of hops: coffee better. Still, even across screens this is fun. If only to remind me of how much I’ve yet to read. I’ve never read Livy on Hannibal! I only know books of Polybius passing fair… that’s just two languages! how am I meant to master Sanskrit literature too? when will I actually learn Russian? It’s all like a glorious ocean.
It’s true nobody cares for epic these days, except for the overworked but admittedly supreme Homer and Vergil. Rather a shame, I think.
Of the canonized nine lyric poets we have by my calculation around 3%, and it would be less still without Pindar’s epinicians. Simonides heads my wish list here (the Plataea elegy is intriguing, but it’s the threnoi I want—that lovely Danae fragment, and I too could quote Catullus), followed by Stesichorus, Alcman, Pindar’s dithyrambs, maybe Sappho—a very disparate bunch. Desire for Sappho is lessened by the new poem.
Plato wanted Democritus’ works bonfired; so maybe it’s Plato that John should offer up? Without Paul’s letters the world might well be in a less dismal state, but too late now.
Which leads to another complaint about fairness. I don’t quite get the What would you give up in exchange? rule. Pretty well anything I’ve read, plus everything I haven’t (a longer list), I’d be prepared to give up for my desiderata.
I mean god imagine if we had MORE western Greek texts!? Or more Pacuvius…
, I think Aristotle’s Poetics would be a fine way to start. Also extremely ethical of our part.
)
. I jest.