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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?

#81

Post by Causality1 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #38
Telemakhos wrote: post #28

A more interesting knowledge-hole is Neo-Latin, Latin written from the Renaissance to today. Surviving from the sixteenth century alone are 10,000 times more different books in Latin than survive from all of antiquity (at least according to Jurgen Leonhardt's "Latin: Story of a World Language"). People think about the Romans when they hear Latin, but they forget that it was the international publishing language for a…

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?

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

#82

Post by yesenadam »

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 etc

https://www.eudaemonist.com/biblion/characters/

[0] A taste of La Bruyere:

Children are haughty, disdainful, quick to anger, envious, curious, self-seeking, lazy, fickle, timid, intemperate, untruthful, secretive; they laugh and weep readily; the most trivial subjects give them immoderate delight or bitter distress; they wish not to be hurt, but they like hurting others: they are men already.

https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/bruyere/inde...

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

#83

Post by Goety »

moftz wrote: post #77
School-Cotton wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Latin was the main international lingua franca among educated people in Europe for about a millennium after it stopped being spoken natively. As such, scientific and otherwise intellectual works of all kinds were primarily written in Latin, for the same reason they’re primarily written in English today. In fact, the US, UK, and every other culturally Anglo country could sink into the ocean tomorrow and I suspect…

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…

Well I would still say French would be dominant over Mandarin for several reasons. Technological advantages include current nuclear collaboration on the vast coast of China. China still does not have key infrastructure to self support.

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newschina-and-france-sign-s...

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

#84

Post by iammisc »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #54
pacman2 wrote: post #18

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices "Bishop De Landa, a Franciscan monk and conquistador during the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, wrote: "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree,…

But remember, the Dark Ages weren't really all that dark, and religious figures throughout history have worked diligently to preserve knowledge rather than to destroy or conceal it. /s

There is no universality amongst religious figures. For every zealous priest that burned a bunch of books, there's a curious, yet equally zealous priest, who carefully documented a cultures behaviors and language in careful latin and published it.

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

#85

Post by Goety »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #66
prox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanskrit in the Indian subcontinent has a long history, and not many are familiar with them. Lots of other scripts and languages in East Asia are relatively unknown (for example from Indonesia)

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.

I hope they get digitized before they all fall apart. Maybe they should contact google.

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

#87

Post by iammisc »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #40
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I perceive it as well. I'm not necessarily advocating for christianity or islam here, but there's a reason they've been much more successful than other various pagan religions.

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, the catholic church has also ruled on the validity of other similarly secular philosophies of other civilizations (see the Chinese rites controversy or Merton's books on Taoism -- Christ the eternal Tao). In general, other than the protestants, Christianity does not require you to immediately reject the works of secular philosophers.

In fact, Islam and christianity are why we still study Plato today. There is no secret or conspiracy.

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

#88

Post by iammisc »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #39

Maybe someone on HN knows the answer to this question, which I've wondered for a while. Are there other civilizations of similar cultural sophistication to the Greeks, Romans, and Chinese whose writings have just not been passed down and so we aren't as familiar with them? Or are the ones whose work survived roughly it, even if much of their works are lost. E.g. there doesn't seem to be much surviving Persian literat…

The indian civilizations were extremely complex. Several philosophies written about in ancient Sanskrit. Things like the arthashastra or the vedas even. Very interesting work. Even more interesting in their distinctive 'easternness' while still essentially just being another branch of the ancient indo European philosophies (and thus somewhat closely related to the Greek and Roman)

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

#89

Post by thaumasiotes »

Goety wrote: post #83
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…

Well I would still say French would be dominant over Mandarin for several reasons. Technological advantages include current nuclear collaboration on the vast coast of China. China still does not have key infrastructure to self support. https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newschina-and-france-sign-s...

A big joint project between China and France does not constitute an argument for learning French in preference to learning Chinese.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

jl6 wrote: post #11
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #3

When you think about the scope of human history, and how little we know, it's sad to think of all the lost work. We only know things going back a few thousand years, but men who have our same cognition have been around for far longer. Plato spoke of a golden age, now long lost, where the flaura and fuana were so plentiful that men didn't need to work. Atlantis is mentioned, stories of a distant time, with men who may…

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?

[deleted]
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