Quote:
Originally Posted by carpetmojo
Yes, that is absolutely astonishing isn't it - mind you, the odds on any piece of text surviving the vicissitudes of climate, environmental, political and social upheaval that work has, are incredibly high.
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The poems of Catullus (one of the greatest of the Roman poets) are similarly "single source". His work was known only via fragments and references by later authors until an anthology containing 116 items of his poems and epigrams was discovered in a monastic library in 1300. This original source manuscript has since disappeared, but, fortunately, three copies made from it survive.