Oldest surviving manuscripts of Ancient Greece and Rome
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Ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of Antiquity are virtually all lost. Papyrus has a life of at most a century or two in relatively moist Italian or Greek conditions; only those works copied onto parchment, usually after the general conversion to Christianity, have survived, and by no means all of those.
Two exceptions, only two: the charred papyrus fragments recovered in Herculaneum and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Cornelius Gallus is often cited as the oldest surviving manuscript of Latin poetry.
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