lost books is a dodgy theme, if you are not certain that a thing existed, how can you know that it is lost? who knows what is lost and what is apocryphal?

once, i bemoaned the destruction of the library at alexandria. my friend kevin said, no, it’s the greatest gift ever to classical lit students. instead of having to read every play aristophanes wrote, they just have to know the ones that were good enough to be widely copied.