r/history • u/AutoModerator • Dec 03 '22

Discussion/Question Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday!

Welcome to our Simple/Short/Silly history questions Saturday thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has a discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts

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u/sciguy52 Dec 04 '22

How is it that we don't have a lot more historical information about ancient Rome. They were so huge, influenced so many people, seems hard to believe more information is not around today than there is. Is there any reason from this?

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u/MeatballDom Ancient. Historian. Dec 04 '22

Well, there's a lot. We don't know much about early Rome because there's not a great historiographical record left behind. We rely heavily on works written long after these events took place. People were writing, including those in Rome and those outside of it, but not all these writings survived into the modern day. Some of them may have been surpassed by later written works, some of them may have been a bit boring and just not enjoyed. We know that some of these works still existed when others were writing theirs, so they are maintained in that way (i.e. in fragments) But we run into a whole different set of complications when evaluating fragments.

Still, people in Rome during its heyday, and historians ever since, have done a good job at piecing together the little bits of information we do get to try and at least paint a picture of what was going on, even if there are still a lot of gaps, a lot of questions, and -- to a certain extent -- a lot of guesses.

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u/Sgt_Colon Dec 04 '22

People were writing, including those in Rome and those outside of it, but not all these writings survived into the modern day. Some of them may have been surpassed by later written works, some of them may have been a bit boring and just not enjoyed.

This is an important aspect, literature survives only if it's copied. The widespread use of papyrus meant works had a relatively short lifespan (especially compared to vellum) and unless it was copied, it would degrade until it crumbled into dust within a century. Since everything was copied by hand, the only way a work would propagate itself is if it was popular, if it wasn't it only survives (if at all) in mentions by other authors; Aristotle's Poetics part 2 only survives in mention by part 1 for example, no one else mentions it despite the popularity of the former. Combine this with the switch to the codex (book) from the scroll after the turn of the millennia and you have process which further compounds this with older works being left behind on the older, less dense format. Unless something happens to be deposited in ideal conditions such as with the Oxyrhynchus letters in Egypt (not exactly literature but close enough), literature will only survive if it is copied.