How did Roman documents survive, especially to the medieval era?

by Creative-Improvement

For instance I am reading Ab Urba Condita by Livy and I am interested how such a lengthy book was preserved after the fall of Rome. Was it copied down the ages by patrons?

gynnis-scholasticus

Yes, it is through continuous copying that our ancient texts have survived. I can recommend some earlier answers about this:

  • This answer by u/XenophonTheAthenian is about how texts, specifically Caesar's Gallic Wars were distributed and copied in Antiquity
  • The continuing copying of them has been explained in a summary fashion here by several users, and more detailed here
  • Our XenophonTheAthenian has also examined this in detail in this answer
  • As has u/Daeres in this older one
  • And u/KiwiHellenist has written both here and here about how, in the mediaeval period for Latin texts, it was mainly monks doing this