| | > any classical document is of course of immense value and interest.
It was not just the rediscovery of Aristotle that launched a Renaissance, it was the Greek scientists, the Greek historians, the Greek poets, the Greek dramatists. The combined weight of radically different (and eloquent) thought and art.
> Ovid...made what scholars think is a reference to a third Homeric epic.
The only problem with there having been an addition to The Odyssey and The Iliad is that Homer was the most important figure in launching Greek culture. He was the foundation of their schooling so it's not credible he was known in the Golden Age and quietly lost later. We would know. And if he were lost before the 6th Century B.C., the Greeks of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. would have written about it, lamented it.
>a private email that informed me that "this article is extremely over-hopeful and very hyperbolic."
Based on what argument? If experts, classicists, say this is a monumental find, no one has a basis to doubt them unless he has detailed knowledge in this field. It can't be a sort of free-wheeling cynicism or tendency not to trust the press on politics. Moreover, focus on the sheer quantity: five million words! And it's not laundry lists, but includes Sophocles, Euripides, etc. Even Objectivists are supposed to trust experts in fields or on issues not thoroughly contaminated by postmodernism.
Phil
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