/lit/ - Literature

>>19162991
Those are some damn intelligent monks then.

learn greek and read byzantine manuscripts then?

>>19162991
I unironically believe that a lot of ancient history is distorted due to bad sources, biased sources, bad copying/translation, fraudulent attribution, etc. We just don't have anything better to work with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko)

>>19162991
Monks creating pagan blasphemy just to practice their Latin?

>Be Petrarch
>Italy 1300s
>Autistically obsessed with ancient Rome
>One day just happen to "find" all of Cicero's letters in a box somewhere conveniently in the same town he lives in
>Hey look guys I found all of Cicero's letters. Yes I know he died 1300 years ago, hundreds of miles from here, but these are definitely his own letters, trust me bro
>nah bro you don't need the originals, don't worry I copied them exactly though, here they are

>>19163024
Before the printing press, those who wrote history were of noble stock, virtuous, honest to a fault. The dumbocratization of literacy has turned information into a shit-show.

>>19163019
a medieval monastery had a higher average iq than a modern university

>>19163056
this but unironically
medieval monk were the peak of intelligence, they were the greatest inventors, scientists, translators

>>19163024
Yes, and this isn't even controversial among people who have any kind of college-level education in history. It's just people who only got the 'they won't be listening anyway so we have to simplify it and play up the exciting parts' middle and high school versions who see it as 'suff we know happened'.

>>19163019
>>19163056
>>19163058
Being a monk is only for committed autists, whereas universities are marketed as fun environments to get laid in. Thus it doesn't filter for seriousness.

>>19163056
Why do we have relatively better technology than medieval people if they were simply the best inventors? I know they had pretty good tech, but you've just gotta compare a scientific treatise from the 13th century with your average, mundane paper on ArXiv to see that current natural science is much more advanced than previous iterations.

>>19163072
Normies regularly make retreats at either Christian or Buddhist monasteries. You must live in some athiest country like Britain or something.

>>19163091
>making a retreat
>vowing lifelong celibacy
yeah totally the same thing, and I live in the American South and have never met a single person who has done either

>>19163110
>I live in the American South and don't see people going to monasteries
Hmm. I wonder why.

>>19163110
I'm just saying that living in a monastery is not something that's out there. Being a hermit in the Egyptian desert or a homeless юpoдивый in the Russian tundra would be an example of something more extreme. Most philosophy in the past 800 years or so has come out of university halls, not the cloisters of monasteries.

Is the the thread with the latest "[ancient author] didn't exist" meme?

>>19162991
>entirety of Latin Literature was based on a imagined scholastic version of Roman Graffiti
stay off /x/
>>19163024
Yes.
The irony is one of the only fragments of a Aristotelian Dialogue covers this exact theme
>like bro, just guess what they meant, lol
>>19163085
>if they were simply the best inventors?
Financing.
Why do we still use fossil fuels?
Why haven't we been to the Moon in decades? We have even better technology now. Why? No one wants to finance it.
Why is there no supersonic commercial airline? Because it's more cost effective to build dreamliners than beat the concorde.
Why wasn't it until 2013 when that the efficiency of the Internal Combustion Engine was like trebbled in 2 years? Because the FIA and engine manufacturers agreed Formula One would now run on a 'energy recovery' rule set which forced them to invest billions of dollars to develop in under 3 years super efficient engines unprecedented in over a century.
Hero of Alexandria had the Aeolipile, but imagine trying to get a wealthy slave owner to invest in developing it as a technology.
Simply put, who was going to pay those monks?

Can anyone here read critical apparatuses? Do they prove that the texts are ancient, or are they just autism?

>>19163110
>American south
So Argentina?

>>19163144
they're annotations to sources often comparing them to other sources. they prove jack shit of course.

>>19163117
We actually have a few Buddhist places in the nearby city, and even some Zoroastrian thing. America is the world anyway, cry about it.

>>19163124
Yes it is. That's on the level of saying that hermaphrodites are normal because some of them exist.

>>19163147
No one cares, Spic.

>>19163143
Which fragment is this?

>>19163144
>>19163159
They usually provide the meaning of the sigla and abbreviations at the front of the book. Contrary to the other anon, these varients are valuable as evidence of textual history.

>>19162991
>Just some monks practicing their Latin.
Based monks. I'm gonna do the same just to fuck with an anon in the future.

>>19163198
Duh, I'm obviously not trying to say half the population is monastic. There's a difference between "not that common" and "magic booster of intelligence that's inimitable outside of a stone cloister"

>>19162991
So monks invented Latin too? Latin seems like more of a code or shorthand than a natural language at times

>>19163024
>>19163143
>fraudulent attribution
this is a tricky one for normies to wrap their heads around, but people back in the past didn't have the same idea of "authorship" and egoism that we had now. It was common if you were writing in the spirit of someone else work to put them as the author. If I saw Jesus in a dream and got some insight, I might sign that insight as being written by Jesus. Or if I was writing on the occult ideas of alchemy, I might ascribe the authorship to Hermes. It wasn't disingenuous, just different. Nowadays everyone demands credit for their work and we have "copywrite" so there is something to gain from claiming an idea as your own. Back then, it wasn't the case.

>>19163029
>Monks creating pagan blasphemy just to practice their Latin?
YES!!

>>19163279
>It was common if you were writing in the spirit of someone else work to put them as the author.
So how do we know which ones are the real works of that author, and which ones are just attributions? Assuming the manuscripts only go back to Charlemagne at the earliest...?

>>19163255
evidence ain't proof, hot shot

>>19163318
Colloquially speaking, evidence is synonymous with proof.

>>19163295
we don't, but the guesses are quite educated by now

>>19162991
>Covid? Four-chan? What in the name of Jove were you dreaming? Get up and pack your gear, legionary. Caesar wants us to cross the Rubicon.

>>19163279
I think you're forgetting the most important source of 'improvements'. Later editors going
>no way, he was a genius, there's no way he's say that... let's just fix it to what certainly it was
repeat a thousand times
>no no no, this must be a later interpolation, I'll return it to how it, I presume, was
and so on
>>19163295
he's saying it probably is an irrelevant question

>>19163190
>America is the world anyway
lol, is this how you guys cope with never leaving your 3rd world country because you live in lifelong debt?

I mean visiting Disneyland is not adequate substitute for going to "Europe".

Fuck you you disgusting Anglo son of a whore.

>>19163401
Obsessed

>>19163032
>>Hey look guys I found all of Cicero's letters. Yes I know he died 1300 years ago, hundreds of miles from here, but these are definitely his own letters, trust me bro
>>nah bro you don't need the originals, don't worry I copied them exactly though, here they are
kek. Is it true?

>>19163403
Legitimately.
You fucks have ruined the world and wants us to accept it was always already ruined to start with.
Go blow the Corporation of London.

>>19162991
If Rome isn’t real then why is it mentioned in the Bible?

>>19162991
It struck me how little we know about Rome when I tried to actually find out about Augustus and what he was actually like.

Listened to an audiobook by a historian named John Williams that was entirely based on supposed letters from his close associates that pertained to him.

But most of these letters seem incredibly fake and I have a hard time believing any of these actually existed.

I also wasn't sure if the author intentionally ignored Augustus's own letters or they don't exist because the book almost at no point has anything he wrote.

So in the end you basically learn about everything you already know about and learn basically nothing about the man.

Both Caesar and Augustus are said to be two of the most influential people in all of human history and we know absolutely nothing about them.

Most of what people think they know is likely invention either by historians pretending to know about these men or slander by their enemies who see them as tyrants.

Hell I read the other day that for all we know the Romans may have never actually worn red. I don't think my heart could take that possibly being the case.

We have archeological evidence though.

>>19163513
This. Inscriptions are legit because you are actually reading the actual text written by the Romans themselves.

>>19163539
>>19163513
And we also have textual witnesses from several different sources. Rome probably existed, unless medieval monks were psychics and all invented the same dead pagan civilization simultaneously.

I'm a medievalist that specializes in the reception of the Latin classics ask me anything

>>19163547
How does the reception of Vergil's poetry tie into the history of philosophy?

>>19163603
Short answer: it doesn't really have a huge impact on philosophy.

Long answer: there were debates in the early church about whether pagan texts should be read. Basically Augustine gave the best answer in De Doctrina where he compares taking the good elements of pagan writing to the Hebrews taking good things from Egypt. Vergil was the foundation of all grammar and much rhetorical education so everyone knew Vergil. But Vergil was not really used as a source for philosophy (there will probably be some exceptions to this but I don't know of any offhand).

>>19163547
did they have stupid jokes like /lit/ has now? like the corn joke about Cesar's Bellum Gallicum.

>>19163056
no retard

If what you are reading is beautiful and true, then why does it matter if it originated from some Roman patrician or a monk at a latter date?

>>19163646
Look up knights riding on snails in manuscripts and you'll have your answer. Medieval memes were very widespread. You might also benefit from looking at a nun pick fruit from a penis tree and putting it in her basket.

>>19163435
>You fucks have ruined the world and wants us to accept it was always already ruined to start with.
Accurate

>>19163499
>Hell I read the other day that for all we know the Romans may have never actually worn red. I don't think my heart could take that possibly being the case.
There aren't paintings?

>>19163430
More or less

>>19163265
no one is saying that, I'm just saying it filters for autism

>>19162991
Stop smoking crack, crackhead.

>>19163395
seethe harder faggot

>>19163430
>>19163794
Maybe he lived in a big city with a nice library.

>>19163796
Monks are anything but autistic. They're kind, helpful and affable people.

>>19162991

https://www.unz.com/article/how-fake-is-roman-antiquity/

>>19163499
Shakespeare is responsible for most of what we think of them desu

>>19163822
>In the mainstream of classical studies, ancient texts are assumed to be authentic if they are not proven forged.
>In the mainstream of classical studies, ancient texts are assumed to be authentic if they are not proven forged.
OK I've read enough. This is going to give me a anxious breakdown. I propose we begin a new movement to re-establish classics and ancient history on a skeptical, evidence-based basis. Which authors make the cut? Which texts do we KNOW for sure are genuine and not Renaissance forgeries?

There is apparently a 4th century manuscript of Virgil (pic related). That is early as fuck and if the dating was real it would definitely make Virgil seem much more likely. But how was this manuscript dated? Could it have been faked by one of these Renaissance autists who learned ancient calligraphy or some shit, and then claimed it was 4th century?

>>19163499
John Williams is not primarily a historian, but an English professor and a novelist. His Augustus novel rules, but it is hardly a fact-based account. It takes liberties to tell a story of power and existence. How he is betrayed and how Varus is getting his balls kicked by German forest dwellers.

>>19163866
it's all fake and gay. but mostly gay.

>>19163037
>Before the printing press, those who wrote history were of noble stock, virtuous, honest to a fault.
mfw when i was a medieval scibe who didn't even know latin and just copied the the letters (making loads of mistakes) and skipped lines to finish the job quicker (sometimes whole pages) and drew dicks in the margins

>>19163887
keximus maximus

>>19163866
One detail we ignore is that the concept that "we are in year X (in a chronology that goes back unbroken through all of human history)" is pretty new, it's practically historiography. In medieval times most people had no fucking idea what year it was and had even less of an idea of what events lead to them being where they were. Scholars knew more but had a lot of liberty to play around with things and simplify them to make satisfying answers, subtlety and self-doubt in intellectualism are also quite new.

>>19163901
>. In medieval times most people had no fucking idea what year it was
Anon...

>>19162991
holy fuck your retarded
theres ship wrecks all over the Mediterranean
Swords, Armor, Trinkets, Jewley ect

>>19164033
they were nearly illiterate and most things we know is essentially fan fic world building

>>19164013
do you have anything to say to contradict that or do you just have generic reaction images? This is pretty well known fact

>>19164033
How exactly do we know those are Roman? Or even from that time and not, say, 800 years ago?

>>19163901
>In medieval times most people had no fucking idea what year it was
Chronicles, even local ones like from a church etc., have the years in them. Was this only for literate people though?

>>19164372
Well obviously yes, plus the information in those chronicles are pretty faulty and every region had their own idea of what year it is. Any dating system just starts from some arbitrary point held to be important in that culture (and is usually misdated anyway, it's accepted that the birth of Christ should be more like 4AD and that's with the standardized system we are using right now).

I read somewhere that well after the fall of Rome there were plenty of towns using shitty and unique dating systems, like starting with the crucifixion and somehow being in the year 300. Keeping a chronology across centuries is just a difficult thing to do, keeping anything across centuries is.

>>19164043
This. It's easy these days to think "history is a legend agreed upon" is some kind of pointless edgy statement that makes a big deal about slanting for narratives, but until very recently history was only studied as a fetish, "muh ancient greek and roman wisdom, muh jews". Sincere, nerdy study of it for the purpose of knowing what actually happened didn't have a lot of foundation until the last two centuries, and some cultures still have no problem with revisionism (China, Muslims). Personally I think we're still intentionally full of shit on a lot of things but that used to be more the rule than the exception.

>>19163811
>t. doesn't know anyone with autism

The real redpill is that Rome was only a few hundred years ago at most

>>19164836
I think Fomenko's specific ideas are retarded (yeah totally, his home country of Russia was the secret founder of western civilization) but the general idea that our chronology is made up is very likely.

>>19164836
The empire never ended.

>>19164903
woke

we never left rome. we're inside the black iron prison.

>>19164645
Yes.

>>19163881
I don't think he took any liberties?

The entire book is based on letters written supposedly by the Romans themselves.

It is possible the sources for these letters is bunk but he is presenting them as prime sources.

Like I said some of the letters come off incredibly fake, like the ones describing the actions of Octavian and his friends after hearing about Caesar's assassination.

A lot of these letters are written to people like Livy or other well known period historians who are usually considered reputable first hand accounts.

So I'm not really sure how to take it. But in terms of what we have it's probably the best single piece available on Augustus. Yet it barely even touches on him.

>>19162991
Well, textual criticism is useful for gleaning information about what are probably the earliest readings from the extant manuscripts, but obviously it totally depends on the quality of what survives. We have archaeological evidence and contemporary inscriptions, so we know things like the existence of ancient Rome and certain emperors with a fairly high degree of certainty. In terms of textual preservation through manuscripts, yes, there's a lot of uncertainty. Doesn't mean everything is fake but we can't know if Cicero's works were altered for the first few hundred years after his death.

>>19163024
I would say it's more that it's totally possible that our understanding of ancient history is badly distorted due to the extreme limitations. We also wouldn't know if it was correct since we can't verify it with high certainty.

>>19163901
>One detail we ignore is that the concept that "we are in year X (in a chronology that goes back unbroken through all of human history)" is pretty new
The idea of chronology and counting years isn't new at all, every civilisation has had chronicles. The concept of a universal dating system starting from a specific year onwards is medieval.

>>19165099
Anon, you read a pop book by a non-specialist. Actual historians are a bit more skeptical than a novelist.

>>19162991
Another problem is all the fame HBO's Rome gets, despite basically being complete trash in terms of even the slightest bit of authenticity.

The writers/producers took the original story and basically 'desperate housewived' it so it would be modern and feminist friendly.

It turns all the female Roman patricians who respected their husbands, family and Rome and turns them into whores who supposedly had immense control over everything occuring.

It is basically Roman history turned into a daytime love drama.

Frankly the only reason people put up with it is because we have so little else to go on.

It is a shame it would basically be considered a crime to portray Rome closer to how it actually was. Because muh progressive feminists would screech at having masculine characters that weren't weighed down by screeching harpies, or who weren't punished or killed off for embracing their masculinity.

>>19165099
>But in terms of what we have it's probably the best single piece available on Augustus.
It's a historical novel written in the 70s, you fucking retard.

>>19165126
Having faith in it and having normal people give a shit is new.

i think the same about ancient greece.
>you had an original idea? i am sorry to inform you that it was already thinked and solved by Papadopoulus from Teslakokaulus 3500 years ago

>>19165135
have sex

>>19165183
Normal people still don't give a shit about history.

>>19165198
Yeah but they could at least tell you what year it is and maybe even have some basic sense of how recently some foundational things happened

>>19163072
Sensational as monkish imaginations can be, especially when drawing directly from nature, the human part of nature can't be apprehended by anyone without a real Rome of some sort. This is not to mention that autists aren't fountains of urbane wit under any circumstances, touching as their confessional self-portraiture is

>>19165491
The whole "things were different back in the good ole days!" idea does seem pretty important to our species, yeah

>>19165188
underrated post

more people need to read thucydides

bump

>>19165134
It's not a pop book, it's literally a fictional epistolary novel by the same guy who wrote Stoner.
It's hilarious because one of the central themes of the work is exactly what anon is getting at by accident, that a man might only be seen in fragmentary or conflicting ways and the "real" him cannot ever be truly known by others.

>>19163026
>Actually everybody important who ever lived was Russian and there were only like a dozen of them
>Every important place that's ever been described was one dilapidated castle in Crimea
>"Jesus" was, in fact, a young man named Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov
>Anything contending otherwise is a Germanic lie
This sounds like the most fantastic drunken CSGO-hacking vatnik shitpost ever created

>>19163056
This is true but I feel comparing them against a modern university makes it a little too easy for the monks to compete
>>19163058
This has some truth but is delusional in its hyperbole

>>19163243
I might be confused, I was pretty sure Protrepticus was the dialogue I was thinking of which basically boils down to "you should pursue philosophy, and if you argue that you should pursue philosophy you're a hypocrite because that argument is in itself practicing philosophy" I was under the impression one of the philosophers mentioned in the dialogue was partly lost by Aristotle's time... but may be I'm conflating things?

>>19167153
>should
*shouldn't
I also want to retract the use of the word 'hypocrite'

>The earliest extant manuscripts of classical Roman texts (excluding Virgil) generally seem to be from the 10th to 14th centuries
>excluding Virgil
could it be becaue Virgil's existence proves your shitty point wrong?
cope

>>19167174
>he existed...because he just did, okay?!!

>all of these people trying to debate this shit linguistically and no one just asking the obvious question of, who then, built the fucking colosseum?

>>19165195
Within marriage only, in obedience to God

>>19163058
also some of the booziest whorehouse frequenters.

>>19162991

but like... what about the coliseum and all that...

>>19167225
Which god?

>>19162991
I am to believe that Horace's Odes with all their infinite depth of subtlety and feeling were written in the 9th century by a contemporary of the hagiographers? No. The texts date from that time because the Carolingians started to gather all the texts and make 'official' copies.

>>19162991
Codex Bembinus dating from the 4th or 5th century contains the 6 plays of Terence.

>>19163144
>Ayy

>>19163901
idk anon Semitic tribes introduced calendar systems to the world fairly early on in history. The Christians didn't invent the sabbath.

>>19163360
Have you ever read Cortazar's "The night face up"?

>>19167254
>which god

If Roman sources are made up then you need to an explanation why there arn't an infinity of sources claiming so and so condemned Jesus

>>19163143
Why do you want to go to the moon? there isn’t anything there

>>19165135
“They made the story into a tv show when they put it in the tv”
So brave

>>19162991
>earliest extant manuscripts of classical Roman texts
>excluding Roman writers

>>19167410
I think you missed the point of the example... it was about the relationship between possible technology and actualization of technology, and how finance is often the difference. not about motivations for said finance.

>>19162991
Reading this thread absolutely convinces me that /his/ is filled with high schoolers who believe they’ve stumbled upon something profound and do not read actual books by professional historians, as this sort of debate was finished long ago in historical methodology and shelved.
Read some actual books by the historians enganging in their specific fields.

>>19162991
The oldest extant complete manuscript goes back to 700. That's really old. You have no clue what you're talking about, and it goes beyond dates. There's plenty of archeological evidence you ignored as well.

>>19167823
A lot of people on 4chan unironically believe the entire field of modern history is a joke because modern historians don't say nice things about the third reich

>mfw not only history but all ontology is randomly defecated out of our minds by yaldabaoth

>>19167823
>/his/
Are you lost?

>do not read actual books by professional historians, as this sort of debate was finished long ago in historical methodology and shelved.
Any specific book recs?

>>19162991
>Just some monks practicing their Latin
Well most ancient Roman works would have had themes and ideas that monks would have abhorrent, so I doubt monks wrote them

>>19168099
A good one is Writing Science: Medical and Mathematical Authorship in Ancient Greece. There is an article in it that deals with ancient writing and modern conceptions of authorship, etc.

There is also History, Historicism and the Social Logic of Text in the Middle Ages

The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of Pseudo-Aristotellian text in the Latin Middle Ages

The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigraphia in context.

Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts: Comments on Some Commentaries

>>19167196
>>19167248
The Colosseum was stolen from its creators and rightful owners, the noble men of Caucasia, by Papists. It was built in Crimea by its enormous ethnic Russian minority (now oppressed) in the 1300s then airlifted brick-by-brick to Rome in 1847 by Popish helicopters.
See >>19163026 and remove the Teutonic blinders that have been foisted upon you your entire life.

>>19168186
Also Scholiasts and Commentators by Nigel Wilson, and Of Monks, Medieval Scribes and Middlemen by Yu, since some people in this thread attribute medieval manuscript culture to monks dawdling and practicing stuff, when that is not true at all and showcases an extremely narrow understanding of Medieval historical writing practice, paleography and chronology.

>>19168186
>>19168210
If you have actually read all these scholarly books and are not just bluffing for that extra dopamine hit, then you should be able to give us some arguments for why the OP is wrong.

>>19162991
>undergrad discovers manuscritps for the first time

>>19163056
>>19163058

Didn’t medieval monks literally create universities?

>>19168226
There’s no point in bluffing or lying on anynomous forums and the studies regarding it are vast and complex, let alone something you can fit into a forum post. OP’s views are correct that many extant sources are found in medieval codices, however, he then takes a leap in logic and ascribes that much of what are contained within are fake attributions. ‘Monks practicing’ as he says. Such a statement is presumptuous and reveals how little he knows about the actual contents and how one can discern truths from them. That in of itself is a complex topic but it has to do with a myriad of factors. One could go the expense and production cost route, as copyist activity is extremely ardous and requires a lot of resources, hence most copyist work is done personally by the abbot or an experienced monk in the scriptorium. Practicioners were handed wax tablets as one could easily make mistakes and erase failures. Most monks were not handed a scribe role either, especially not one pertaining to the ancient world.
There are also the use of scholia done by monks and the use of olympiad years when copying certain works, especially from Ancient Greece instead of utilizing the Dionysian or Gregorian Calendar which got started quite early due to the paschal controversy. There’s also the use of specific nouns, verbs etc which are highly irregular. Then, of course, there is material evidence on top of that in myriader of eipgraphic studies where the original text survives completely which showcases wide differences in the Classical roman world and the medieval. It goes on and on, anon.

>>19162991
Waitwaitwait, OP, are you indirectly implying the BIBLE isn't real?

>>19168263
So this is what passes for "evidence" in the humanities departments. 90% of your post is not even circumstantial evidence...it's just feasibility arguments.
t. STEMchad whose career would be disgraced if I worked like this

Unironically though, it seems that the only true evidence is the inscriptions and the papyrus fragments. Starting from there, how far can you go using arguments like "if this 9th century French manuscript has a couple lines identical to this Roman era fragment, then we can fairly safely assume the 9th century manuscript has an ancient text as its source"? And then using the "confirmed" manuscripts where authors quote/cite other authors to confirm other manuscripts etc, can you work you way up to significant portions of the corpus like this? Without resorting to stylistic arguments or faith in the integrity of scribes

>>19162991
This is what Chinese propagandists are teaching.

>>19168303
Indeed, STEM is quite different from Humanities, but they are entirely different in their contents so it’s not strange. Humans are fallible and biased unlike the components of a rock or the temperature of a volcano, which are, at least, certain.

The best kind of evidence one can have in history and archaeology are if material and textual evidence coincide, of course. But it is not always the case. Take typology, for example. Where one categorizes artefacts in accordance to styles and the era’s where they were made in. All of that was based on experienced guess work in the late 19th century, which turns out, was quite accurate when dated with more modern tools, and it is the reason why you have the names Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron age as overarching terms.
Comparison work is also greatly used. When you have fragments of texts, copied and found in different languages, reconstruction becomes possible. Plenty of long gone Greek texts survive in Syriac manuscripts. How does one know? There’s names, authors and direct usage of greek words transliterated into Syriac, which never happens if one is not working as a copyist, as it is mostly a liturgical language with few latin and greek loan words.

A lot of the times presumptions are made too, just like typology. If an author has the name ‘pseudo’, the work is pseudegraphia, which was extremely common in the Ancient and Medieval world as the modern idea of authorship did not exist. It was common to take bits and pieces of different works and compile them under a name not your own.
Collection of text was also far easier in the past, they lived closer to the time they wrote about and since then plenty has been lost to fires and wars.
If a copyist wrote down Homer, for instance, it is clear that it is not the original as many texts and works speak of homer and the events from earlier times, and it is a well known oral story. If an author lies, it is usually ‘easy’ to figure it out as it would be a minority against majority case. An assumption many do is that they believe works only survive in one form, when in fact, they survive in many fragments, in many languages and have several people copying and writing about it.
It’s a difficult field though, much more so than pop-historians would have you believe. If something is doubted, it is highlighted and examined.
Hopefully that answers some, but I am currently out walking so I might have missed some lines.

>>19162991
>Rome isn't real
>Just some monks practicing their Latin
Where the fuck did the Latin come from if Rome isn't real, you turbo autist?!

>>19168685
>where does Elvish come from if Middle Earth isn't real?

>>19168331
this thread is brought to you by B L A C K E N E D

>>19163063
Except the transmission of texts was decentralized. Every monastery would have had to degrade its texts the same way.

>>19163091
>Normies regularly make retreats at Christian monasteries
Hahahahahahaha they most certainly do not.

>>19168099
>>/his/
>Are you lost?
I mean, this thread does scream /his/ retardation even if it's /lit/.

>>19168263
>>19168263
>There’s no point in bluffing or lying on anynomous forums
Dude, 90% of this board's content proves you deadly wrong.

>>19168303
>STEMchad
those words don't belong in the same sentence

>>19168752
Well, I speak for myself, not for others.

>>19168766
I was being unnecessarily provocative due to all of this being done on 4channel, but you actually went and presented a well-argued case for why OP's suggestion was wrong. Well done.

>>19168774
Thank you, anon

>>19167392
The idea is that they made it up as fan fiction to expand on ideas that already existed (apparently not considered intellectual dishonesty in some places and times), I imagine making up tangible fact about Jesus would be seen as heretical and could likely get you in a lot of trouble.

>>19167823
Professional historians will tell you that people have been caught making shit up lots of times, and many more are highly suspected of it. The only questional part is that they stop short of saying "we honestly don't know shit for sure".

>>19168685
>?!
you don't belong here

>>19168722
Now you're just making things up

>>19168303
>Nooo if I presented a historical artifact that wasn't precisely carbon-dated three separate times I'd be thrown out of my undergraduate research assistant job in the industrial engineering department
I work in STEM too but you need to go be a redditor somewhere else

>>19168722
What do you mean by degrade?

>>19163279
There are multiple instance in the ancient world where the pratcise of writting something pretending to be somebody else was seen in a negative light. It was common to write about figures you didn't meet, not to pretend to be them.
Like Plato made up story about Socrates, but he didn't write anything pretending to be him

>>19169626
the vast amount of pseudo titled authors prove your statement incorrect. It wasn't frowned upon, it was common practice.

>>19170896
there are also a number of source of people denouncing the practise, it was widely practised, doesn't mean it was seen as good

>>19169626
And how do you know that for sure? Think hard, now.