LOST WORKS
BY ANTHONY REID

Lost Works by Donald Gordon Anthony Reid (1916-2003), an English bank manager and erudite book collector, is a short essay (pp. 107-9) in the first volume of his huge compendium, The Eternal Flame: A World Anthology of Homosexual Verse (2000 B.C.-2000 A.D.) published by Dyanthus Press in Elmhust, New York in 1992. 

Lost Works prefaced the classical Greek section of this volume and therefore refers to lost ancient Greek works. “Homosexual” in Reid’s published writing almost invariably meant “pederastic” (as indeed was most homosexual verse before the last century).

With the passage of time Greek art has suffered enormous losses. War, accident and the malignity of man are merciless destroyers. A brief Note at this point must serve as a universal epitaph, for there is no country which has not shared this fate to some degree.

Of Greek painting virtually everything of importance has perished. Some measure of this loss is conveyed by the fact that in antiquity critics, who had seen both, ranked Greek painting above Greek sculpture.

Written records survive. We know much of artists such as Zeuxis and Apelles. We know the subject matter of many paintings. Nude boys were a constant theme: Ganymede, Eros, Phaethon, Hyacinthus, Narcissus and many more. They must have been beautiful indeed.

Greek sculpture has fared only a little better. Nearly all bronze statues have been melted down over the centuries for their metal value. Indeed Nero carried off 500 bronze statues from Delphi alone; and there were four pillagers before him, and more followed after.

Merely to read, in Pausanias, of the hundreds of statues at Olympia—to victors in the Games—is to sense deep regret. Scores commemorated boy-victors: boxers and wrestlers (some very young, some very beautiful); boys on horseback, by masters such as Phidias, Calamis, Polycleitus.

But there were masterpieces all over Greece. If one may stand for all—the great statue of Zeus in gold and ivory (one of the seven wonders of the world) by Phidias, who immortalized the boy he loved, Pantarkes, by carving his likeness on a plaque, and his name on the finger of the god.

Painted vases, plates, ceramic-ware are, from their fragile nature, soon destroyed. Enough survive, however, to show how freely and frankly the Greeks pictured erotic activity. Scenes of lovemaking, homosexual as well as heterosexual, and many involving boys, are still extant. These give but a hint at those we shall never see.

Literature has suffered losses hardly less grave. In the eras before printing there could be only a few copies (each laboriously scripted by hand) of any work. No copies at all of most. Authors whose work we do possess often come down to us by chance survival of a single manuscript. The vast corpus of Greek literature has perished for ever.

Here again some scanty records remain, giving us the names of writers and plays and poems, sometimes with short quotations. Brief and tantalising as these are, they do add something to our knowledge of this early civilisation.

Plays for the theatre have already been mentioned. Since titles can indicate content, here are a random few: The Paederast (Antiphanes), Priapus (Xenarchus), The Cup Bearer (Anaxandrides), The Wrestling School (Alcaeus), The Teacher of Profligacy (Alexis), Hermaphrodite (Menander), Paederasts (Diphilus), Hyacinthus the Pimp (Anaxilas), The Corinthiast (man with vile habits--Poliochis), Ganymede (at least three versions by Eubulus, Alcaeus, Antiphanes), while Linus (a Satyr play by Achaeus) featured satyrs who gamble for the prize of having Heracles for a lover.

Here are some titles from another class of literature: On the Prostitutes of Athens (at least five versions by Ammonius, Antiphanes, Apollodorus, Aristophanes Gorgias); Lascivious Works (by Gnesippus, noted for his debauchery); Indecent Nomes (Argas, Telenicus); Erotic Songs (Ametor); on Sexual Pleasure (Terpsicles); Love Stories (Alcaeus); Treatise on Love (a scandalous book by Polycrates); Satho (i.e., penis, a dialogue by Antisthenes); Ludicrous Memoirs (Aristodemus); Art of Love (Sphodrias); Convivial Dialogues (Persaeus).

One could compile a vast list. There was an entire. class of Erotic Epistles in prose. Numerous Love Romances (e.g. Clearchus); Writings on the Erotic (e.g. Asopodorus); Books of Indecent Stories (e.g. Milesian Tales). Just as there were many celebrated writers of pornographic verse and prose, there were equally famous pornographic artists (e.g. Aristeides, Pausias, Nicophanes, etc.). One could go on, and on.

Perhaps the greatest loss of all time was the destruction of the great Library of Alexandria in 390 A.D. This contained thousands of books: the complete poems of Sappho, Anacreon, Ibycus, Polymnastus, Simonides... all the lost plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides... the 800 comedies and other works mentioned above... countless fascinating works by writers we know only by name... by writers whose very names are lost... and then an equal wealth of lost Latin literature... all the missing books of Petronius’ Satyricon... works beyond the dreams of man to imagine.

 

Gibbon (Decline and Fall, Ch. 28) ascribes this act to the Christians. One remembers that the Catalogue of Titles alone, compiled by Callimachus, itself filled 120 books. Volumes destroyed here were virtually annihilated, lost to posterity forever, since copies were so few.

Unhappily such vandalism by religious fanatics is far from rare. Gibbon (op. cit. Ch. 45) instances the burning of the splendid Palatine Library in 643 A.D. on the orders of Pope Gregory I.^[1] “The writings of Gregory himself,” he adds, “reveal his implacable aversion to the monuments of classic genius.”

Since the invention of printing, which enabled the publication of multiple copies and their wide dissemination, it has become more difficult to annihilate books in this way. Instead, endless forms of censorship have been enforced, such as the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (instituted by Pope Galesius in 494 and continued ever since).

In 1515 the Lateran Council tried to forbid the printing of any book without previous examination by the ecclesiastical authority. Ceaseless repressions followed, with ritual burning of books (ranging from the “vanities” of Savonarola to the purges of Hitler). Even today intolerance prevails. Works are proscribed as ‘blasphemy’ or ‘pornography’. Books which circulate freely in some European countries are, in Britain, banned utterly, even from scholars.

As mentioned in the Introduction, even great classical writings, which have miraculously survived the holocausts of centuries, are still often bowdlerised, expurgated and (secretly) misrepresented in many English translations. For readers who lack a command of the language and access to authentic texts the truth is hard to find.

It has been truly said that creative artists (in all fields of endeavour) are the great benefactors of mankind. As a result of their passage through this world, the world is a richer place. They leave a rich legacy of happiness to posterity.

In like manner it is often argued that religionists are the malefactors of mankind. Their wars, crusades, murders, torturings, inquisitions, intolerance, censorship and persecutions have caused centuries of suffering. Their activities have left a legacy of sorrow.

It is sad that religionists (who usually affirm that they are motivated by God—a gross delusion) should campaign so fiercely against the artist. It is not merely his work, but also his way of life, which is cruelly assailed, so that the good is driven out by the bad. Even Christ was crucified.

One understands why so many individuals of sensibility, asked in what period of history they would prefer to have lived, settle instantly for “Greece at the time of Socrates.” It was a time when Plato urged men to strive for “the beautiful and the good.” This book, in a modest way, strives to salvage from limbo something of the beautiful and the good.

^[1] While it is true Gibbon wrote that “it is commonly believed" Pope Gregory I ordered the burning of the Palatine Library, he added that “the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful and recent.” The first to claim Gregory was responsible was in fact John of Salisbury in his Policraticus, written in ca. 1159. In any case, the date of 643 has been added by Reid and is patently wrong, since Gregory died in 604.
     Gibbon actually had much to say in praise of Gregory, whose pontificate he called “one of the most edifying periods of the history of the church." This was the Pope who was so moved by the beauty of some English slave-boys he had once seen for sale in a Roman market that he sent missionaries to begin the conversion of the English to Christianity. (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People II 1).
     Of course, none of this detracts from Reid’s point that this priceless library had been destroyed (probably rather earlier), and it is only too believable that it should have been done out of the same Christian fanaticism that doomed the greatest ancient library at Alexandria. [Website note]