Photius, (c.810 - c.893), a Byzantine theologian who was patriarch of Constantinople twice, was an active religious figure in the Eastern Orthodox Church but it is his writings that are of greatest interest to me. He wrote detailed summations or short descriptions (in a collection now known as the 'Bibliotheca') of some 280 ancient books, "half of which", writes Basbanes, "no longer survive in any form except in the succinct condensations he prepared for the private amusement of his immediate circle." Photius claims that his summations were written for his brother Tarasios as a "written account of the contents of such books as were read in your absence, in order to have some consolation for the separation which you sorely regret, and at the same time to obtain at least a summary and general knowledge of works you have not yet read in our company." The book reviews tell us a lot about long lost texts. "Thus it is," Basbanes writes:
Thank you, Photius! Now I must find myself a copy of the Bibliotheca...that the modern reader can sense the narrative power of tales crafted by the storyteller Antonius Diogenes, or appreciate the observations of the historian Pamphila, a woman who was "born in Egypt and lived at a time when Nero was emperor of the Romans." Those with a penchant for poetry may be amused by the tropes of Olympiodorus, while those interested in the history of science can sample the writings of the physician Dioscurides. The names of other thinkers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and poets - Eudocia, Conon, Sotion, Diodorus of Tarsus, Eunomius, Phrynichus, Epiphanius, Irenaeus, the litany of lost voices goes on and on - come at us like desperate calls from a shrouded sea.