The Lost Books of Photios’ Bibliotheca

The Lost Books of Photios’ Bibliotheca

If New Atheists know anything about ancient Greek and Roman learning, they know that Christians destroyed it. They will grudgingly admit that at least some ancient works of wisdom, science and rationalism were preserved in the “Dark Ages”, but generally this is quickly followed by laments that these represent only a fraction of the storied wealth of ancient learning and thundering condemnations of the Christian destruction, suppression and neglect that led to this learning’s ultimate loss. But is this accurate?

(Alleged) Bonfires of Books

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell famously observes “To lose one parent …. may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” To New Atheists, much the same could be said about the loss of the bulk of Classical texts between the late Roman Era and the invention of printing. Estimates as to the extent of the loss vary, but the usual guess is that we have about ten percent of what once existed. To the shrill Lady Bracknells of New Atheism, the idea that a culture could simply “lose” a whole 90 percent of its literary corpus has to go beyond even carelessness – only wilful destruction and suppression could explain such a cataclysmic loss. Christopher Hitchens’ acerbic observations are typical, as he writes of:

“[T]he lost works of Aristotle and other Greeks … ‘lost’ because the Christian authorities had burned some, suppressed others, and closed the schools of philosophy, on the grounds that there could have been no useful reflections on morality before the preaching of Jesus.”(God is Not Great, p. 29)

At the other end of the intelligence scale of New Atheist polemics is the sprawling chaos of jesusneverexisted.com which, as the name would suggest, is mainly a tangle of web pages devoted to Jesus Mythicism maintained by someone called Kenneth Humphreys. This jumbled mess of a site does not limit itself to the usual arguments against a historical Jesus, but veers off in all directions condemning Christianity for a multitude of sins, both real and imagined. To to the perpetually hysterical Humphreys, the loss of ancient learning was due purely to a campaign of destruction by his cartoon villains:

“‘Pious monks in remote fastnesses copying the Classics’? Do not believe a word of it! Remote they may have been, pious perhaps. Illiterate and indolent for the most part, they re-used (and thus ‘preserved’) ancient parchments because of the scarcity of new parchment. Washing off ancient wisdom, and copying without understanding their biblical fables, they excelled at adding pictures and calligraphy based on pre-Christian tribal motifs. Actually, it was the neglected archives of Byzantium and the schools of Islam that preserved much of classic learning, which trickled into western Europe, particularly after the 13th century.” (Humphreys, “The Closing Mind – The Insanity Begins”)

Of course, all of the Classical works that we can be sure Humphreys has never actually read were preserved for him by those “indolent monks”. There is no evidence that such works were typically or even regularly recycled as palimpsests and the example of the Archimedes Palimpsest, which he seems to be leaning on here, actually shows that those Byzantine archives were far from “neglected” and in fact represented a vigorous living tradition of preserving ancient works. Like most of his ilk, Humphreys also seems under the impression that the texts from those “schools of Islam” must have fallen from the heavens, rather than being provided to those Islamic scholars by still more of those pesky monks’ manuscripts in Greek and Syriac.

The idea that the loss of ancient works came as a result of active suppression by “Christian authorities” coupled with ignorant neglect is the persistent element in these laments. In her recent debut book The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, British popular history writer Catherine Nixey harps on this theme. “Works by censured philosophers were forbidden,” she solemnly assures her readers, “and bonfires blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.” (p. xxxii) I imagine this kind of stuff sells popular books, but if we actually turn to the evidence and the relevant scholarship, we find very little to support these ideas.  The Christian emperors of the fourth and fifth centuries were not shy about forbidding and periodically burning books, but examination of the collected Imperial edicts of the Theodosian Code reveals a total lack of any censuring of philosophers or outlawing of their books and no injunctions against Classical texts generally.

In the key scholarly monograph on the transmission of Classical works, L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson’s Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literaturethe authors do note that “many influential clergy” disliked pagans and their literature and learning equally, but they go on to observe that “if this attitude had been adopted by all the clergy it would in due course, as the new religion became universal by the fifth century, have imposed an effective censorship on classical literature.” (p. 48) The key point is that there was actually no blanket disapproval of “pagan” literature and scholarship, let alone the “outlawing” of it or the Nazi-style bonfires of Nixey’s fervid imagining. Reynolds and Wilson note, correctly, that the decline in interest in this non-Christian literature did indeed have an impact on the number of copies in circulation and therefore the ultimate chances of their survival. But they also note that the fact we have any such works at all is due to a relatively benign attitude toward this material. They go on to say that despite a short period when the pagan emperor Julian’s renewed restrictions on Christianity inflamed things, “the persecution soon ended and pagan and Christian continued to use the same [Classical authors] without serious polemic or controversy.” (p. 50)  Interestingly, Nixey cites Reynolds and Wilson several times on other points, but neglects to mention these and similar observations that substantially undercut the lurid tale she tells.

As Reynolds and Wilson also note, any “bonfires” of books in this period tended to be of the works of “heretics” from non-conformist variants of Christianity rather than works of pagan scholarship. Apart from these variant Christian texts, the books that the Christian emperors were most keen on rooting out were works of divination, augury and prophecy, since all later Roman emperors, pagan and Christian, saw the private consulting of auspices or the consultation of prophetic books about their rule as a potential act of sedition. Nixey tries to claim this was merely a “pretext” for the destruction of hated Classical learning, though does so with little evidence.

What people like Nixey neglect to mention is the fact while some prominent clergy argued that the Bible and the works of the Church fathers were sufficient for a Christian’s education, others argued that all knowledge came ultimately from God and so “pagan” learning was a gift to be used. And the key point here is that these were the Christian authorities who won the debate over the use of non-Christian learning. It was not hardliners like Tertullian, Tatian or John Chrysostom who ended up setting the intellectual agenda for Christianity for the next 1000 years, it was the more liberal and open Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basil of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus. John of Damascus encouraged his readers to study “the best contributions of the philosophers of the Greeks” arguing that “whatever there is of good has been given to men from above by God, since ‘every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights'”(Philosophical Chapters, 1958,5). Similarly, Clement argued that philosophy was worth study because “[t]he way of truth is therefore one. But into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides.”(Stromata, I.5). Modern polemicists may sneer that these Patristic writers still saw philosophy as ancillary to or “the handmaiden” of theology, but that is essentially just condemning ancient people for not holding modern priorities. The fact remains that these were the authorities whose view prevailed, not the hardliners who the polemicists always highlight.  Edward Grant makes the key point here:

“The handmaiden concept of Greek learning was widely adopted and became the standard Christian attitude toward secular learning. …. With the total triumph of Christianity at the end of the fourth century, the Church might have reacted against pagan learning in general, and Greek philosophy in particular, finding much in the latter that was unacceptable or perhaps even offensive. They might have launched a major effort to suppress pagan learning as a danger to the Church and its doctrines. But they did not.”(The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, p. 4, my emphasis)

Stupid Neglect?

So the basis for any systematic or orchestrated suppression or destruction of these works is flimsy, but polemicists like Hitchens, Humphreys and Nixey can fall back on the lesser charge of criminal neglect.  Here is Nixey again:

Other ancient texts were lost through ignorance.  Despised and ignored, over the years, they simply crumbled into dust, food for bookworms but not for thought. The work of Democritus, one of the greatest Greek philosophers and the father of atomic theory, was entirely lost. …. One can achieve a great deal by the blunt weapons of indifference and sheer stupidity.” (p. xxxii)

Again, this is the kind of sneering Presentism that mars most of this sort of prejudiced polemics. To begin with, while the works of these Christian scholars may not be to many modern reader’s taste, to pretend that thinkers of the sophistication of Augustine or writers of the elegance of Gregory of Nazianzus were simply “stupid” is pure ignorance, blind bigotry or both. Whatever it is, it certainly is not sober, objective historical analysis. And while we may be far more interested in reading any of the works of Democritus or Suetonius’ lost and intriguing Famous Courtesans over say, Eusebius of Thessalonica’s Against the Aphthartodocetae, blaming people in the past for preserving the works that interested them rather than the ones that interest us is simply childish. This also applies to non-Christian ancients. Like most such polemicists, Nixey seems to assume that if a work did not survive to us, it must be because of Christian neglect. It does not seem to occur to her that many of these works could have been lost or on their way to oblivion long before Christianity came to the fore. As interesting as the work of the “father of atomic theory” may be to us, Democritus and his school were not held in as high regard by rival philosophers, with the Aristotelians and Platonists being vehemently opposed to their ideas. Diogenes Laërtius reports that “Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect” (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IX.7.40) – prejudices and trends in thought, with their impact on the survival of works, went on long before Christians appeared on the scene. While ancient Epicurean or Stoic philosophy can be, with the right pretty packaging, made appealing to modern readers, these lesser schools were already losing the race before Constantine’s fateful conversion.

But how much of the loss of that estimated 90 percent of ancient works be attributed to these changes in intellectual fashion and how much is simply due to the fact that keeping any work alive in a pre-printing world was a battle against probability? As I have pointed out here before, many modern readers – used to books that are so plentiful they are disposable objects or not even objects at all – fail to grasp how few copies of any work existed at any given time. Manuscripts were fragile, fell apart from use and, in a world where any artificial light meant open flames, prone to burning. The maintenance of even modest collections of books therefore required some level of patronage, which was not always constant or reliable, and such collections usually resided in major urban centres as a result. And major urban centres in the ancient world tended to be sacked and burned eventually. Even in the most peaceful times and in the cases of books which were revered and loved, the odds were stacked against any book’s survival in the long run. Given all this, was it really that a combination of Christian malice and Christian neglect was responsible for the loss of most of the learning of the ancient world, or were Christian books just as likely to be lost as “pagan” ones?

Photios’ Bibliotheca

One work which may give us something like an answer is the Bibliotheca of Photios of Constantinople (c. 810- c. 893). Photios was an interesting man who lived in interesting (and therefore tumultuous) times. A well-educated aristocrat, he took advantage of his family connections to the court of the Empress-Regent Theodora to rise in secular ranks, serving as captain of the Imperial Guard, then chief Imperial Secretary and he also undertook an embassy to the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. A change in Imperial administration saw his career suddenly switch to the Church and when the Patriarch of Constantinople, Ignatios, was deposed in 858 AD, he was fast-tracked into the job and so was successively ordained lector, sub-deacon, deacon, priest and finally bishop and Patriarch over five very long days of back to back liturgies. Photios’ unconventional elevation caused a scandal and set off a complex (and, literally, Byzantine) series of ecclesiastical repercussions, with several Church councils, depositions and reinstatements and a schism with the western Church and the Roman Papacy following in consequence.

Through all this and during his several exiles, Photios maintained a reputation as a scholar and prolific writer. He seems to have been friends with the polymath Leo the Mathematician and, as Patriarch, had access to the extensive collections in the Imperial Library. His most famous work is the Bibliotheca, also called the Myriobiblos or “the Ten Thousand Books”. The latter title is an exaggeration, but his work is a summary of 280 volumes of various works he claims to have read. It is part book review, part bragging and part synopsis of works he found interesting. Two things make it interesting for us: (i) he read both Christian and non-Christian books and (ii) most of the books he describes no longer survive – for dozens of them, Photios’ epitomes are all we know of these lost texts.

I have been drawing attention to Photios’ book for some years, noting that his snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century not only shows a range of non-Christian texts by Classical writers, but also shows that all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries. The majority of the books he mentions, both Christian or otherwise, are no longer extant. But while reading the infuriatingly polemical book by Catherine Nixey mentioned above, I wondered exactly what proportion of Photios’ Christian works were no longer extant and how this compared with the “pagan” and Jewish works on his list. If Hitchens, Humphreys and Nixey’s screeds are correct, surely a far higher proportion of his Christian books should still be in existence. So I sat down with a translation of the Bibliotheca and a spreadsheet and began to map each work mentioned.

This turned out to be a lengthy process, as Photios’s 280 volumes contained, according to his account, no less than 297 separate works. Most of these were identifiable and therefore able to be sorted into “Christian” (CH), “pagan” (P) or “Jewish” (J) – the only exceptions were three anonymous lexicons which I left out of my calculations as a result. I then sorted each group into two categories – “Extant” and “Lost”. Several works survive in incomplete form and others only as  fragments. The former I sorted into the “Extant” category if more than 60% of the work survived and the latter went into the “Lost” category. Here are the final results:


Photios’ Bibliotheca – Analysis

Total – 294 books

Christian Total – 185 books

Pagan/Jewish Total – 109 books


Extant Total – 107 books

Lost Total – 187 books

Extant % – 36.39%

Lost % – 63.60%


Christian Extant – 66 books

Christian Lost – 119 books

Christian Extant % – 35.67%


Pagan/Jewish Extant – 41 books

Pagan/Jewish Lost – 68 books

Pagan/Jewish Extant % – 37.61%


Far from being less likely to still be extant, the non-Christian works in Photios’ list are actually very slightly more likely to survive (37.61%) than the Christian works he mentions (35.67%). This is despite the fact that most of the “pagan” and Jewish works he mentions are much older than most of the Christian works. Of course, Photios only tells us about the books he has read so his list is a snapshot, not a fully representative sample. The Christian books he mentions are heavily skewed toward theological disputations, sermons and scriptural commentaries and the non-Christian works are mainly historical works, speeches and lexicons rather than philosophy or the natural sciences. But probably the other key finding here is exactly how much of the Christian material is no longer extant: a full 64.33% of the works he mentions. If it were mainly “indifference” that accounted for the loss of ancient works, this percentage would be much lower for the works that Christians cared more about. The fact it is so high indicates that while some indifference probably played a part, keeping any work in circulation in this period was a battle against the historical odds.

For those who are interested, here are the data I worked from:

AuthorTileChNon-ChExtantLost
Theodore the PresbyterOn the Genuineness of the works of Dionysius the AreopagiteChX
Hadrian the monkInstroduction to the ScripturesChX
NonnosusHistoryChX
Theodore of MopsuestiaFor Basil Against EunomiusChX
Gregory of NyssaFor Basil Against Eunomius 1ChX
Gregory of NyssaFor Basil Against Eunomius 2ChX
Origen De PrincipiisChX
EusebiusPraeparatio EvangelicaChX
EusebiusDemonstratio Evangelica ChX
EusebiusPraeparatio EcclesiasticaChX
EusebiusDemonstratio EcclesiasticaChX
EusebiusRefutation and defenceChX
ApollinariusAgainst the HeathenChX
ApollinariusOn PietyChX
ApollinariusOn TruthChX
Gelasius of CyzicusActs of the First Council – NicaeaChX
VariousActs of the Third Council – EphesusChX
VariousActs of the Fourth Council – ChalcedonChX
VariousActs of the Fifth Council – ConstantinopleChX
VariousActs of the Sixth Council – Constantinople IIChX
VariousActs of the Seventh Council – Nicaea IIChX
John PhiloponusOn the ResurrectionChX
Theodosius the MonkRefutation of John PhiloponusChX
CononRefutation of John PhiloponusChX
EugeniusRefutation of John PhiloponusChX
ThemistiusRefutation of John PhiloponusChX
AnonymousActs of a disputation between Tritheites and HesitatorsChX
John ChrysostomNotes on DeathChX
John ChrysostomHomilies on the AscensionChX
John ChrysostomHomilies on PentecostChX
Synesius of CyreneOn ProvidenceChX
Synesius of CyreneOn the Kingdom ChX
EusebiusEcclesiastical HistoryChX
SocratesEcclesiastical HistoryChX
Evagrius ScholasticusEcclesiastical HistoryChX
SozomenEcclesiastical HistoryChX
TheodoretEcclesiastical HistoryChX
Athanasius LettersChX
Justus of TiberiasChronicle of the Kings of the JewsJX
Julius AfricanusChronographyChX
Philip of SideChristian History ChX
Cosmas IndicopleustesChristian TopographyChX
AnonymousOn GovernmentChX
Theodore of Mopsuestia Commentary on GenesisChX
Eusebius Against HieroclesChX
PhilostorgiusEcclesiastical HistoryChX
John of AegaeEcclesiastical HistoryChX
Basil the CicilianEcclesiastical HistoryChX
John PhiloponusOn the HexaemeronChX
PhilostratusLife of Apollonius of TyanaPX
AndronicianusAgainst the EunomiansChX
Theodoret Against HeresiesChX
TheodoretEranistesX
TheodoretPolymorphos ChX
Flavius JosephusJewish WarJX
 HippolytusOn the UniverseChX
Cyril of AlexandriaAgainst NestoriusChX
Nicias the MonkAgainst the Seven Chapters of PhiloponusChX
HesychiusOn the Brazen SerpentChX
AnonymousActs of the synod of Side, 383, against the MessaliansChX
AnonymousActs of the synod of Carthage, 412 or 411, against the PelagiansChX
VariousCopy of the Proceedings taken against the Doctrines of NestoriusChX
John PhiloponusAgainst the Fourth CouncilChX
Theodoret of CyrrhusAgainst Heresies ChX
AppianRoman HistoryPX
ArrianParthicaPX
VariousActs of the Synod of the Oak, 403ChX
HerodotusHistoryPX
AeschinesAgainst TimarchusPX
AeschinesOn the False EmbassyPX
Aeschines Against CtesiphonPX
Praxagoras of AthensHistory of Constantine the GreatPX
Praxagoras of AthensThe Kings of AthensPX
Praxagoras of AthensAlexander King of MacedonPX
ProcopiusHistoryChX
Theophanes of ByzantiumHistoryChX
Theophylact SimocattaHistoriesChX
NicephorusHistorical EpitomeChX
Sergius the ConfessorHistoryChX
CephalionHistorical EpitomePX
Hesychius IllustriusHistoryChX
Hesychius IllustriusOn JustinChX
Diodorus SiculusHistorical LibraryPX
Cassius DioHistoryPX
CtesiasPersicaPX
CtesiasHistory of IndiaPX
HeliodorusAethiopicaPX
ThemistiusPolitical OrationsPX
LesbonaxSpeechesPX
John Philoponus On the Trinity against John ScholasticusChX
JosephusAntiquities of the JewsJX
EunapiusChronicle PX
MalchusByzantine HistoryPX
CandidusHistoryChX
OlympiodorusHistoriesPX
Theodore of MopsuestiaOn Persian MagicCHX
DexippusHistoryPX
DexippusHistorical EpitomePX
DexippusScythiaPX
Dionysius of HalicarnassusHistoriesPX
Dionysius of HalicarnassusSynopsisPX
HeraclianAgainst the ManichaeansChX
John ChrysostomLettersChX
Achilles TatiusAdventures of Clitophon and LeucippePX
Gelasius of CyzicusProceedings of the Synod of NicaeaChX
Gelasius of CaesareaContinuation of the History of Eusebius PamphiliChX
LibaniusVarious worksPX
ArrianHistory of the Reign of AlexanderPX
ArrianContinuationPX
ArrianBithynicaPX
IamblichusDramaticonPX
John ScythopolitaAgainst SchismaticsChX
John ScythopolitaAgainst Eutyches and DioscorusChX
George of Alexandria Life of St. ChrysostomChX
Phlegon of TrallesCollection of Chronicles and List of Olympian VictorsPX
ZosimusNew HistoryPX
HerodianHistoryPX
The Emperor HadrianDeclamationsPX
VictorinusPanegyrics on the Emperor ZenoChX
Gelasius of CaesareaAgainst the AnomoeansChX
Philo JudaeusAllegories of the Sacred LawsJX
Philo Judaeus On the Civil LifeJX
Philo JudaeusAgainst FlaccusJX
Philo JudaeusAgainst GaiusJX
Philo JudaeusOn the Essenes and TherapeutaeJX
Theognostus of AlexandriaOutlinesChX
Basil of CiciliaAgainst John ScythopolitaChX
Theodore of AlexandriaAgainst Themistius ChX
Clement of AlexandriaOutlinesChX
Clement of AlexandriaThe TutorChX
Clement of Alexandria The MiscellaniesChX
Clement of RomeApostolic Constitutions and RecognitionsChX
Lucius of CharinusCircuits of the ApostlesChX
AnonymousAgainst the QuartodecimansChX
MetrodorusOn the date of EasterChX
AnonymousA Third Volume on the Holy Easter FeastChX
Anonymous In Defense of OrigenChX
Pamphilus & Eusebius Defense of Origen ChX
PieriusHomiliesChX
IrenaeusAdversus HaeresesChX
HippolytusAgainst Heresies ChX
EpiphaniusPanarionChX
EpiphaniusAncoratus ChX
EpiphaniusOn Weights and MeasuresChX
Justin MartyrApologyChX
Clement of Rome Letters to the CorinthiansChX
PolycarpLetter to the PhilippiansChX
EusebiusLife of ConstantineChX
LucianDialoguesPX
Lucius of PatraeMetamorphosesPX
DamasciusIncredible StoriesPX
AmyntianusOn AlexanderPX
Palladius et.al.DeclamationsPX
Cyril of AlexandriaThesauriChX
Eunomius of CyzicusApologyChX
Eunomius of CyzicusAgainst BasilChX
Eunomius of Cyzicus Letters ChX
AthanasiusCommentary on EcclesiastesChX
AthanasiusCommentary on the Song of SongsChX

101 thoughts on “The Lost Books of Photios’ Bibliotheca

    1. As I may have mentioned before, most of these articles are being written with one eye on re-working them as chapters in a book on New Atheist bad history. There are several big topics that I still need to tackle here (Hypatia, Copernicus, Galileo, the Papacy and the Nazis), which I hope to cover over the next year or so. This means any book will be a while off, but the continued support of my readers here means that it is likely to happen. Thanks.

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        1. Yes, I wrote a couple of longish answers to questions relevant to him there. One of them, in answer to the question “What is the most misunderstood historical event?” got 3,220 upvotes. Yet, strangely, it’s the fifth highest ranked answer to that question, behind an answer about a woman who supposedly gave birth to rabbits which got 12 upvotes. Why? Who knows. The weird Quora answer algorithms are one of several reasons I’ve abandoned that site.

          The Galileo Affair is so complex and is such a central feature of New Atheist pseudo history that I suspect it will require a series of 3-4 articles, though that will probably include ones on cosmology before and after Copernicus and another on how the scientific consensus of Galileo’s time shifted to accept heliocentrism by about a century later.

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  1. Thanks to those who caught a couple of miscalculations in the first version of this article. I was doing those at the end of a long day of writing and it showed. They have now been fixed – thanks again.

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  2. Marvellous to see this analysis of the Bibliotheca! (And why has nobody translated the rest of this work?) Thank you. Hard data like this is great to have.

    I don’t know if you are aware that N.G. Wilson suggested 1% of ancient literature survives? He is following an estimate by Pietro Bembo. (See my note here: https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2015/12/19/pietro-bembo-less-than-1-of-ancient-literature-survives/). But all these estimates must be guesses.

    1. I’m glad you’ve found it interesting Roger, as I’ve often found your writing to be very useful over the years. And thanks for your analysis of Bembo’s estimate. Catherine Nixey’s awful new book, which I am reading through gritted teeth at the moment, uses the “1% survival” claim in her slightly crazed introduction. It’s one of several claims she backs with no evidence and doesn’t footnote, and I wasted some time a couple of days ago trying to find out where it came from. She said that we only have 1% of all Latin literature (Nixey, p. xxxii), so it may not be based on Benbo’s estimate. Elsewhere she gives the more common estimate I refer to in my article above of 10% survival for both Greek and Latin literature. For this her endnote cites “Gerstinger (1948) and Bardon (1952/1956), quoted in Rohmann (2016)” (p. 166, n. 35). So that’s Hans Gerstinger, Bestand und Überlieferung der Literaturwerke des griechisch-römischen Altertums (Graz: Kienreich, 1948) and Henry Bardon, La littérature latine inconnue, (2 vol. Paris: Klincksieck, 1952/56). Checking Rohmann, whose book she seems to lean on very heavily, it seems both the “1%” estimate for Latin literature and the 10% for Classical works overall come from him. He writes:

      “Most of the literary works of Antiquity are lost. For example, it is estimated that for Latin literature less than one per cent of titles survive in total.²⁴ The ratio of extant titles to titles lost but known from secondary references is less than 10 per cent for both the Greek and Latin literature.²⁵” (Dirk Rohmann, Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity; Studies in Text Transmission (Boston: De Gruyter, 2016, p. 8)

      The second note is to Gerstinger and Bardon. The first, on the “1%” claim, cites “Fuhrmann, (2005), 17”, which is a reference to Manfred Fuhrmann, Geschichte der römischen Literatur (Reprint. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005). Google Books doesn’t give me a preview of Fuhrmann’s book and it’s probably beyond my non-existent German anyway, so perhaps someone else can take up the trail from there. I am learning to be wary of Nixey’s citations and Rohmann’s book, while much more cautious than Nixey’s, is also riddled with problems of interpretation.

      1. Thank you for your very kind words. I try to be useful.

        These estimates of loss are all interesting. Thank you.

        I was looking at Catharine Nixey’s twitter feed this evening, and found an interesting quote she attributed to Chrysostom. This turns out to be from Rohmann, whose book I found online, quoting a work not translated which I’ve thought about having done. Must read his book.

        1. Reading Nixey’s book is a chore, I can assure you. I only write notes in the margins of books I dislike and so far my copy of hers has an average of three asterisks with exclamation marks per page.

          She completely misrepresentss a statement of Chrysostom’s:

          “Far from mourning the loss [of Classical works], Christians delighted in it. As John Chrysostom crowed, the writings ‘of the Greeks have all perished and are obliterated’” (Nixey, pp. 165-66)

          Except in the Latin edition what Chrysostom actually said was “ac Graecorum quidem opiniones exstinctae deletaeque sunt.” “Opinions“, not “writings”. Yet again, Nixey is depending on Rohmann for thsi quote and didn’t bother to check the original. Her book is absolutely riddled with this kind of stuff.

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          1. I see in her replies to your tweets Nixey is offering to educate you about ancient texts Roger. How kind of her!

          2. I was tempted to comment “LOL. Catherine Nixey offering to school Roger Pearse on ancient literature – classic!” but I’m resisting the urge to get into a Twitter spat with her. I’ll keep my powder dry for my critical review of her book.

          3. I think you are wise to hold off until you can do a proper response. I would guess that her claim is backed up by quote-mining. I see that she didn’t display any interest in whether Rohmann had quote-mined Chrysostom Contra Judaeos et Paganos (although I think his prose is merely confused, and she misread it on top of that). But I’m too busy this week to engage seriously with her. Will she be the new Acharya S, one wonders?

          4. She’s a hell of a lot smarter and more articulate than the late “Acharya S.” Smart enough to get a mainstream publisher and some slick marketing for example.

          5. She has a good editor in George Morely, that’s for certain. Morely queried some of my recent Twitter comments about Nixey and seemed genuinely mystified as to why I would have a problem with her book. That some people actually care about objective historical analysis seemed a revelation to her.

          6. Interesting. It’s a different world, isn’t it? But Nixey is really a journalist so this is an attempt perhaps to stir up some fuss and shift some product.

          7. I am not aware that there is a “Latin edition” of the works by John Chrysostom. To be sure, there is a Latin translation of the works (1718-1738) by Bernard de Montfaucon, reprinted in PG, but I have not so far heard of any Latin edition.

      2. I can read Fuhrmann’s book for you. Consider that a substitute for a Patreon support (are you on Parteon at all? Sorry if you already said that, I must have missed it).

        1. That’s very kind. I hope I’ve given sufficient bibliographical information above for you to locate the passage in question. I’d be interested to know how he supports the “1%” claim. And no, I’m not on Patreon. This blog is my gentlemanly hobby and so is funded by my vast personal wealth (and yes, that was a joke). Thanks in advance.

          1. “I hope I’ve given sufficient bibliographical information above for you to locate the passage in question.”

            Page 17, or?

            At any rate, there will be a chapter specifically on textual transmission and the passage in question will be there.

          2. Page 17 is the reference that Rohmann gives, but whatever you can find will be gratefully appreciated.

          3. I ordered the book almost a month ago and it hasn’t arrived yet. Just so you know I haven’t forgotten my promise.

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  3. Tim what would you say is a motivation of Catherine Nixey? Carrier is a narcissist so I get him. What do you think Nixey is doing?

    1. It’s always hard to tell these things. Thirteen years ago she wrote a (I assume) tongue-in-cheek piece for the Independent called “What’s the point of a classics degree?” that basically said her degree from Cambridge was a self-indulgent waste of time. Recently she wrote a piece for The Sunday Times telling the story of how her father went from being a monk to marrying her mother, who had been a nun. It’s an interesting account of the fallout from the Second Vatican Council and a reflection on the reasons people stay in or leave religions. But there are details in it and in the introduction to her book that indicate she has a rather weird perspective on the Catholic Church.

      The Times piece talks about how pop music made her uncomfortable as a child because she wasn’t allowed to listen to it at home. Apparently lipstick and high heels were also forbidden and even at university she was disturbed by the fact a friend had never been baptised. She characterises her upbringing as very happy, which I’m sure is true, but also seems to think the forbidding of pop music and lipstick was normal for a Catholic upbringing, which I don’t think any Catholics I know would agree with. In her book she assures her readers that her parents faith was “never dogmatic” and supports this by saying if she asked them about the origins of the world “I was more likely to be told about the Big Bang than Genesis” or “told about evolution than Adam”. This seems to imply that she thinks more dogmatic Catholic parents would be inclined to do otherwise, which is a very odd view of Catholic teaching.Perhaps she’s never heard of Georges Lemaître.

      It seems pretty clear that she is still working through this rather peculiar upbringing and has emerged with no great love of Christianity, as some of we apostates do I suppose. Perhaps she’s worked out what to do with that pointless Classics degree after all and is using it to belatedly work through her teenage angst.

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  4. What is depressing is that Nixey’s book won an award from the Royal Society of Literature, whose judges called it “riveting” and “a powerful corrective to our view of Christianity as a religion of peace, showing how it triumphed through violence, philistinism and wholesale barbarity”.

    At least on Amazon there are some 1* reviews.

    Tim, if I can call you that, if you do write your intended book, you’ll have to come up with a snappy title so it will fall off the shelves.

    1. I just had a look at some of the Amazon.co.uk reviews. I loved the one that declares “Every Christian should read this book, and then demand a response from The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian Churches.” Yes, I can image the churches will be rocked to their very foundations by a biased little book written by an arts editor for a newspaper.

      1. I wonder if the Primate of All England is getting such demands, & what he would have to say about events that supposedly took place centuries before the founding of Anglicanism? ” Oh, so you do not care for Catholics, that is quite low church of you, I suppose”?

    2. The whole anti-theist “movement”/cult and anti-Christian sentiment (history has shown the extreme results of that) is depressing. Straw-manning various faiths & beliefs (Christianity in particular), synchronizing science with materialism, propagating the far-leftist ideology, and even going so far as to butcher history; that I cannot forgive.

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      1. The New Atheist “movement”, especially in the US, is currently going through paroxysms over the number of Alt Right-style people who are becoming prominent in its ranks. So you may want to modify that “propagating the far-leftist ideology” stuff. I also find that what many conservative people call “far-leftist ideology” would actually be called “normal, fair and sensible” by most other people, especially those of us who live outside the weird political maelstrom that is the USA. But please stick purely to discussing history here.

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        1. I was particularly referring to third-wave feminism and all that bs. Hey, I’m normal :p I’m not conservative either, just a history buff who’s rather disturbed with the direction the world is headed into, thinking out loud.
          And good idea, haha. The Catholic Church is no saintly institution (pun intended), but other than preserving the ancient works (that which the Golden Age Muslims didn’t get a hold of), what other good would you say it has done to the world overall?

          1. “Good” is so subjective I can’t see a way to make that kind of assessment. I’m not comfortable with value judgments about history, apart from history that is within living memory and part of our world and culture. Even that can get tricky.

        2. > The New Atheist “movement”, especially in the US, is currently going through paroxysms over the number of Alt Right-style people who are becoming prominent in its ranks.

          Well, New Atheism was a product of president Bush junior and his Evangelicals. Makes sense that the movement is falling apart now that Evangelicals are toast (Trump is crazy but he is secular crazy). It was only a question whether the movement would be taken over by SJWs (Carrier wing) or Alt-right folks.

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  5. Tim, Just wondered how many of the extant Christian and pagan works on P’s list were being preserved in Moorish libraries before being re-introduced to Christian Europe?

    And would that matter?

    1. None of the Christian works he mentions were preserved by Muslims, who had no interest in that material. Virtually none of the pagan works he mentions were passed from Spain to western Europe via Arabic translations that I can see. They all seem to survive because they were preserved in Greek in the Byzantine Empire or they were works the western Europeans already had in Latin.

      1. This question is about the transmission of Greek texts via Arabic translations. The ones made for Abbassid rulers tended to be of technical texts, especially medical works such as Galen, but also works of Aristotle. Some of these passed to Latin Europe during the middle ages. But although Christian works were indeed translated into Arabic, which don’t survive in Greek, I am unaware of any being transmitted via Muslims to the Latins. Not sure if any of Photius’ lost texts fall into either category.

      2. No, the Arab-speaking world improved on Classical knowledge, as did the Latin world, as an continuation of that tradition. The Byzantines did have the Greek source texts, but did not go beyond them, even though, according to adherents of the “Chart”, they ought to be romancing space-babes/hunks on Alpha Centauri by now.

        1. Did I say somewhere that the Arab world didn’t improve on Classical learning? Where do you think I said this? And the Byzantines did go beyond them in some respects – John Philoponus’ work on physics and dynamics would be one clear example. But they inherited the earlier Roman idea that, overall, there really wasn’t much to go beyond.

          “The great men of the past have said everything so perfectly that they have left nothing for us to say.”
          (Theodore Metochites, 1270–1332)

          Why medieval natural philosophers and their successors in the Scientific Revolution did not have the same attitude is one of the key questions in the history of science. In brief, I’d say it was precisely because the medieval westerners were acutely aware of how much they didn’t know and also aware that the ancients had not been right about everything. Yuval Noah Harari makes an eloquent case in his book Sapiens for this awareness being heightened by the discovery of the New World and the “blank spaces on the map” that this made prominent in western European thinking. Europeans started being aware of conceptual “blank spaces” in their knowledge in the Twelfth Century Revival and the lure of “blank spaces” became a driving intellectual force in western Europe as a result. Cultures that considered everything pretty much settled, like the Romans, the Byzantine and, particularly, the Chinese were really never going to come up with the scientific method in its full form.

          1. Yes, the discovery that the ancients had neither seen nor known about the New World did compel curiosity, as did the invention of clear glass lenses that allowed humans to see the macro and microscopic worlds that had remained unseen for so long.

            “Fifteenth-century Europe was still essentially medieval, living in a geocentric and finite cosmos, the fixed stars bounding the universe beyond the crystalline planetary spheres [and beyond the fixed stars lay the abode of God and angels, as seen on tidy maps of the entire cosmos ]. No celestial objects invisible to the naked eye were known, nor, at the other extreme, any organisms or structures smaller than the naked eye could see. In the natural world, maggots generated spontaneously from rotten meat, the heart was the seat of the emotions, and the arteries carried air. Less than two centuries on, much of this had become what C. S. Lewis (1964) aptly called ‘the discarded image.’

            “The new universe was infinite: Pascal in the seventeenth century felt himself lost ‘entre les deux abîmes de l’infini et du néant,’ terrified of ‘les espaces infinis.’ It was also heliocentric; the earth was terra INFIRMA and God was no longer literally looking down out of heaven at the lowermost unmoving piece of real estate in the cosmos. The sensory horizons were broadened in both directions: Galileo had seen the moons of Jupiter, and Leeuwenhoek had seen spermatozoa. Ah, what enormous vistas were opened to the human eye via the careful grinding of clear glass into lenses, boosting human curiosity a millionfold.”

            Source: The Cambridge History of the English Language. General editor Richard M. Hogg, volume iii 1476 to 1776 [with some edits]

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          2. St. Albert the Great’s book on the earth and geography (really, it’s just a short commentary on stuff) includes a lot of announcements that Aristotle got this wrong, Avicenna got this other thing wrong, and Augustine was totally wrong about that thing over there, nyah! It’s easier to get hold of his book on animals, which is less gleeful about how wrong everybody else was, but has a lot more personal stories about “Darn it, I climbed up the freaking cliff and looked at raptor nests, and this is what I saw.” Some people find this egoistic, but I think Albert’s got more of a sporting attitude toward finding errors. It is fun to find something missed by the greats.

            So yeah, there were a lot of medievals having personal experiences and observations that conflicted with classical and even patristic writers, and they weren’t afraid to talk about it. There were also a lot of medievals traveling around a fair distance, rummaging through other people’s libraries and seeing weird plants and animals.

          3. A “cultural cringe”, in fact, on the part of the Latinised Germans. They did not regard it as an excuse for underachievement, though, but a spur to learn from any source they could get their hands on. And at the same time, as SB says, a bold willingness to argue the toss with anybody they thought was getting it wrong.

    1. Given that the number of Jewish works on Photios’ list totals just three, this is hardly a “problem”. And by “Classical” texts, we’re talking about pre-Christian and non-Christian works, so those three Jewish works count. So no, no problem at all, actually.

  6. Many thanks for naming the ‘scribes & scholars’ book – that’s going to be very useful! On the to-buy list.

    “The great men of the past have said everything so perfectly that they have left nothing for us to say.”
    (Theodore Metochites, 1270–1332)

    There was a similar sentiment in Baghdad in the 11th / 12th century as it was starting to slow down: “The old have left nothing for the young”.

    1. You would think Wilson would know better, but many Classicists seem to have a blanks spot in their knowledge after about 400 AD and retain the old prejudices about “the Dark Ages”. Dame Averil Cameron, on the other hand, has written a succinct but witheringly critical review in The Tablet that is worth a read if you can get past the paywall. ON Twitter this morning she has called it “a travesty” and “simplistic and wrong”. Fighting words from a historian who really knows the relevant periods.

    1. Good catch. The Acts of Chalcedon do indeed exist, and a 2 volume English translation of them in the Liverpool TTH series. No disrespect to Tim tho … this sort of thing happens.

  7. So finally I have received Fuhrmann’s book. On p. 17 he just says that we are justified in assuming that less than 1% of all works of Roman literature are lost. “Roman literature” means to him that between 250 BC and 250 AD (after that we have late antiquity, of whose literature much more is conserved, as much as 20 times more works than from the “Roman” period). Also, scholars of Classical Latin literature have a wider concept of “literature” than usual: it includes philosophical, scientific works and the like, so anything that is in any way formal writing. This works precisely because very little is preserved. Quintilian lists 55 authors whom he considers the greatest, but only around 1/3 have left behind works that we can still read today.

    So his argument seems to be: we have so little, there must have been at least 100 times as much. Not exactly exciting.

    I haven’t found anything on the subject in another passage in the book so far.

    1. May I ask if Fuhrmann includes in ‘Roman literature’ of late antiquity also Christians authors (particularly the theologians)?

      1. To him, “Roman” literature is that between 250 BC and 250 AD. Anything that comes later is “late antique” literature – or Medieval lit., modern lit. and so on.

        1. I hope this answers your question. Fuhrmann explicitly says a lot of late antique literature is Christian stuff. This is nothing new. either; in Greek the vast majority of manuscripts that contain ancient works contain Biblical and other Christian writings. Thus, the “Classics” make up only a relatively small fraction of what is conserved of ancient Greek and Latin literature.

          1. He mentions the “eye of a needle” of the 7th century AD, where it was decided (not consciously!) which works from antiquity would be preserved.

          2. Sorry for this delay but I wonder if Fuhrmann gives a historical motivation on why it was in the 7th century that these (not consciously) choices have been made.
            As far I’m concerned the “eye of a needle” was in the second and third century when there was the passage from roll to codex. Does Fuhrmann acknowledge also this passage?

  8. Anyone who calls Democritus the “father of atomic theory” knows nothing about at least one of those two things. Classical atomism doesn’t really resemble modern particle physics. At. All. Presentism indeed. *Nobody* back then was doing science as we recognize it, and you can’t just play this sort of “that-then looks like this-now” game and proclaim you’ve found the origin of the latter.

    If anyone deserves that title, it would be Bohr and Rutherford (for any definition of “atomic theory” meaningfully connected to current knowledge).

    1. “Classical atomism doesn’t really resemble modern particle physics. At. All. Presentism indeed.”

      Indeed. That was what I meant by “Nixey is quite a fan of Greek ideas that seem to fit with our own.”

  9. Regarding Catherine Nixey’s allegation “Works by censured philosophers were forbidden”–ancient civil governments, even those as powerful as the Roman Empire, did not have the time, resources, or energy to micromanage what the small percentage of their literate population read. If a book was causing civil disorder, riots, and rebellions the Emperor may “ban” the book as part of their more general response to preserve order/the government (which you acknowledge when talking about divination and sedition). Burning the books of heretics, if it happened, was probably more symbolic than a Munich-style “find every copy and destroy it.” Recent totalitarian states make Byzantine polity look like Chuck E Cheese’s.
    But the notion that the Emperors had some Index Librorum Prohibitorum and could afford to go house to house (or into bookstores) confiscating and destroying texts is nonsense on stilts. In fact, the Index itself did not arise till after the printing press, when literacy was more widespread AND printers provided a nexus of book production that could be policed in ways that slaves in private homes copying by hand simply cannot.
    For the sake of brevity, I’ll also simply point out the inherent contradiction between saying Christians gleefully burned texts they disagreed with on the one hand, and carefully scraped the ink off to re-use the parchment in others. Either the parchment is expensive and we want to preserve it, re-using it where we can, or it’s cheap and can be used as firewood–not both.

  10. So happy that I stumbled on your website. Lovely work; delightful article.

    As a small note: Theodoret’s _Eranistes_ did survive, no? I remember buying a copy of an English translation –part of the FotC series put out by CUA Press– years ago that I never got around to reading.

    1. Yes, you’re right about Theodoret’s Eranistes – that must have been a slip of the keyboard when I was compiling my table. I’ve edited it and adjusted the calculations accordingly. Thanks.

  11. “[S]imply due to the fact that keeping any work alive in a pre-printing world was a battle against probability?”

    You’ve left out at least twenty-seven surviving Christian books, Tim.

    Or was it the radar of we godless ignoramuses they were supposed to have gone under?

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    1. Pardon? You’re claiming there are 27 more Christian books on Photios’ list that are actually surviving and I’ve listed them as lost? Do tell.

  12. __________________________________________________________________
    You’re claiming there are 27 more Christian books on Photios’ list that are actually
    surviving and I’ve listed them as lost?
    __________________________________________________________________

    Golly. If that’s how badly you misread my post of April 26th ( above), it would explain far more about you than any point I raised.

    As it is, everybody else can read what I really said, so pretending that you can’t just shows you’re not very good at being disingenuous, either.

    Haven’t you made yourself clear enough in your own article at the head of this webpage, too? The one that could give all these posters here, and anyone else checking in to your big fancy website, grounds for suspicion that this Photios’ [i]Bibliotheca[/i] offers “something like an answer” to your own question, “was it really that a combination of Christian malice and Christian neglect was responsible for the loss of most of the learning of the ancient world, or were Christian books just as likely to be lost as ‘pagan’ ones?”

    That article, and that your subsequent little survey amounts to “hard facts” ( as you seem to have convinced Eric Hatfield) or “hard data” ( the impression you have put Roger Pearse under) to the effect “that [i]all[/i] texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries.”

    Or was I just being too suspicious?

    Only if my impressions serve, you seem to have said that in some sense Photios’ [i]Bibliotheca[/i] is a fair or accurate guide ( though I’d be quite happy to agree that a rough one will do) to the chances of this, that or any kind of literary work of Classical times making it through the Dark Ages and Medieval times until at least – say? – the Renaissance to be available to the beginnings of modern scholarship. Though I do notice you also put “snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century” which could be confusing or, worse, give rise to the uncharitable suspicion that a pious and erudite bloke only put it there as a fallback position, because he should know damn well that Photios’ [i]Bibliotheca[/i] isn’t even a rough guide to “what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century”.

    Of which those twenty-seven surviving Christian works the [i]Bibliotheca[/i], and you, left out and that I’m drawing attention to, are only the beginning.

    At least twenty-seven. Against which sixteen centuries of damp, fire, bookworm, neglect, ignorance, armed conflict, wear and tear, looters ripping off jewelled bindings and throwing the contents on the midden unless someone ransomed them, etc. that were, you say “stacked against any book’s survival in the long run” didn’t stand a chance.

    At least twenty-seven. All going to show what the Christian Church can do when it is really bothered.

    At least twenty-seven.

    To make it easier for you, I’ll let on that I left out metrical versions, the Book(s) of Enoch, Tatian’s [i]Diatessaron[/i], even those Gnostic works that were known to scholarship before the Nag Hammadi discovery, and that the fact that some works I do include are forgeries is beside the present point.

    ______
    Do tell
    ______

    So, as I may have suggested, I was rather hoping that a pious and erudite bloke such as yourself should be the one to enlighten all, we benighted heathens and our “New Atheist pseudo history”. What with that seeming to be the whole idea of this, fine website of yours, and all.

    Come on Timmy old boy! I’ve all but given it away now.

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    1. “Golly. If that’s how badly you misread my post of April 26th ( above), it would explain far more about you than any point I raised.”

      I didn’t “misread” anything. I merely asked a question, since your comment made little sense. You said “you’ve left out at least twenty-seven surviving Christian books, Tim.” Given that this was a comment on an analysis of which books in Photios’ list survived, this comment could only make sense if you were claiming there are 27 more Christian books on Photios’ list that are actually surviving and I’ve listed them as lost. Of course, I thought you could have been referring to 27 other Christian books that survived but weren’t on Photios’ list, but that would not make sense as a comment about which books on Photios’ books survived, so I charitably assumed that you weren’t doing that. Thus my question. Thanks for clarifying that your comment made no sense.

      The rest of your new comment is even more confused. You say:

      “Haven’t you made yourself clear enough in your own article at the head of this webpage, too?”

      Well, yes I have. I make it perfectly clear that I am analysing which books on Photios’ list survive, which don’t and what this may tell us about the survival rates of Christian books versus non-Christian ones. I am very careful not to draw any hard and fast conclusions and am suitably cautious in my language. I begin by saying Photios’ list “may give us something like an answer” and I note “his list is a snapshot, not a fully representative sample” and draw attention to the fact that the “Christian books he mentions are heavily skewed toward theological disputations, sermons and scriptural commentaries and the non-Christian works are mainly historical works, speeches and lexicons rather than philosophy or the natural sciences”. So I am clearly not saying that this list and its proportions gives us anything other than an indication of what proportion of works in either category did or didn’t survive.

      This means I’m finding it very hard to parse your tangled and poorly expressed sneering comments above. As far as I can make out they seem to have something to do with my reference to “his snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century”. You said:

      “Though I do notice you also put “snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century” which could be confusing or, worse, give rise to the uncharitable suspicion that a pious and erudite bloke only put it there as a fallback position, because he should know damn well that Photios’ [i]Bibliotheca[/i] isn’t even a rough guide to “what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century”.”

      I have to admit I have no idea exactly what his sentence is supposed to mean. The “educated eastern Christian …. in the ninth century” I’m referring to is Photios, so how could Photios’ own list of what he says he had read not be a guide to what he read? Perhaps you think I was saying that his list was typical for what all or most educated eastern Christians in the ninth century were reading. I wasn’t and I have no idea how we would determine that. I simply said – pretty clearly – that his list gives us a snapshot of what this educated eastern Christian was reading, and then drew some cautious conclusions from that.

      You then keep banging on out about these “twenty-seven surviving Christian works” that you seem to think are vastly relevant. I can only assume you mean the books of the New Testament, which I think we can be pretty sure Photios read and which, obviously, are extant. But I didn’t include those because this analysis is of the works he included on his list, not the ones he didn’t. So exactly what point you think you’re making is gloriously unclear. How about you try dropping the juvenile sneering and try to express yourself better.

    1. We see a slow down in proto-science from the later Hellenic period and stagnation in the west from the late second century AD. Then we see a collapse with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, along with a similar collapse in all other disciplines of learning. But then we see a remarkable flowering of it from the twelfth century onward, eventually leading to the Scientific Revolution. So something sure as hell gave it “a huge boost”. To say that “something” was Christianity is about as dumb as saying Christianity suppressed science in the same period. But to pretend that Christianity didn’t contribute to the key elements that seem to be behind that post-twelfth century revival of proto-science is also wrong. It was not the only element by any means, but it was integral to the modes of thinking, world view and institutions that enabled this growth and laid the foundations of true science.

      Of course, that kind of hedged and nuanced answer doesn’t sit well with the zealots on either side. Christian apologists try to claim it was the key factor and anti-theist polemicists insist it was consistently working against the rise of science. Both are wrong because both are trying to ram complex phenomena into simplistic ideological templates.

  13. ____________________________________________________________________
    “[T]wenty-seven surviving Christian works” that you seem to think are vastly relevant. I can only assume you mean the books of the New Testament,
    ____________________________________________________________________

    So… it’s just my imagination that the New Testament is vastly relevant to the question you raised in your article discussing the chances of this or that kind of literature surviving from Classical times?

    Does your analysis of Photius’ Bibliotheca back that up?

    Does anything?

    ( As for netiquette, hasn’t your mother told you to learn to control all that spleen and splutter of yours, that you toss about like it doesn’t matter, before you get prissy about anyone else’s tone? If you will insist on tossing in lies about the clarity of my English so crude, you prove yourself a liar in your own replies, I’ll remind you to do another little analysis of other posters’ and viewers’ understanding of my point, to prove that it’s not just you who has no idea what I’m on about.

    Hint: the NEW TESTAMENT and what don’t you understand about its relevance? )

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    1. As I note in my FAQ, I am usually civil for the first few responses and then give back whatever I get. The key word there is “usually”. I go on to say “civil comments, even if critical, generally get polite responses. Trolls and idiots don’t.” Guess which category you fall into. You’ve waddled in here honking like an idiot, making incoherent arguments using confused syntax and ungrammatical sentences and have adopted some kind of ridiculous sneering tone, which is amusing given that it’s you who has totally missed the point (see my other comment re “indicative samples”) and then even failed to grasp it when it’s been explained to you. So I don’t need a prissy little lecture from you about “netiquette”, you silly little troll. You’re half an inch from the kill file.

  14. ______________________________________________________________
    [T]his was a comment on an analysis of which books in Photios’ list survived
    ______________________________________________________________
    __________________________________________________
    [ A] comment about which books on Photios’ books survived
    __________________________________________________

    Who told you that?

    My point was raised in response to the question you raised in your article. As clearly as the quote above it where you came closest to putting your finger on the whole point you seemed to be labouring. To your article, you appended your analysis of Photius’ Bibliotheca as evidence to back up your article’s case about the chances of literature from Classical times surviving the Dark Ages and Medieval Period.

    Can’t you join your own dots?

    Ergo I put “the Bibliotheca, and you, left out” and then pointed out that it, and you, left out the New Testament.

    What isn’t clear to you?

    Only if you will insist on sticking your head inside Photios’ Bibliotheca and just hope I’ll go away, Timmy old bean, you’d better not overlook how clear you made yourself elsewhere, too:

    __________________________________________________________________
    “I have been drawing attention to Photios’ book for some years, noting that his snapshot of what an educated eastern Christian was reading in the ninth century not only shows a range of non-Christian texts by Classical writers, but also shows that all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries.”
    _____________________________________________________________________

    ______________________________________________________
    “[S]hows that all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries.”
    ______________________________________________________

    Note the ALL, there.

    ALL, Tim.

    Bit of a giveaway, I’d say, for what your analysis of Photios’ Bibliotheca was doing there, appended to your article.

    Or if your “not a representative sample” is the ball people should be keeping their eyes on ( now that I’ve caught you swaggering out with your arse hanging out of your smarty pants) what was the point of your analysis at all if it establishes nothing that supports your case?

    This is your website. What was it doing there?

    Were you contradicting yourself just to get people worried?

    Furthermore you’ve now gone and said that:

    ____________________________________________________________________
    I am clearly not saying that this list and its proportions gives us anything other than an indication of what proportion of works in either category did or didn’t survive
    ____________________________________________________________________

    Which everybody can see is untrue.

    Whereas I am clearly saying that neither Photius’ Bibliotheca, nor you, do even that, since both leave out the New Testament.

    Which brings me back to my point:

    ____________________________________________________________________
    [W]hat this may tell us about the survival rates of Christian books versus non-Christian ones
    _____________________________________________________________________

    Only you still left out the New Testament.

    And:

    ________________________________________________________________
    [ A]n indication of what proportion of works in either category did or didn’t survive
    ________________________________________________________________

    And still left out the New Testament.

    Not forgetting:

    __________________________________________________________________
    [ H]ow could Photios’ own list of what he says he had read not be a guide to what he read?
    __________________________________________________________________

    By leaving out the New Testament.

    Obviously.

    And that’s just for starters. There’s also something called the Old Testament. Then, in your article, you also mention and partially quote from Tertullian, Tatian, John Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement and Basil of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, John of Damascus and Augustine of Hippo.

    Then you ignored all their surviving works too, as if neither you nor Photius had heard of them.

    Have you any honest or competent defence for this procedure?

    Unless ( dare I suggest?) you’ve done some other little analysis, showing how many people checking into this, here webpage of yours understood you to mean something else? That you meant to say that Photios’ Bibliotheca has NO very good relevance to the chances of literature from Classical times surviving into the modern era, say?

    You just… stuck it on the end to confuse people?

    Then you go for the punchline:

    ____________________________________________________________________
    I am very careful not to draw any hard and fast conclusions and am suitably cautious in my language.
    _____________________________________________________________________

    So: in this book you mention you may write, will you, a) carefully and cautiously conclude that the Bible, major patristic works, saints’ lives etc. written before AD 476, Pliny, Donatus etc., maybe even the works of Boethius and Gregory the Great, should form part of any full and fair analysis of the chances of this or that kind of literature surviving from Classical to Renaissance times?

    Or will you, b) carefully and cautiously keep your head stuck inside Photios’ Bibliotheca that leaves them all out?

    You will find this easier to answer, and more dignified, if you take your time and pay attention.

    So far you’ve been so quick to act as if you can’t read, you act as if you can’t think, either.

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    1. You still don’t seem to be grasping the concept of using an indicative sample.I’ll try one more time. My analysis is of Photios’ list as an indicative sample of what books someone like him was reading in his period. My analysis fully acknowledges that there were other books that did survive – notice how I mention that his list doesn’t have many works of pagan philosophy, for example. That is noting that these works survived and yet aren’t on his list. The same can be said for the OT and NT texts and the others you mention. But the analysis is focused on what proportions of survival and non-survival this indicative sample can give us and then makes some qualified but reasonable comments about what that tells us about survivals etc. outside this sample. That includes all the books you mention. Understand now?

      I thought this was bleeding obvious, so I didn’t see the need to spell it out. But it seems some people are a bit thick.

    2. I can’t help but chuckle when Christ-mythers (almost always historically-uneducated anti-Christian fanatics) try to be patronizing towards the actual experts. And you wonder why people don’t take you any more seriously than evolution-deniers who try the same snark with people who actually know what they’re talking about

      1. How do you know that Chris/”Bowerthane” is a “Christ-myther”? Beware of falling into the fanatic’s habit of lumping anyone who disagrees with them into one category. That’s like the Mythers who insist I must really be a Christian because I accept that a historical Jesus most likely existed. Fundamentalist thinking.

  15. Well, well, swell. Can anyone say “accident waiting to happen”? You had your chance, but you can’t control your sense of the ludicrous either, and now it is you who is ludicrous. A common mistake by blind prigs.

    ____________________________________________________________________
    You still don’t seem to be grasping the concept of using an indicative sample.
    ____________________________________________________________________

    Wrong again. YOU have failed to grasp how UN-indicative your sample is.

    Quite apart from the fact that Photius lived four hundred years ( 400, years) too late, after most of the lost works at issue were A-L-R-E-A-D-Y L-O-S-T but before many surviving Christian works were written. Or that Photius was the product of a culture too unrepresentative for any reading list of his to be “an indicative sample” of anything much beyond his times and his Greek-speaking, Byzantine culture.

    However, since you “don’t need a prissy little lecture” from the “silly little troll” you take me for, you poor suffering innocent, I can only suggest that you waddle out of here and honk your hyperactive blind-brat arrogance to any “representative sample” of lawyers. They’ll teach you about not appealing from John Sober to John Drunk. Whilst you’re about it, learn how statistics relate to the real world, for instance what any scientist can teach you about a correlation not being a cause-and-effect, about not pastry-cutting reality into hypothetical constructs and, in your case, what John Locke wrote about syllogisms and Sir Karl Popper wrote about metaphysics wouldn’t hurt, either.

    I’ll explain to everybody else where you kept going wrong.

    What Tim the Terrible Tight-arse has been instructing all you, eager Tim-watchers the world over to believe, is that his put-the-anal-into analysis of Photius’ Bibliotheca shows that the New Testament, Augustine’s City of God and other major patristic works, saints’ lives etc. written before AD 476… never stood a better than 35.67% chance of survival from AD 476 onwards.

    Though clearly they have survived against these, low odds!

    ( Seriously. Who would believe that Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, the scriptoriums at Bobbio, Monte Casino etc., the papal archives, the whole Carolingian Renaissance etc. etc. could be so butterfingered! Still, since “all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries” according to the odds Timbo gives them, so he’s got it hung round his own neck.)

    Ludicrous.

    Whereas the Old Testament, Pliny’s Natural History, Plato’s Timaeus, Porphyry’s Tree of Knowledge, Donatus’ grammar and other non-Christian/ pagan/ secular works that everybody knows the Church preserved, have made it only thanks to a “very slightly” better, 36.61% chance of survival.

    And all the works of Democritus, of Epicurean interest or Lucan’s Orpheus, say, were just among the 63.39% not so lucky.

    Ludicrous.

    Crumbs, Timbo had better hope it’s just “trolls and idiots” who find that hard to believe, hadn’t he?

    Notice that ( for crying out loud) Tim’s given odds of roughly two-to-one against the survival of BOTH Democritus’ works AND of the New Testament, of both the works of Aristotle and the works of Augustine of Hippo, of both the Latin poets and of the saints’ lives, etc.

    As if the Western world were as about as likely to lose the New Testament as the works of Democritus

    As if it could well have turned out the other way round.

    Ludicrous.

    Yet Tim Has Spoken from his mount. Claiming not only that his analysis of Photius’ Bibliotheca “shows that all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries” but also, if his “indicative sample” actually indicates anything “about the survival rates of Christian books versus non-Christian ones”, it is that both Christian and non-Christian literature, alike, faced pretty much the same “danger of not surviving the centuries”.

    Well folks, Tim had better hope it’s just our imaginations that we have not lost 64.33% of the New Testament, or that the odds were never two-to-one against its survival from the time of, even, Damascius, where Caroline Nixey rests her case. Nor have we lost 64.33% of patristic works written in Classical times, nor were the odds against their survival.

    Not even if it was it only 64.33% of the Bible, two thirds of the patristic works, of saints’ lives etc. that merely got lucky, because it was only 35.67% of these were “works that Christians cared more about.”

    Ludicrous.

    Ergo, Timbo’s “indicative sample” indicates only that he had his head stuck so far down the back of his smarty pants, I’ve had to pull them this far down to bring him back into the reach of daylight.

    Can HE clock it at last, we wonder, the witless prig?

    And all on this here, on his own website that was supposed to indicate there are no grounds for implicating the Christian Church in the survival of every book of the New Testament, and the loss of every work by Democritus.

    Ludicrous.

    Ludicrous because, remember Tim Says “all texts were in danger of not surviving the centuries” and, according to his analysis of Photius’ Bibliotheca, and to his “indication of what proportion of works in either category did or didn’t survive” Tim has given both Christian and non-Christian works remarkably similar, remarkably poor odds. As if the Christian Church was as likely to let – say? – the Gospel of Matthew or even the Life of Augustine of Hippo fall down the memory hole as it was likely to let most non-Christian texts fall down the memory hole, with them.

    Ludicrous.

    As if the Christian Church was as likely to lose a psalm as it has lost, seemingly, the poem Orpheus by Lucan ( but did discover 200 new psalms at about the same time, about AD 800).

    Ludicrous.

    As if we moderns stand the same chance of discovering a Gospel of Timothy ( on all fours with the canonical ones, unsuspected by scholarship) as we do of discovering a lost work by Pliny, Cicero or Democritus ( several known to scholarship).

    Ludicrous.

    As if in AD 476 Western civilization were at the same risk of losing its Christian literary heritage as is was, of losing its non-Christian literary heritage.

    Ludicrous.

    So I’ll leave others to ask Timbo to defend this as “qualified but reasonable” or “suitably cautious”. With or without his vile language/ attitude/ ego ( perm any) because any combination will make good slapstick.

    All based on an “indicative sample” that Tim took from a Greek-speaking culture the last of which was destroyed by the armed expansion of Islam, just before the Renaissance. FOUR HUNDRED YEARS TOO LATE. Who on earth would call that bit complicated?

    _________________________________________________________________
    I thought this was bleeding obvious, so I didn’t see the need to spell it out. But it seems some people are a bit thick.
    _________________________________________________________________

    Tim said it. So I’ll leave him to come up with a better excuse than blind arrogance or blind stupidity, missing the point to his own words this time see how far he gets, smelling the coffee this time.

    He’d better hope I’m not a “silly little troll” because, if just one of them can do this within one week, what does that make him?

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    1. Wow. So many words shrieked at so much volume yet making so little sense. One more time – the Photios list is an indicative sample. The key word there is “indicative”. That does not mean “typical”, nor does it mean “comprehensive” or “definitive”. It just means it gives us some indication of how likely books that existed in Photios’ time were to survive to our time. I never made any claim beyond that and all the conclusions I did draw were clearly in that context and were hedged with appropriate caveats. The fact remains that if deliberate exclusion and active neglect were the sole or even the primary agents of destruction, which seems to be what you are shrieking, then the proportion of surviving Christian books from his list should be far higher than that for the pagan ones. But they aren’t. So the quite reasonable conclusion we can draw from this is that even Christian books, despite their scribal and scholarly culture’s preference for them, had the odds of survival stacked against them.

      Nowhere did I say the Christian works you mention or Christian works generally “never stood a better than 35.67% chance of survival from AD 476 onwards”. Nor did I say anything remotely like that. That you have decided to take that figure as some kind of hard and fast rule to misrepresent what I actually said tells us a great deal about you. Similarly, no reasonable person could read what I said and conclude I was claiming “the Christian Church was as likely to lose a psalm as it has lost, seemingly, the poem Orpheus by Lucan”. The fact that you are coming to such utterly silly conclusions leads me to believe that you are (a) an idiot, (b) a troll or (c) some combination of the two. I’m inclined towards (c), which is why you will no longer be bothering us on this blog. Goodbye.

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    1. It seems the last update of WordPress changed something in the way it formats tables, so the “Lost” column has disappeared. I will have to go back to my data and reconstruct the table. That is going to take a lot of time. Thanks WordPress.

        1. I’ve saved it from the last webarchive. I need to find the time to fix the page, given that I will be on holiday for the next two weeks.

  16. Aye Tim, this is one of my favorite articles of yours and on the topic of Byzantine/Eastern Roman history, what is in your opinion some of the best scholarly overviews of the Byzantines? In addition, I would also much enjoy some other Byzantine recommendations on the Byzantines that aren’t overviews.

  17. The list above includes codices 1-139 from Photius’ bibliotheke, but not 140-280. This is just the first half.

    1. Unfortunately the full list was cut off when I moved from an previous blogging platform. And the original data spreadsheet I worked from has been lost in a hard-drive crash. One of these days I’m going to get the time to redo all that analysis and then repost the full list.

  18. Great article, Tim

    I just wanted to add that the idea that Nixley seems to make about reused parchment being, or implied to be, solely from pagan works is a bit silly. A great example of this is from when I was in college. My college, Indiana State University, for whatever reason has a massive collection of dictionaries and lexicons. One of the older lexicons had a rather interesting thing used as part of the binding. It was part of proto-sheet music used by monks for chants. Now, if Christians only sought to preserve only Christian sources, why would they use this as part of the binding?

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