[HN Gopher] Who preserved Greek literature? (2020)
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Who preserved Greek literature? (2020)
Author : jorgesborges
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-07-20 04:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
| guestbest wrote:
| I wish I could make a living through my handwriting.
| permo-w wrote:
| the writing style of this (and the preceding) article is
| extremely unpleasant. the author can't seem to move past a point
| without retracing it 3 times. interesting subject matter though
| gwern wrote:
| It's poorly written, and the subject matter is interesting, but
| it's only worth reading if you can also trust it.
|
| Take a look at the screenshot
| https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YoT5zTT4p9Y/XuGVBfGPpaI/AAAAAAAAP...
| the author describes as
|
| > According to this widely used textbook for learning ancient
| Greek, published by Oxford University Press, slavery was
| benign, and enslaved people were 'lively and cheeky
| characters'. (Balme and Lawall, Athenaze, 3rd edition 2016, ch.
| 2)
|
| Do you think this is anything even remotely close to a
| reasonable paraphrase, or rather, brazenly lying to the reader?
| As I am not a classicist, that means I can't trust anything
| else he says either. (At least HN now lets me retract my
| upvotes for articles.)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think the Cambridge Latin Course just updated their
| textbooks and one of the changes was to change the treatment
| of slaves to make them less objectified, so this bit seems
| plausible to me.
|
| https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-cambridge-latin-
| cour...
|
| > Enslaved characters were, in earlier editions, sometimes
| depicted in simplistic terms: as "happy", "hard-working" or
| "lazy". In the new edition, slavery is now depicted through
| the eyes of its victims, focusing on their anxieties and
| gruelling lives.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I agree that the author's style is not the best, but I think
| that what you describe as a paraphrase was meant more as a
| polemic. That is why the author quotes the whole textbook
| passage. I do not think he meant to imply that the textbook
| was making a specifically false statement, but that by its
| general approach it illustrates a tendency to portray slavery
| as not as bad as it actually was. Whether this is broadly the
| case with such textbooks would, of course, need to be
| demonstrated in much greater detail. However, the author
| links a more detailed critique above the quoted textbook
| passage.
| tgflynn wrote:
| This article would tend to lead one to suppose that more Latin
| than Greek texts have been preserved from the classical period,
| because it describes better conditions for preservation in the
| West than in the East, but I've heard that the opposite is true.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| allturtles wrote:
| > Back in December I wrote about the myth that ancient Greek
| texts only survived by being preserved in the mediaeval Islamic
| world. ... But first, I'd better repeat that it is a myth. ...
| Only in a tiny number of cases do we rely on translations for
| ancient Greek texts
|
| But the second statement of the myth they are trying to deflate
| doesn't contradict the first statement at all. Ancient Greek
| texts could have survived by being preserved in the medieval
| Islamic world _in Greek_ (not in translation). I 'm not saying
| they were (I don't know) but it's a bit of a bait-and-switch
| argument.
|
| > Greek texts were primarily preserved and transmitted in Greek-
| speaking regions of the empire, that is (initially) in Greece,
| Anatolia, greater Syria, and Egypt.
|
| Okay, but Greater Syria and Egypt were lost to the Byzantine
| Empire during the Islamic expansion of the 7th century, And the
| whole "Muslim scholars preserved the ancient greek tradition"
| narrative is obviously about that later time period, so those
| don't seem relevant.
| vondur wrote:
| I assumed most of it stayed in Greek in the Byzantine empire, and
| then came to Europe after the Fall of Byzantium to the Turks.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That seems to be the common theory for the source of the Greek
| texts, but before that the Greek philosophy, maths and science
| seems to have been translated into Latin via Arabic:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelard_of_Bath
|
| > The oldest surviving Latin translation of Euclid's Elements
| is a 12th-century translation by Adelard from an Arabic
| version.
|
| But he also translated original Arabic work, introducing
| algebra.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Cl...
|
| It's a complicated enough tale that lots of people get credit
| over the centuries for keeping the past alive and adding their
| own layer.
| gatonegro wrote:
| I am not sure who the author is addressing here, and I find many
| of these "common myths" quite baffling. Ancient Greek works were
| widely known amongst mediaeval Islamic scholars, and translations
| into Arabic were made, but this is the first time that I've seen
| someone claim (to refute the claim, but still) that these Arabic
| translations are the "only reason" why these ancient works
| survived.
|
| The big reveal seems to be that, surprise surprise, Greek texts
| survived in their original form in the area of Europe where Greek
| was the lingua franca, and Latin text survived in areas where
| Latin had that role. Also, the fact that books were copied is,
| apparently, another big revelation.
|
| Honestly, as interesting as the subject is, the writing style and
| the bizarre arguments the author makes are off-putting, to say
| the least.
| smartmic wrote:
| I have not read this article but what fascinates me in this
| context is that it is very difficult to estimate how many works
| have survived time at all and how many are lost? Most historians
| assume only ~1% has survived. Written works are better conserved
| than music and everyday language.
|
| I stumbled over this information in the book "Offline!" by Thomas
| Gruter, a highly recommended read, by the way. Among others, it
| tackles the question if future historians will know more about
| our time than we know about the past.
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