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A fascinating article on the massive amount of information that was lost as a result of the change from rolled scrolls to bound codices at Fields & Energy:

The codex transformed books from narratives to be read from beginning to end into repositories to be consulted anywhere at will. For science, this shift was revolutionary: theories, proofs, observations, diagrams, and tables could now be located, compared, annotated, and transmitted with unprecedented efficiency, making cumulative scientific progress far more practicable. The medium may not quite be the entire message, but media do shape the course of scholarly research in general and science in particular.

The transition was not without a downside, however [[ix]].

The change from roll to codex involved the gradual but wholesale transference of ancient literature from one form to another. This was the first major bottle-neck through which classical literature had to pass. It must have been somewhat reduced in the process, but the losses are not easily specified or assessed. There was the danger that little-read works would not be transferred to codex form, and in time … would perish.

A scroll not deemed worthy of the labor of copying to expensive parchment in the third through fifth century would not make the transition. By one estimate, “94 per cent of classical Latin literature was lost in the intervening period between Rome’s downfall and Charlemagne’s rise to power” [[x]]. The Catholic Cardinal and scholar, Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) claimed that less than 1 per cent of ancient literature survived [[xi]]. While those claims are suspiciously precise and exact numbers may be difficult to establish, the general sense of massive loss is undeniable. According to one analysis of just Latin literature, we know of only 772 authors in all. Subtract 276 for whom not one word remains, and 352 known only in small fragments or quotations. That makes 80 per cent wholly or almost wholly lost [[xii]]. And how many chroniclers and pamphleteers never came to our attention at all?

Most of the 20 per cent or so of “surviving” authors suffered extensive losses, including Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), Livy (59 BC–AD 17), and Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79). “Some of the best remains, but four-fifths of our writers, and apparently more than four-fifths of their writings, are beyond our reach” [[xiii]].

One cannot consider these facts without marvelling at the slenderness of the thread on which the fate of the Latin classics hung. In the case of many texts a single copy survived into the Carolingian period, and often a battered one at that. When the great period of the revival was over, some of the great works of Latin literature were still but a single manuscript on a single shelf [[xiv]].

Aristotle’s analysis of the Constitution of Athens was only recovered from a first-century Egyptian papyrus in 1890 [[xv]]. Aristotle’s Dialogues were widely read, “a golden stream of eloquence,” according to Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) [[xvi]]. Today, only fragments survive [[xvii]]. Strabo (c. 64/63 BC–c. AD 24) reported that Aristotle’s library disappeared from public view for generations after passing to his student Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BC), only to be rediscovered in the first century BC. The bibliophile Apellikon of Teos (d. 84 BC) acquired and recopied the neglected, moldy, and worm-eaten manuscripts [[xviii]]. While modern scholars question parts of the story, it illustrates the precarious survival of ancient literature and how even Aristotle’s works relied upon fortunate rediscovery and continued copying.

It was not only pagan works that suffered the culling, but also Christian classics as well. The Didache: The Teachings of the Twelve Apostles [[xx]], one of the earliest surviving Christian writings outside the New Testament, endured only because on Tuesday, 11 June AD 1056 “Leon the scribe and sinner” completed a copy, and signed and dated it. This single eleventh-century copy was preserved in an Orthodox monastery, and in 1873, a Greek Orthodox Metropolitan named Philotheos Bryennios (1833–1917) rediscovered it.

So for the next 1,500 years, Western scholars knew the Didache the way you might know a famous book you’ve never read—by reputation, by quotation, by the references others made to it. Some suspected it was a legend. Others assumed that what survived in fragments was all there was. Then Bryennios found Leon the monk’s careful 11th century copy sitting in a library in Constantinople… When the first English translation reached New York bookstores on 20 March 1884, 5,000 copies sold in a single day [[xxi]].

We may be seeing a modern version of this with the move from the physical book to the ebook. The problem with the latter, of course, is that while they are easily and inexpensively propagated, they hold no value and they are temporally ephemeral, being wholly dependent upon the availability of the technology to read them. Here the insidious evils of copyright can be seen, as the digital rights management most publishers install on their books virtually assure their inability to survive over time.

It’s interesting to contrast the distinction between the historical interest in the Didache and the relative lack of interest in the hitherto unavailable books that we’ve been translating. Of course, I imagine the media coverage of the English translation of the Didache was considerably greater than it has been of the first-ever English translations of various works of Eiji Yoshikawa and Benito Perez Galdos, among others, despite the massive popularity of the latter in their own cultures.

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