My five favourite Roman classics . . . that we have lost

Classicists can be a miserable lot. When such a rich array of ancient Greek and Roman writing has survived, you’ll still find them lamenting about what has been lost.

Most of the ancient literature we still have, we owe to the efforts of medieval monks who eagerly copied and preserved it. They didn’t do a bad job. True there are some oddities. Has it ever struck you how many of the plays of Euripides have a title beginning with "i" or “e” (or, what is much the same in Greek,"hi" or “he”): Iphigeneia, Hippolytus, Electra, Helen, Hecuba etc . . . ? It looks as if somehow, at some date, a single alphabetically-arranged volume of the master’s complete works managed to escape, when others were lost in fire, flood or whatever.

And just occasionally there is a dramatic find in the ancient papyri from the sands of Egypt. Most of the works of the Greek comic dramatist Menander reached us that way. So too (if you think that the monks maybe had it right in not bothering with Menander) did Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians – actually probably the work of a research assistant, but still a good find for anyone interested in Athenian history.

But Alan posted a comment to ask what I would like to come up from any new excavation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, where eighteenth-century diggers found loads of papyri rolls, the vast majority of which (apologies now to my philosophical colleagues) were rather dreary treatises from an also-ran Epicurean philosopher by the name of Philodemus.

I confess that I am not a tremendous enthusiast for more excavation on the Villa site. Various reasons. First, my feeling is that – if you have millions of euros to spend – you’d be better off preserving the parts of the ancient town of Herculaneum that have already been dug up, but are so badly crumbling that they wont make it to the next century. Second, I’m not honestly sure that we are desperate for much more classical literature, when we haven’t really studied very hard vast tracts of what we have already got. Third, when most of what has come up from the Villa so far has been Philodemus,
I don’t see much reason to be optimistic about finding a more varied selection if we only dig deeper. (This place was obviously the bolt hole of an obsessive Philodemus fan.)

But if I had to pick my 5 favourite lost classics to find in the lava, what would they be?

First off  (and I’m scrupulously sticking to Latin – and written before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD here) would be the Autobiography of Agrippina, Nero’s mum.

We know she wrote one, and quite what she had to say about the death of her husband Claudius (those mushrooms?) would be fascinating to discover. Besides, we need some more women’s literature from the ancient world.

Second, I’d have Ovid’s play Medea. This is partly on the principle that you couldn’t ever have enough of Ovid – than whom none was ever cleverer and funnier. And it would be good to see what he did with the story of a jealous child-murderer.

Third, I’d like the complete poetical works of Cicero. Poor old orator Cicero has had a really bad press for his poetry. Not helped by the 70 odd lines he himself quoted in one of his essays from his own epic poem “On his Own Consulship” (this included, as we know from other sources, the memorable bit of doggerel, “o fortunatam natam me consule Romam” = “Rome was born a lucky city,/ when I as consul wrote this ditty”, or sort of. . .!). I’d like to see what it looked like when we saw the lot.

The fourth is going to play it safe. I’ll take Ennius’ Annales – his multi-volume epic on the history of Rome from the fall of Troy to the second century BC. Before Virgil, this was the national epic of Rome. And although some fragments survive, they’re not really enough to see how the whole thing works.

Fifth, the wild card. The Handbooks on Divination by Umbricius Melior. Melior was the favourite haruspex (Etruscan diviner) of the short lived emperor Galba (who followed Nero, 68/69 AD) and he’s known to have written handbooks on his skill. This would be an insider’s view on reading the omens in livers and the flights of birds… which might just help us see how this bit of ancient religion worked (there speaks the historian of religion!).

Does anyone have better ideas? And remember, not after 79 AD please.

Comments

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

Not quite such a stupid comment, Jenny, in the circumstances. The legal system of a disintegrating Republic would be sure to result in show trials. That was the point of the comment - one intended to startle and shock the audience into thinking matters over.

[Josiah Rowe]

How about Aeschylus' Achilleid? The fragments of his "Myrmidons" that remain are tantalizing. I'd love to know how he handled the rest of the Achilles legend.

[Jenny]

Yes I love Lindsey Davis, I think she's great. My favourite Cicero quote, however, is the one where he says 'Milo must be innocent, can't you see? Because... he's on trial!!' What kind of a stupid reason is that? I'll find the Latin tomorrow to prove he really said it, can't tell you how pleased I was when it came up in the exam.

[sm]

Clodia's account: Cute, witty, but really, you know, a loser.

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

A bit reactionary perhaps, Jenny - by our own standards - but he was trying to defend a political system (the Republic) that he could see disintegrating around him. I admit, however, that I've been compared with him myself many times. In my book, that's far from insulting (though I suppose I do get on people's nerves on occasion). Not quite this subject, but not entirely different: I'm delighted at the lasting popularity of Lindsey Davis' work. She could be the key to the strengthening of classicism after so many years of neglect.

[Jenny]

I take your Cicero point, Michael, and we probably judge too much by modern standards, he just always seemed a little reactionary in peacetime, however courageous when things were tough (think De Gaulle...) Gorgeous prose, though. In my A-level group we were on Clodius' side all the way (helped along by some seriously fallacious reasoning by Cicero, maybe not a spineless statesman but a lawyer who knew all the tricks in the book), then expected to repeat this by taking Turnus' side in Aeneid X. Needless to say, Virgil is far too good a storyteller for us to succeed in this, and we (both) ended up nearly crying when Pallas died!!

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

I'm a little puzzled by the distaste felt for Cicero by some posters on this site. We can't be sure of his verse, since so little survives.
His moral courage, can't be denied - and that's enough for me. To defend a victim of one of Sulla's freedmen, in Sulla's lifetime, took more courage than most of us have now. And at the end of his life: the supercharged attack on Mark Antony (his Philippic 2)that, he must have known, would probably result in his death - as it did, in the most gruesome way.
If we think of the spineless statesmen of our day (although I tend to prefer not to), I think I know who gets my vote.

[Jenny]

Sulpicia - yes please! Any more Ovid would be wonderful and I'd love to be able to contrast Cicero's verse with his prose (which I for one think is great, however much we might dislike the man who wrote it!) Also being able to look further into the lives of Catullus' contemporaries would certainly lead me to sign up for a classics degree.
I know we're not talking about Greeks here but does anyone else think it's just heartbreaking to see the gaps and breaks in editions of Sappho or Alcaeus? Classics in general really encourages us to be grateful for what we have, I think.

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

I seem to remember hearing, years ago now, a report that missing books of Livy had actually been found, but were left in a safe place where they'd been for many years. That was in the 1920s or 30s.

The 'safe place' was, tragically, Monte Cassino.

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

Surely no-one would contemplate the disposal of the first few books of Livy's History? Much, I'm sure, is entirely mythical. However, that scarcely makes it less significant.

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

Seconded: remarks above on Cornelia's comments. Assuming she was still alive at the time, exactly how did she respond to the murder of her sons, not least the contemptuous disposal of the body of one at least?

[mu313]

Professor Beard, et. al.,

If you take a gander at my website: The Englishman, at:

http://mu313.wordpress.com

you'll see the latest re a 'missing' (wink) dialogue of Plato, entitled "Kollourion", translated by the esteemed Manny Sessura. Cheers!

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

Second posting (I'm so interested in this site): it's tragic that Bakkhylides' work almost was lost and was rediscovered virtually by accident. Pindar - my own favourite author - practically suffered the same fate. And, of course, Sappho, sacrificed to moralism long after her day.

[Michael Igoe (M.Litt, Classicist retd.)]

I echo the lament above over the loss of Claudius' History of Etruria, above all any mention and description of the language. It remains in this way similar, in a sense, to ancient Pictish.
One great worry of mine: the growing neglect of mythology, a vital tool of the mind, which I used repeatedly to great effect in teaching days. The interest is there, but utilitarianism has devalued it.

[Mary]

Thanks Peter.. I'd love to claim the credit. But I think that it is mostly a mixture of your second two points...I really love the idea of writing a blog which is neither a little posse of experts talking incomprehensinly to each other...but at the same time tries not to dumb everything down as if the non-specialists were simply stupid.
I'm pleased that it works, at least some of the time.. m

(Glad you're enjoying Heather, after Rubicon... a good combination.)

[Peter Foot]

Why IS this consistently SUCH a good blog? I am in PolSci/Security Studies where blogs are opportunities to display prejudice, ignorance and, saddest of all, a remarkable lack of generosity (I may, of course, have missed all of this here due to my own limited grasp...!). I cannot think, for example, of an equivalent exchange in my disciplines to Oliver Nicholson's 'conversation' entry.

Is it Mary's extended teaching skills? Is it a new dynamic in Classical Studies (am just reading Peter Heather's Decline with enormous benefit, having been hooked by Holland)? Is it a huddled minority yearning to breathe free?

We are abjured envy but would like to know...

[Oliver Nicholson]

Syme's blog from Istanbul in WW II every time. No verbs either way.
OPN

[SW Foska]

Oliver, if you have to choose between a weblog written by Tacitus on which Syme posted comments, or vice versa, which would you pick?

[paul potts]

Does nobody want the rest of Sophocles? Or any of it? Is he out of fashion or something?

The fragments of a philosopher contemporary with Plato were published last year, incomplete but fascinating, sorry his name escapes me. It was quite different from anything we expected and so different from the orthodoxy that there must me more - him and others.

Paulo

[Anise K. Strong]

I second Agrippina and Suetonius' "Lives of Famous Whores." Beyond that, and sticking to the women's history theme, I'd give a lot for the actual letters of Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi. Sulla's memoirs would also be fun, one imagines.

[NW]

The rest of the Satyricon would do me. Not merely for its literary merit, but for what more it could tell us about the lives of the lower orders in Imperial Rome.

[Xjy]

Funny how prose affects people almost as much as poetry! Livy is such a great rolling river, a mid-flow Mississippi or a Don. Caligula was spot on about him. Tacitus is a Yangtze or Iron Gates Danube - not a stream to mess with! The public Cicero is tight-ass lacework. Livy-Virgil, Tacitus-Lucretius, Cicero-??? is there any Latin poet so spectacular and boring at one and the same time? Some Roman, hm, Spenser?

Again, the 79 thing irks a bit cos it deprives us of the great unknown picaresque novel between the Satyricon and the Golden Ass :-)

Imagine Soviet lit without the Master and Margarita...

[Oliver Nicholson]

Funny no one has asked for the lost Veronensis of Catullus - or even a papyrus (if Gallus can do it...).

This correspondence recalls a conversation years ago at a conference when folk started enumerating books written on the principle of the solitary Highland lass's thoughts about Wordsworth which they would like to read. Someone suggested, "The Justice of Lloyd Jones by Zeus", someone else "Syme, by Tacitus". "What about Syme by the author of the Historia Augusta ?", asked a wit. "They could not find anyone to sign the contract", came the reply.

[Mary]

I've been thinking about this...in particular what I would lose if faced with a choice. (One of my colleagues volunteered the view that s/he would happily get rid of all of Livy....his/her identity is a secret safe with me; but it's not the colleague who has just written thousands of pages on the said author. I wouldnt go that far, Book 1 is my bread and butter.)

I had toyed with the idea of having Varro's Antiquitates; but I then thought that we probably had most of the useful and interesting information quoted in later authors anyway???

[F.Gamberini]

A lot of interesting posts worth filing away for reference.
What we've got we've got, and however much more or less we had we would have to be content with. The point has been raised about whether it's worth finding more or even doing away with some of what we already have -which reconnects with the permanent quandary as to how much of the past is worth retaining, if any. There is, in any case, a Latin and Greek heritage beyond the classical period -right up to the 18th century for Latin, and I might want to know more about how classical Greek evolved into katharevousa -but all that too is subject to the quandary above.
However, just out of curiosity I could do with a look at the following:
1. the Emperor Claudius's Etruscan History (already mentioned) and some texts in Etruscan (Mary's no.5?); 2. the rest of Plato's Critias; 3. any of Varro's non-literary works; 4. technical manuals on art, architecture, and engineering.

[Gavin Kelly]

The Histories of Sallust. And the Amores of Gallus, on the grounds that they must have been better, or would look better complete, than those ten or so lines dug up 30 years ago. But harsh to exclude the lost books of Tacitus from consideration. I remember an old teacher of mine remarking on how he'd happily give up a decade or two of Livy for some lost Tacitus. Mary, can I dare you to say which extant works you'd sacrifice in exchange for the lost books of Tacitus?

[Carol A]

Yes, I'll put in another vote for the works of the Emperor Claudius - they were probably dull stuff but he was apparently one of the few to write on the Etruscan language. Some more by the early Greek philosophers would also be most welcome, instead of the rather tantalising fragments we now have.

[Lutja]

The Spook Who Spoke by Marcus Didius Falco :)

[Lynley]

How about Mark Antony's "On His Own Sobriety"?

[Liz]

To add again - I'd love the collected letters of Terentia and Tullia, especially those of around the time that Tullia married Dolabella. The mechanics of that particular marriage are endlessly fascinating!

[Zacha]

I second the wish for Ovid's Medea, and the rest of Sulpicia's fabulous works.

[Xjy]

Cicero can't have been the only one writing familiar letters to people... More letters by others!
Away with the 79 limit! Tacitus rocks. (Pre-79, the missing Livy.)
Can Lucretius have been the only seriously gifted Epicurean in Rome?

And I'd like to see a lot more texts by immigrants and non-Latins - especially Celts and Germans - from the earliest days of contact. Contracts, glossaries, shopping lists, the lot.

[Peter]

I seem to remember that, in the book-lined long gallery at Syon House near London, there is a false door disguised with fake leather book spines. All of these false books have the titles of lost ancient works - a lovely conceit - and could provide plenty of inspiration. From these surely a strong contender would be the artist Pasiteles's 'Famous Works from the Whole World' (which the fake-book maker has spun out into several volumes): we only get an echo of this great history of art from Pliny the Elder's use of it.

[DML]

Varro's 'Tricaranos'. A political pamphlet called 'The Three-headed Monster' must have been an interesting document on the triumvirate. Perhaps even a satire?

[Lee Perry]

Can we also suggest surviving Latin works that we would like to see become lost in lava of Pompeii? I'd like never to have to see Cicero's pompous face on the cover of a text. Maybe we could trade prose for poetry. Or how about getting some Hortensius instead?

[Michael Bulley]

totae unum historiae uersum Calui anteferamus.
Cinna recludatur sed Tacitus taceat.

[Oliver Nicholson]

Does Captain Nemo know that bits of the lost 2nd decade of Livy turned up on papyrus a few years ago. He is, I fear, welcome to my share.
May I plead for the lost letters of Lactantius (which are said to have survived till the Renaissance and were then used as Pfefferduettel). I know they come after 79, but if the Peutinger Map can show both Pompeii (destroyed 79 A.D.) and Constantinople (founded 324), one migt be allowed some chronographical latitude ?

[Mary]

Hi everyone. I must say that, in every other circumstance, I would have chosen anything by Tacitus (the author for whom, on his own, it is worth learning Latin to read)...but he fell outside my 79 AD time limit . . . m

[Nemo]

How about the missing books of Livy's history (75% of the total)and Cato the Elder's Origines and his 150 speeches?

[Eric Hirschorn]

I've always hoped that an intact copy of Tacitus' Annals would be discovered.

[Tim Lacy]

Professor Beard: I was so happy with your 5th suggestion: Umbricious Melior's Handbooks on Divination. I recently attended a Webster Lecture at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and the speaker gave an hour talk on ancient astrology. He centered his talk on the Sarapus (sp?)/Zeus astrologers, and the missing bits of material information needed to build a right view of the importance of ancient astrology. Given the missing information on how to divine, I was surprised at the pervasiveness of material culture evidence on readings and charms. ... I just looked up the talk to refresh myself. It was given by Dr. James Evans (University of Puget Sound) and titled "The Astrologer's Apparatus: A Picture of Professional Practice in Greco-Roman Egypt." - TL

[judith weingarten]

The complete poems of Sulpicia -- and her autobiography :-)

Judith
Visit Zenobia's blog at Empress of the East

[tam]

How about the Collected Letters of Atticus?

[anthony alcock]

I'd like to read Clodia's account of of her liaison with Catullus.

[Alan]

Thank you Professor Beard for taking up my suggestion and answering with your customary and admirable verve! More Ovid, to be sure! And why not more Greek plays and poetry rather than Cicero's doggerel. (Chances are he really was a bad poet!) But I would like to read his life of Cato, if I'm not mistaken that he wrote one. And why not another collection of extensive correspondence, not Cicero's but rather say ... Gaius Julius Caesar's or Pompey's or Crassus' or Lucullus'? Now there would be something to chew on.

[DemetriosX]

I'm with Bingley on the works of Claudius, but I'd also like to see the biography of Brutus that was written by his son-in-law (or was it his stepson?). Not eligible here, alas, but the missing bits of Tacitus would also be nice.

[Liz]

So, this is the list of stuff we haven't got that we'd like to have - what's on the list of stuff that we have got but behave as if is still stuck in the Villa, and is thus in need of charismatic rescuing?

As for Philodemus, I'm with JIW - his poetical works do look like they're worth a look. David Sider has an article out explaining how they're all in praise and pursuit of the ideal philosopher's wife, which I still need to read fully, but does look like quite fruitful material to ponder. When I have time.

[Adam Greves]

Suetonius' Lives of Famous Whores or Physical Defects of Mankind.

[Jackie]

Forget the 'women's literature'. Agrippina's story, in her own words, would be a wonderful antidote to the poison dispensed by her male detractors, Tacitus and co! Not that I'm biased you understand!

[Dylan]

The first two books of Curtius Rufus! Would be great to see how his treatment of Alexander's early years compared with our other sources.

[JIW]

A cute idea on the transmission of Euripides... Seeing as some of the Euripides plays in your list begin with Eta and others Epsilon, does this mean that a corollary of your hypothesis is that there were no plays whose title began with Zeta or Theta?
I'll let the digs against Philodemus go for now... Great literature it might not be, but I'm not sure Cicero's poetry would be a better bet. And have you ever looked at Philodemus' poetry? You might like that.

[Richard]

I can't resist pointing out that the thirst for new material is of course a great reason to study Greek, where new texts come up all the time...

"Just occasionally" doesn't really do the papyri justice - only the last few years have included such star publications as the "new Sappho" from a mummy-wrapping; the Archilochus elegy from Oxyrhynchus; the Milan Posidippus, with dozens of new epigrams wrapped around another mummy...).

The translation of the Cicero line I have heard runs "O! How fortunate the state to be innate in my consulate"! (For the full effect, pronounce each -ate like the number eight).

And I *like* Menander!!!

But in Latin I'm with Michael Bulley: more Calvus, Cinna, other contemporaries of Catullus.

Best,
Richard

[Mary]

I´m with you on not digging more up, I really would hate to see a further rise on this desperate search for ever more information with no reference to quality.

[Michael Bulley]

The poems of Licinius Calvus, Catullus's friend, as one imagines they were very good, and maybe those of "Suffenus" (Catullus 22), as it might help our understanding of Latin poetry to see why Catullus thought they were so bad.

[bingley]

The rest of Cornelius Nepos, please. Not a profound historian/biographer, perhaps, but his quick summaries are very handy.

The complete works of the Emperor Claudius, especially his Etruscan and Carthaginian histories, and his autobiography.