In researching the great Greek playwrights, one interesting thing I've found is how few of the plays written remain in existence. It's not that hard to believe that after over two thousand years, some works were lost, but for some of the playwrights, the amount lost are pretty impressive. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all wrote around 100 plays, but Euripides has the most surviving at 19 (or maybe 18, one is controversially sourced). Only 7 of Aeschylus' plays survive. Again, this isn't terribly surprising as they wrote thousands of years ago, but there were active attempts to preserve the plays as soon as the 4th century BCE. Despite this, very few of the tragedians works remain today.
After some research into lost works, it became apparent that this is not a unique situation. Writers as prominent as Shakespeare and as recent as 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud have had some of their works lost, including some historical plays of Shakespeare like Cardenio and a poem of Rimbaud's that contemporary poet Verlaine said was his masterpiece. In addition, many works, even from the 20th century, have been lost due to intentional destruction, both by censors or the authors themselves, as well as some manuscripts just being lost accidentally. It's interesting to think how much potentially great literature has been lost randomly and the effect this might have on our perception of different writers. For example, Aeschylus wrote his own play of the Oedipus story, but we are unable to compare it to Sophocles', as it is lost to history.
Lastly it's interesting to think about what from today will be lost two thousand years from now. While that may seem impossible with modern archives online, two thousand years is a long time, and some works will probably be lost, and more might end up forgotten and ignored. It's fascinating and a little disconcerting to think about how many works of literature from today might end up forgotten or even completely lost in the future.
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That's an interesting point, Bryce. What disconcerts me the most, I think, is just knowing that our perception of that time period could be completely off. What we know is entirely shaped by the little remnants of the time period. There is a possibility that what we consider as the norm of Greek drama was actually unconventional. Our perception could be totally distorted, and we really can't ever have a fully accurate account of history. That's pretty crazy because so much of the modern arts are based off of conventions created in Greek drama, and it really just makes you think about how easily theater customs could have been altered. Also, I can't help but apply this concept to the future. What will people thousands of years in the future think of us? What will stand out to them? What will be left of our time?
Going further off of both of your posts, I think that it is most interesting to think about the future of our society. If in thousands of years our civilization is in ruin how much of our work will be saved. What if the only works of literature that are saved are Dr. Seuss of kids books. Will the future civilizations of the world think those books were the peak of our literary works. Another thing to consider is the internet, will later civilizations have access to our internet. If not what would they think of these computers and phones that are seemingly everywhere. If so a large majority of society's major works and an endless supply of material describing and detailing our world would be saved. If we didn't have the internet we would likely have more hard copies of items, and they might have a greater chance of surviving. To me it is interesting to think about whether having the internet will impede or help future civilizations from discovering more about us.
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