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Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

talesoftimesforgotten.com

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Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#101

Post by wirrbel »

inglor_cz wrote: post #4
lai-yin wrote: post #2

The part about the extinction of the Punic language made me wonder - what would it take to utterly erase an entire branch of knowledge today?

Burn it all on CDs and leave them for ten years in wet environment. Joking aside, our methods of recording information are hellishly vulnerable. This comes with the density of record. A clay tablet from Mesopotamia does not carry more than 2 kB of info, but 4000 years have gone by and it is still readable.

I think the most present danger for books and preservation efforts today is of course deletion of digital records, but for books we have more printed copies everywhere than ever.

But, the danger is really high that they will be all thrown out alongside of the yellowed Harry Potter books.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#102

Post by wirrbel »

mycall wrote: post #86

I'm sure there are tons of old writings buried in Rome. They just kept building on up of the old city.

A while ago there were reports that they try to restore papyri-turned-charcoal from Pompeyi.

The problem with books buried in Rome is, that Rome isn't exactly a desert with natural conditions to preserve books.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#103

Post by jazzyjackson »

tablespoon wrote: post #98
moftz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control of the US has perpetuated English even more so. If the Anglo countries all sank into the ocean, I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. China would be the major trading power and without the need to work with America…

> I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. I kinda doubt that, given its writing system.

There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#104

Post by AlotOfReading »

Koshkin wrote: post #25
jl6 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that’s the Greek mythological version of the Garden of Eden story. I find the reality even more interesting. What were humans thinking about 40,000 years ago, with their modern bodies and brains?

Even with the abundance of plant and animal food, they were preoccupied with survival. There were too many things to be taken care of: avoiding falling prey to carnivores (including fellow humans), injuries, sickness; need to hunt and/or collect food, tend to children. There was just no time to think about much else. But the prehistoric form of communism made survival easier. In the later, more individualist, times,…

Please don't make people out to be weird, primitive aliens when it's completely untrue. If you had ever read any of the numerous ethnographies out there, you'd know that they gossip, tell stories, joke, and complain like any other people. Special emphasis on the complaining and joking, because those tend to be important social behaviors. 'resource-related' discussion happens mainly during work hours and then it's still not the majority of discussion in the numbers I've seen.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#105

Post by dr_dshiv »

prox wrote: post #71
dr_dshiv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of lost palm leaf books, in Sanskrit and other South Asian languages, rotting away. There is simply no money to support the scholarship that would preserve these works. It's incredibly sad.

Do you know any libraries that need financial support for archiving this body of work?

I know of research institutes, yes.

Sanskrit is widely taught in younger years. Funding needs to go to bright PhD students to make the field again. It's extremely conservative and territorial after so many years of hardship.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#106

Post by tablespoon »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #103
tablespoon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. I kinda doubt that, given its writing system.

There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.

> There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.

I don't speak or read Chinese, but my understanding is there are a lot of homophones (and a culture of homophonic puns) that would make that undesirable (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Standard_Ch...).

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#107

Post by 8bitsrule »

Great details about a period I am sketchy about. I used this 15-min video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV4xYG4KMIU] to get caught up on Mycenae.

I remember grinning while reading in Lucio Russo's (2004 The Forgotten Revolution on 'Antikythera') caustic description of how, after Rome wiped out Greece, Greek writings became a very popular commodity with Roman book collectors. As Horace put it, "Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium."

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#108

Post by yesenadam »

yesenadam wrote: post #82
antognini wrote: post #35

I've been doing a lot of research on early astronomy lately and have been digging into how exactly we know what we know about the early Greek astronomers like Thales and Anaximander [1]. It turns out that it's pretty remarkable that we know anything whatsoever about these early figures. Thales was active so early on that philosophers weren't really writing anything down at that point. One of his successors, Anaximand…

I was reading Theophrastus recently - his very entertaining Characters , having read that it inspired a large number of imitators, among them La Bruyere's Characters [0], long one of my very favourite books. The chapter titles give the idea: I. The Ironical Man II. The Flatterer III. The Garrulous Man IV. The Boor V. The Complaisant Man VI. The Reckless Man VII. The Chatty Man VIII. The Gossip IX. The Shameless Man e…

p.s. Theophrastus was not just "a student of Aristotle" but took over Aristotle's Lyceum and led it for 35 years:

"Aristotle in his will made him guardian of his children, including Nicomachus, with whom he was close. Aristotle likewise bequeathed to him his library and the originals of his works, and designated him as his successor at the Lyceum. ...Under his guidance the school flourished greatly—there were at one period more than 2000 students, ...and at his death, he bequeathed to it his garden with house and colonnades as a permanent seat of instruction. His popularity was shown in the regard paid to him by Philip, Cassander, and Ptolemy, and by the complete failure of a charge of impiety brought against him. He was honored with a public funeral, and "the whole population of Athens, honouring him greatly, followed him to the grave."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophrastus

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#109

Post by dr_dshiv »

iammisc wrote: post #87
dr_dshiv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, they are not as successful as the secret Platonic influence underlying Christianity, Islam and the secular Academy. There are many mysteries about the past still to be discovered in the future.

There is no secret platonic influence in catholicism. In the latin church, it's openly encouraged. I was just discussing platonic ideals after mass today with fellow parishioners and how important it is to pursue truth. The priest had even mentioned Plato in his homily on the nature of truth There's nothing secret here. Christianity is openly and unashamedly compatible with many aspects of Plato's philosophy. In fact…

I really appreciate your exposition. Maybe "open secret" is more appropriate. It is certainly esoteric, but not a conspiracy as you say.

But let me put it this way. Most Christians would be surprised to discover that the original conception of god is Platonic — i.e., a god of cosmic unity, a god of ineffable oneness, as opposed to a singular god. After all, it is only in the esoteric Judaic tradition that the god of Moses is a principle and not a person.

Pope Theophilus supposedly massacred 10,000 monks who believed in the non-person version of God. Happy to share links on that history.

Re: Are there more surviving ancient writings in Greek or Latin?

#110

Post by dr_dshiv »

Causality1 wrote: post #81
dr_dshiv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I was shocked when i learned this. I'm currently working on a Neo Latin translation from Marsilio Ficino. He is famous for catalyzing the Italian Renaissance by translating Plato (and many other Greek works) into Latin, making it available in the west after about 1000 years. He also restarted "the Academy." He was a prolific philosopher himself. The book I'm helping to translate is "De Voluptate", or "On Pleasur…

Plato wasn't translated into Latin until the middle ages?

Until c.1450, the only Plato was the Timeaus and some scattered partial translations.
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