The study of classics hinges on one perennial tension: whether archeology or textual sources hold more value, and which discipline should be respected more. Each approach offers a distinct lens on antiquity: whilst archeology offers us more overt representations of ancient life, literature offers us ways of more tangible access to concepts. However, for classicists, the question is not which study is superior, but rather how the interplay of these helps us understand the complexity of the Greco-Roman world.
Archeology:
Archeology delivers to us the un-meddled residue of antiquity. For example, excavations at Troy unearthed artifacts and walls that brings Homer’s Iliad into a physical reality. Similarly, the stratified layers of Roman forum encapsulates an evolving city from mud huts to marble grandeur, a story that simply no text can fully encompass. Other findings, such as pottery, clay, or even rocks, speak to us of the Romans’ daily life and ritual in a way that transcends literature.
Yet archeology’s strength is also its limitation. It offers evidence, but weak ones. The evidence is rich in presence but poor in explanation. The simple unearthing of objects cannot help us answer the question of why or how something is. To answer that, classicists turn to literature.
Texts:
Texts, by contrast, grant us invaluable insight into the minds of the ancients. Whether it’s literary works, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which offered us with a kaleidoscope of myth, Augustus’s Res Gestae Divi Augusti, which revealed Augustus’s ideology, emotion, and legacy, or fragmented papyri, like the ones in Egypt, which preserved the sentiments of dissent within the Roman provinces, these texts humanize our past, expressing nuances that archeology cannot achieve.
However, texts are treacherous. In the ancient world, authorship skews towards the privileged people - aristocrats, priests, or propagandists. This means that the voice of countless illiterate people might be stifled, offering us an incomplete or biased account of what happened. In addition, the transmission and passing down of texts complicate the issues: many classical texts are lost, many medieval scholars may have mistranslated/misinterpreted literature, and many subtle Latin/Greek neologisms may be lost. Moreover, the writers of ancient texts often write across many different purposes. Some wrote to praise the regime, others wrote to critique it. To utilize textual sources, classicists need to have a nuanced understanding of the different authors, a nuance that is very hard to grasp.
Synthesis or Supremacy?
The rivalry between these different approaches is something that all classicists encounter. Archeology stresses empiricism and a tactile connection to antiquity, whilst texts provide nuance and reasons behind people’s actions. The discipline of classics thrives in exploring this tension. We need to always focus on the benefits of each discipline and cross-compare between these two to acquire the closest we can get to the truth of what actually happened.