Cultural WI: Trojan Cycle survives

Interestingly, the Iliad and Odessy are only 2/8 of the story of the Trojan Wars, the other 6 parts have been lost to history. So, WI they survive? What cultural effects may occur?

(Survival PoD: Get copied into Arabic and then returned, or Greek copies survive in the Byzantine Empire and are brought to the West with the sack of Constantinople, or maybe they just never get lost in the first place).
 
Millions of teens in highschools across the US now have to read all eight parts instead of working their way through the two epics we have OTL ;)
 
The 'lost' material had already been lost in antiquity, so it would require a very early POD. Huge changes in canonical art, as a result. There may be some knock-on effects on writing technology with that much text to be preserved.

Other than that I guess it would depend on what this material contains. It might pose a problem for Virgil if he can't just make up stuff.
 
The 'lost' material had already been lost in antiquity, so it would require a very early POD. Huge changes in canonical art, as a result. There may be some knock-on effects on writing technology with that much text to be preserved.

Other than that I guess it would depend on what this material contains. It might pose a problem for Virgil if he can't just make up stuff.

We have outlines, but not the actual works.
 
Any cites for that? I've never heard of it before.

What I was taught back when (late 90s) is that there was a generally familiar narrative framework or the Trojan War into which Homer's work fitted, so it took no explaining to his audience (whenever that audience actually lived). I never looked into the extant fragments, so I can't speak to their age (I was taught they considerably post-dated Homer, being later poetic creations in the mould of the canon, rather than the treatment of these events in Homeric times, presumed lost). But studying Homer is a lot like Old Testament studies, only with a lot less good documentation and less funding. Nobody really knows, but everybody has a theory.
 
What I was taught back when (late 90s) is that there was a generally familiar narrative framework or the Trojan War into which Homer's work fitted, so it took no explaining to his audience (whenever that audience actually lived). I never looked into the extant fragments, so I can't speak to their age (I was taught they considerably post-dated Homer, being later poetic creations in the mould of the canon, rather than the treatment of these events in Homeric times, presumed lost). But studying Homer is a lot like Old Testament studies, only with a lot less good documentation and less funding. Nobody really knows, but everybody has a theory.

Well, these days nobody things there ever was an actual Homer, at least not in British scholarship from what I can tell. But the notion that the Iliad and Odyssey are only two out of a full cycle of eight or nine is one that's generally accepted. It's true that the Iliad and Odyssey we have, especially the Iliad, are the creations ultimately of the 6th century, in Athens. But, on the other hand, there are many markers left behind of its original oral state of transmission in the way in which it's written, so it's obviously descended from the original; what it's not is a direct copy, because parts of the story have been added in later by other authors who thought they fitted.
 
since it has been lost, one could infer that nobody cared very much for it, and thus that the other parts weren't very good
 
But that is extremely subjective. Following your logic, the Romans were stupid folk, as were the ancient Greek, et cetera.
 

MrP

Banned
since it has been lost, one could infer that nobody cared very much for it, and thus that the other parts weren't very good

That's an interesting inference. I precisely once enjoyed a part of The Aeneid, to give a different epic as an example. Now, I really did enjoy that passage, and I hold the imagery, although not the Latin, in my mind this very moment. Does that mean the rest is objectively awful, that I (in the main) don't appreciate verse or - maybe - option C?

Answer: The answer is B, not A or C. C was a red herring. :)
 
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