Tacitus' Annals

[gggg gggg]

https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277

[Ed Cryer]

Post by gggg gggg
https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277

"Sometime in the 9th century AD, a monk in the Benedictine monastery of
Fulda in modern Germany copied out an extensive Latin history into
Carolingian minuscule, a script promoted by the emperor Charlemagne to
aid in the reading and comprehension of great works of literature. It is
to this monk that we owe the preservation of the first part of what is
arguably the greatest history of imperial Rome, the Annals of P.
Cornelius Tacitus."
.....................
"The history was originally composed of 18 books, of which 1-6 are
preserved in the manuscript from Fulda, and 11-16 in a second manuscript
copied in Italy at the monastery of Monte Cassino in the 11th century."
*****************

Blimey! How could such knowledge and such great artistic literature
disappear? Imagine living in those dark (???) times and having only the
Bible to tell you what preceded. How did they account for all the great
buildings and monuments around them? Very strange!
Who to blame? "Barbarians", savages? Or the Christian Church?

Well, maybe they had Suetonius?
But no;
"Suetonius’s Caesars (De vita Caesarum); that we know the Caesars at all
is due entirely to the survival of one book that emerged in
north-central France, late in the 8th century or very early in the 9th,
to serve as the archetype of all the extant manuscripts."
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2014%20TAPA_0.pdf


Ed

[Ed Cryer]

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by gggg gggg
https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277

"Sometime in the 9th century AD, a monk in the Benedictine monastery of
Fulda in modern Germany copied out an extensive Latin history into
Carolingian minuscule, a script promoted by the emperor Charlemagne to
aid in the reading and comprehension of great works of literature. It is
to this monk that we owe the preservation of the first part of what is
arguably the greatest history of imperial Rome, the Annals of P.
Cornelius Tacitus."
.....................
"The history was originally composed of 18 books, of which 1-6 are
preserved in the manuscript from Fulda, and 11-16 in a second manuscript
copied in Italy at the monastery of Monte Cassino in the 11th century."
*****************
Blimey! How could such knowledge and such great artistic literature
disappear? Imagine living in those dark (???) times and having only the
Bible to tell you what preceded. How did they account for all the great
buildings and monuments around them? Very strange!
Who to blame? "Barbarians", savages? Or the Christian Church?
Well, maybe they had Suetonius?
But no;
"Suetonius’s Caesars (De vita Caesarum); that we know the Caesars at all
is due entirely to the survival of one book that emerged in
north-central France, late in the 8th century or very early in the 9th,
to serve as the archetype of all the extant manuscripts."
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2014%20TAPA_0.pdf
Ed

There’s a strong irony in this.
The monasteries. On the one hand they were the refuge from the world for
monks; on the other they were bastions of the the Catholic Church. In their
early days they built libraries of the antique world’s books; and then the
antique world got outlawed by the Church. But the monasteries became
centres of learning; our English Bede is an arch example.
But later the books were left to rot, or taken out and scratched clean to
hold a psalter or breviary.

[Ed Cryer]

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by gggg gggg
https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277

"Sometime in the 9th century AD, a monk in the Benedictine monastery of
Fulda in modern Germany copied out an extensive Latin history into
Carolingian minuscule, a script promoted by the emperor Charlemagne to
aid in the reading and comprehension of great works of literature. It is
to this monk that we owe the preservation of the first part of what is
arguably the greatest history of imperial Rome, the Annals of P.
Cornelius Tacitus."
.....................
"The history was originally composed of 18 books, of which 1-6 are
preserved in the manuscript from Fulda, and 11-16 in a second manuscript
copied in Italy at the monastery of Monte Cassino in the 11th century."
*****************
Blimey! How could such knowledge and such great artistic literature
disappear? Imagine living in those dark (???) times and having only the
Bible to tell you what preceded. How did they account for all the great
buildings and monuments around them? Very strange!
Who to blame? "Barbarians", savages? Or the Christian Church?
Well, maybe they had Suetonius?
But no;
"Suetonius’s Caesars (De vita Caesarum); that we know the Caesars at all
is due entirely to the survival of one book that emerged in
north-central France, late in the 8th century or very early in the 9th,
to serve as the archetype of all the extant manuscripts."
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2014%20TAPA_0.pdf
Ed

There’s a strong irony in this.
The monasteries. On the one hand they were the refuge from the world for
monks; on the other they were bastions of the the Catholic Church. In their
early days they built libraries of the antique world’s books; and then the
antique world got outlawed by the Church. But the monasteries became
centres of learning; our English Bede is an arch example.
But later the books were left to rot, or taken out and scratched clean to
hold a psalter or breviary.

Perhaps just as ironic is the rubbish tip of ancient Oxyrhynchus in
Egypt. This has given us the poetry of Sappho and a comedy of Sophocles
among much more.
The tip survived in a rain-free desert, in a town abandoned after the
Arabic invasions. The Arabs (whose scholars loved and preserved
Aristotle's works) didn't repair the water-courses that kept O inhabitable.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oxyrhynchus-ancient-egypts-most-literate-trash-heap

Added to which modern technology using x-ray fluorescence has given us
the scraped-off texts of palimpsests; Archimedes among others.
https://phys.org/news/2006-08-modern-technology-reveals-ancient-science.html

Ed

[Ed Cryer]

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by gggg gggg
https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277

"Sometime in the 9th century AD, a monk in the Benedictine monastery of
Fulda in modern Germany copied out an extensive Latin history into
Carolingian minuscule, a script promoted by the emperor Charlemagne to
aid in the reading and comprehension of great works of literature. It is
to this monk that we owe the preservation of the first part of what is
arguably the greatest history of imperial Rome, the Annals of P.
Cornelius Tacitus."
.....................
"The history was originally composed of 18 books, of which 1-6 are
preserved in the manuscript from Fulda, and 11-16 in a second manuscript
copied in Italy at the monastery of Monte Cassino in the 11th century."
*****************
Blimey! How could such knowledge and such great artistic literature
disappear? Imagine living in those dark (???) times and having only the
Bible to tell you what preceded. How did they account for all the great
buildings and monuments around them? Very strange!
Who to blame? "Barbarians", savages? Or the Christian Church?
Well, maybe they had Suetonius?
But no;
"Suetonius’s Caesars (De vita Caesarum); that we know the Caesars at all
is due entirely to the survival of one book that emerged in
north-central France, late in the 8th century or very early in the 9th,
to serve as the archetype of all the extant manuscripts."
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2014%20TAPA_0.pdf
Ed

There’s a strong irony in this.
The monasteries. On the one hand they were the refuge from the world for
monks; on the other they were bastions of the the Catholic Church. In their
early days they built libraries of the antique world’s books; and then the
antique world got outlawed by the Church. But the monasteries became
centres of learning;  our English Bede is an arch example.
But later the books were left to rot, or taken out and scratched clean to
hold a psalter or breviary.

Perhaps just as ironic is the rubbish tip of ancient Oxyrhynchus in
Egypt. This has given us the poetry of Sappho and a comedy of Sophocles
among much more.
The tip survived in a rain-free desert, in a town abandoned after the
Arabic invasions. The Arabs (whose scholars loved and preserved
Aristotle's works) didn't repair the water-courses that kept O inhabitable.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oxyrhynchus-ancient-egypts-most-literate-trash-heap
Added to which modern technology using x-ray fluorescence has given us
the scraped-off texts of palimpsests; Archimedes among others.
https://phys.org/news/2006-08-modern-technology-reveals-ancient-science.html
Ed

What changed in the history of the west? What brought these ancient
texts into relevance?
It seems facile to say that the strangle-hold of the Church weakened.
But who/what weakened it?
Charlemagne? The Islamic conquests? The devil himself?

My answer is enlightened outcasts. Men who felt the strangle-hold all
too keenly, and fought against it with their wits.
Not Francis of Assisi. Not St Benedict. No, failures of the system!

Take a famous example; Galileo. What motivated him? Was it just some
accidental experiment that proved Aristotle wrong? Or a telescope that
showed Jupiter has moons?
Was it the spirit of humanism? Some new Zeitgeist blowing through the
world? No. Those things have never been observed! They are abstractions
owing much to hindsight.

It was the same rebellion against the Church that motivated Martin Luther.

Ed