News at Eleven: It was common for 14th and 15th-century

scholars to claim that there was a destruction of classical learning in the middle ages, or, as [Stephen] Greenblatt calls it, "a Great Vanishing", and that they were bringing the classical past back to life. As Francesco Barbaro wrote to Poggio [Bracciolini]: "You have revived so many illustrious men and such wise men, who were dead from eternity."

Was this story really true? It more or less works for De Rerum Natura, which was indeed "lost" (or at least not often recopied between the 13th and 15th centuries) and then found on a particular day by an individual humanist. But the story that the renaissance suddenly began with a great rediscovery of the pagan past does not work so well in relation to other classical authors.

from The Guardian: The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt--review

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