rob117

When talking about the survival of ancient manuscripts, members of this forum often refer to the Dark Ages as a total collapse of classical civilization. The fact is they weren't; the Dark Ages were pretty much an exclusively West European phenomenon. The Byzantine civilization continued the legacy of the classical world relatively uninterrupted, and the Byzantines apparently had access to many classical authors that we do not. Stephanus of Byzantium, writing in the sixth century, cetrainly did- his works provide us with almost 400 framents of Hecataeus of Miletus. Sudas (10th century) did as well, as did George Syncellus (9th century). The loss of ancient authors is simply due to the fact that over time, many of them weren't considered important enough to bother with (and the shift in values due to Christianization was a factor in these decisions), and manuscripts were being lost all the way up to the dawn of the age printing. It was only with the printing press that the preservation of any and all works was expected. Loss of ancient books occured within the classical world as well as after- Manetho was apparently lost by the third century AD as Sextus Julius Africanus, writing in the early third century, knows only Josephus' epitome of him; and even some of Chaucer's works from the 14th century have been lost. The loss of classical culture was not abrupt, and blaming a period of some 300 years of relative illiteracy that was really only a Western European phenomenon in the first place is not the best solution.

On a related note, the loss of knowledge of cuneiform and hieroglyphic literature that occured largely as a result of the Hellenization of the Near East in the 500 years after Alexander's conquest was a much more complete loss than the alleged loss of classical civilization that occured after Christianization. We at least have some material from the ancient Greek and Roman authors that has been preserved and passed down; detailed knowledge of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia was only possible after the decipherment of their writing systems and subsequent unearthing of their texts.

So next time you think of lamenting the loss of classical knowledge due to the neglect of Christian copyists, keep in mind that it could have been a lot worse than it is. The contrast is clear when realize we have a fairly complete historical record of the ancient world back to the 5th century BC (when the Greeks started writing history) whereas anything before that is pieced together from archaeological evidence.

Malachi151

This has been discussed in detail in this thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=179520

Basically, what you say is wrong

rob117

I wasn't talking about Christianity's effect on the loss of classical knowledge per se. I even acknowledged that Christianity played a part in it. My point was that the popular image of the Dark Ages as a priest-ridden age of ignorance that is often expressed on this forum is not entirely accurate- the Dark Ages were confined to Western Europe; eastward the classical heritage was kept alive and the loss of important books was done only gradually, through neglect rather than active hostility. The early Christians were hostile to the classical heritage; there is no doubt about that, but their hostility was due to what it represented- the mainstream pagan Greco-Roman culture they actively rejected. Once classical paganism was dead as an active religious system, the Christians' hostility to everything produced by it died as well, as its heritage was no longer a threat. Why else would Byzantine (and Muslim Arab) writers continue to preserve its works?

Roger Pearse

Well, they were actually. Every generation had less than the one before. You weren't safe, your property wasn't safe, you couldn't give your children what you had, and every year things grew worse.

I have seen this revisionism touted before, by people (not you) who live in safety. But not, I notice, from people living in Zimbabwe, who are experiencing just what are the consequences of the collapse of civilised power and just what it is like to live under a barbarian kinglet, weak in all respects except preventing everyone from living a decent life.

This is really an overstatement. The ruinous wars with the Persians did run down the Eastern Roman state.

This is true, not least because the school curriculum remained based on the pagan classics. Indeed the breakpoint seems to be 1204, when the renegade army originally hired for the 4th Crusade devastated Constantinople. Photius has far more than we do; but he is pretty much the last.

There are losses later than this. One of the early humanists records that the emperor had a complete copy of Diodorus Siculus in the palace (now extant only in portions). And even later, there are losses.

This is all true, of course.

True.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

This is the law of the Eastern Empire, tell me if you don't see some obvious problems here, and this is just the tip of the iceberg:

Many schools of philosophy and learning were shut down throughout the east as well. As I pointed out in the linked thread, just because we have a book today doesn't mean that this knowledge was "maintained" or known throughout the Dark Ages, many of these books were either lost entirely and hidden away for hundreds of years, only to be rediscovered in the 12th-15th centuries, basically making it out of luck, or they were maintained by the Arabs.

Even of the pre-Christian books that were maintained, their ideas were not allowed to be taught, the people copying them sometimes didn't understand them, or they were copied only for the purpose of arguing against them. Several works of Galen were maintained, but only a few sections were actually used, most of it was considered heresy and not taught. The core ideas, the fundamental principles, were unused. The ideas that led to increasing knowledge through experimental means was not adopted. Some conclusions of Galen that were compatible with soul / body duality were taught but they weren't able to use his methods to make any new discoveries.

Astronomy was in shambles, much like the works of Galen, several works were maintained, but their ideas were frozen in time, and only the works that were compatible with the Christian worldview were used. In ancient Greece and Rome there was a huge array of different cosmologies, and even heliocentric theory. The atomists argues that the universe was infinite with an infinite number of worlds, etc., and none of that was allowed by the Christians or even maintained. We only know of most of the ideas of the atomists through the anti-atomist writings that outline their positions only for the purpose of denouncing them.

All of materialism, essentially 1/3 of the philosophical schools prior to Christians, was considered heresy, denounced, outlawed, and thee works destroyed. We only know of it from the anti-materialist writings and few surviving scraps that made it due to luck and being lost somewhere and later re-found hundreds of years later.