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Missing Episode/Literature: Difference between revisions
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* For certain values of "episode", this trope is known to be [[Older Than Dirt]]: many ancient masterpieces of literature are lost forever, and many others are missing chunks of text due to physical deterioration. We know of a relatively small number from quotations or references in other literature of antiquity.
** One well known example of lost literature: [[Sappho]]'s poems, the vast majority of which are simply lost to history (read: out of nine volumes of poetry, exactly ''one'' complete poem has survived.)
** ''[[The Iliad]]'' and ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'' were originally just two of eight poems that made up the [[The Trojan Cycle|Trojan Cycle]] telling the story of the Trojan War. The other six, which were not attributed to [[Homer]], are all lost. However, it is possible to deduce the contents of the other poems through a number of summaries, excerpts and references in extant works.
*** Said lost works include many of the most widely-known episodes of the whole saga. For example, [[Achilles' Heel|Achilles' death]] and the building of the [[Trojan Horse]] happen after the events of the ''Iliad'', and were recounted in the ''Aethiopis'' and the ''Little Iliad'' respectively. The fall of Troy is the subject of the ''Iliou Persis'' ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Greek for "The Sack of Ilion")]].
** [[wikipedia:Library of Alexandria|The Library of Alexandria]]
*** A particularly scary hypothesis on the destruction of the Library's contents claims that the works of [[Aristotle]], [[Plato]], Sappho, Alceus and many more were used to heat the baths in the city for months after the Library was ransacked. Luckily (or not) it's more widely accepted that most of the work in the Library was lost simply due to negligence during what was a politically disastrous time.
* The never-published (but still canon) ''[[Bionicle]]'' book, ''Invasion'', which was eventually lost forever after Greg Farshtey's computer died.
** Not that it was ever close to being finished, mind you. Even if the written chapters were to be published somehow, about two thirds of the story would still have been missing.
* The memoirs of [[Evil Matriarch|Agrippina the Younger]], which we only know existed due to their having been used as references by later Roman historians. Seeing the life of one of the most powerful and prominent woman in Roman history from her own point of view would've been nice.
* Many ancient philosophical texts are considered lost. This includes all of Aristotle's dialogues (which themselves [[Trope Maker|started a genre]] of texts distinct from [[Plato|Plato's]] dialogues) and all the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers. If Socrates himself ever wrote anything, that has vanished too. All that we know about any of these works, we owe to excerpts, summaries and other secondary sources written by later authors.
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