The Top 10 Books Lost To Time

Smithsonian Magazine:

Before the Iliad and the Odyssey, there was the Margites. Little is known about the plot of the comedic epic poem—Homer’s first work—written around 700 B.C. But a few surviving lines, woven into other works, describe the poem’s foolish hero, Margites.

Read the whole story: Smithsonian Magazine

Comments

[mygenericemail78]

06:10 PM on 09/29/2011

How do these people know if this stuff even ever existed in the first place?

If it was mentioned in other texts, then its possbile they were just ideas and never written.

[Syllogizer]

01:10 PM on 09/28/2011

The Margites? We don't even really know if Homer existed, far less that he wrote this work. Aristotle's word is not good enough, though it is the best we have (he mentiones the Margites in "The Poetics".

[MolliBlum]

09:33 AM on 09/28/2011

... and Walter Benjamin's final manuscript... :-(