Abstract

Our knowledge of ancient history has been tremendously enlarged in the last hundred years. Ancient civilizations, formerly scarcely glimpsed or completely unknown, have emerged from the obscurity in which they were buried. In other domains, already more or less well known, the discovery of documents year after year has shed a clearer—sometimes even a harsh—light upon the great pages of the human past. These discoveries, which reveal to us what the man of earlier days was like and which enable us to achieve a better understanding of the man of today, have at times been due to the purest chance. The manuscripts we are discussing here as well as many others belong in this category.