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Hi. I'm David Miano and I'm answering voicemails. Let's give one a listen.
This one is from someone named Blake.
"Hello Professor Miano. I was wondering if there was a lost historical work that you wish
you could read, a loss of antiquity, a loss of historical work that we knew existed but
has been lost to time. An example: for me, I would like to read Cassiodorus' History of the Goths,
which has been lost but only abridged by the Getica by Jordanes.
Was there a particular historical work or loss of antiquity that you would like to read? Thank you."
And thank you for your excellent question, Blake!
All right, so 'is there any lost historical work?' So I'm assuming you mean
an ancient work of historiography (like the one that you mentioned,
Cassiodorus) and one that has been named so we know that it existed, that I would want to read.
Now, there's a difference between one that I would want to read personally and one that I hope is
recovered for historians to study, although maybe they're kind of the same thing, anyway, but I'm
thinking why should I be the only one allowed to read it, right? But I can think of three
lost historical works that I would want to read and also I would love to see recovered.
One would be the Phoenician history of Sakunyatan. Probably never heard of him, right? He's better
known as Sanchuniathon in Greek. Information about this particular author comes from Philo of Byblos,
who lived in the late 1st century to early 2nd century CE. Not to be confused with Philo of
Alexandria, that's somebody different. This is Philo of Byblos, a Phoenician himself,
and he translated from his native language the work of Sakunyatan into Greek. Sadly, we don't
have Philo's Greek translation of Sakunyatan, either. We just have ancient references to Philo's
translation and a few of the things that it said. Now, we're told that Philo says in his work that
Sanchuniathon lived before the Trojan War—that's before 1200 BCE. The existence of
this figure, or at least the truth of Philo's account about him, has always been doubted and
frequently denied by scholars. But more modern research has shown that many of the ingredients
of the work attributed to him are of great antiquity and of native provenance,
as was confirmed, in general terms, by what we found in the text from Ugarit.
So, Philo must have employed a Phoenician source on which he would have no reason to make
up a fictitious name. That doesn't mean we need to credit the early date that
Philo assigns to Sakunyatan or the truth of everything that he says about Sakunyatan, but
he probably did have a source. The modern consensus is that Sakunyatan's history
existed and it was written between. . .oh, the time of Alexander the Great
and the first century BCE—if it wasn't a literary invention of Philo.
One of the things that Philo says is that Sanchuniathon believed that the gods
were originally human beings who came to be worshipped after their deaths and that the
Phoenicians had taken what were originally names of their kings and applied them to elements of the
natural world. This is basically euhemerism, I've talked about euhemerism before on this channel,
but it was popular in the period that scholars believe the work was written. Anyway,
ancient histories are frequently facts mixed with fiction, so you might wonder ‘why would you want
this book if it's got all these fanciful tales in it?’ but I believe the history of Sakunyatan would
contain all kinds of information that we could use for historical purposes, including what the time
was that Sakunyatan himself may have lived. So I'd be really excited to be able to read that one.
The next one I would like to see is the history of Quintus Fabius Pictor; it's a history of Rome. And
he is the earliest known Roman historian. He lived in the early 3rd century BCE,
his history was written in Greek—you might be surprised it isn't in Latin but
Latin wasn't yet a great literary language, and the educated public at the time
would have mainly known Greek, so that's why he wrote it in Greek. The work was published after
216 BCE but probably before 213 BCE, so somewhere in those few years. We have 32 extant passages
from the work. These are fragments, they are quotations, basically, that people made of them
in other works. So we've got these pieces. Now, what do they tell us about this history?
We know that the history had an apologetic tone, it was very pro-Roman.
It idealized the republic as a well-ordered state, it emphasized Rome's loyalty to its allies,
and all these things seem to support the view that he was doing damage control immediately after
the battle of Cannae, which was when Hannibal defeated the Roman army, it was a terrible defeat
for Rome. Now, the work comprised three main sections. The first would cover the first years
of the republic, the second part would be the period from the Decemvirate to the Pyrrhic War,
and then the third part would be contemporary history from the First Punic War forward,
which was highly opinionated, but meticulously researched and more close to the author's time.
The Roman orator Cicero claimed that Pictor's books were nothing more than a compilation of
yearly chronicles; unadorned in their style and without interpretative skills. But a
glance at the surviving fragments makes it very plain that this is not an accurate assessment.
And Pictor had a lasting impact on the formation of the content, the form, and the style
of history writing in Rome. So he was kind of the founder of a new literary genre.
Other historians like Polybius and Livy
do retell a lot of his material, but it would be nice to see the original. So that's why
this is another great work of history that I would love to see found and be able to read.
And the third history that I would love to be found and be able to read is that of Manetho of
Sebennytos, also called ‘man-uh-thoe.’ He lived around the third century BCE. He was an Egyptian
high priest at Heliopolis; this is in the early Ptolemaic period. He wrote a history of Egypt in
three books called the Aegyptiaca and it goes from mythical times up to the year 342 BCE.
We don't know his full Egyptian name, we think it may have been a name that meant beloved of Thoth,
truth of Thoth, or gift of Thoth, but some people think it means beloved of Neith or lover of Neith,
a goddess. We're not sure, we only have the Greek form of the name. It's generally agreed that
Manetho was born in Sebennytos in the Nile Delta during the third century BCE and was a priest
in the temple of Ra in Heliopolis during the reign of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II. Now, he had access to
many sources which no longer exist, such as temple records. Of course, we have to keep in mind that,
like the other two authors that I mentioned, he also included legends and fanciful stories.
No full copies of Manetho's text remain today. We only have short sections of it
and a few references in the writings of a few ancient writers: Flavius Josephus
from the first century CE, Sextus Julius Africanus from the third century CE, Eusebius of Caesarea
from the 3rd to 4th century CE, and George Syncellus from the 8th century CE. None of these
texts are contemporaneous and his writings were used and abused by these ancient scholars in a
long-running rivalry between proponents of Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek histories,
arguing over which civilization was the greatest and which was the oldest. And as a result, they've
skewed Manetho's text a bit, so our knowledge of it is limited
and colored by the opinions of these authors, who were referring to him.
So wouldn't it be great to actually have the real Manetho to be able to read and compare?
You know, Egyptian literature didn't have any narrative history—at least not the type that
we're used to—until Manetho. That doesn't mean that there was no text with actual or potential
historiographic orientation, there was. I mean, Herodotus clearly knew about some of this stuff.
He talks about ancient Egyptian history, coming from somewhere. Manetho took pre-existing
narratives, prophetic and irregular texts, royal biographies, and wisdom texts from various places
and put them into his king list. He basically had a chronicle list of the kings and when they
reigned. And so he's uniting these two traditional historiographic Egyptian forms together.
Now, he had an associate named Hecataeus of Abdera,
who also wrote an Egyptian history around the same time, maybe a little bit before Manetho,
but he's a Greek. Manetho’s Egyptian. That's kind of why I want to see Manetho's history.
Manetho divided the rulers into dynasties, or ruling houses, and this book
formed the basis of the modern system of dating Ancient Egypt. Yeah, he divided
Egyptian history into 30 dynasties. . . I think there was a 31st added later by someone else,
but that still forms the framework for ancient Egyptian chronology today. Very influential
and we don't even have the book. So, yeah. That's another book I would love to read.
Those are my three picks and I like yours, too, Blake. Cassiodorus’s History of the Goths was a
good one. If you, viewer, have a suggestion that there's a lost historiographic work from ancient
times you would love to see recovered and be able to read, tell us about it in the comments below.
If you have a question—a different one that you would like to leave me and
possibly get it here on the channel answered—go to speakpipe.com/davidmiano and you can ask it there.
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Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.
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