Literary notes about Extant (AI summary)
In literary and historical texts, the term "extant" is used to signify that a work, artifact, or document continues to exist despite the passage of time. It designates surviving texts such as ancient translations ([1]) or scholarly commentaries that have been preserved through various manuscripts ([2], [3]), and it can also refer to physical remnants like coins or architectural features ([4], [5]). Authors employ the word "extant" to underscore the material continuity of evidence from past eras—be it letters ([6]), inscriptions, or even entire bodies of work—thereby emphasizing their value in the study of history and literature ([7], [8]).
- The original is not now extant; but it was translated in the time of the Apostles into Greek, that version was of equal authority.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - p. 285) mention a commentary of Michael Psellus on twenty-four plays of Menander, still extant in Ms. at Constantinople.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - His Institutes are quoted by Servius, Boethius, Priscian, &c.; and the Epitome by Arrian is still extant.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Note 17 ( return ) [ There are coins still extant of this Eraess, as Spanheim informs us.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus - It was the first completed of the extant buildings of the group of the Acropolis and dates from 466 B.C. FIG.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - X. There is a letter of his extant, which runs thus:— PITTACUS TO CRŒSUS.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - One of his speeches is extant, a funeral oration which he made in public over his son who died after he had been consul.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch - Gulielmus : – M. Tullii Ciceronis opera omnia quae extant ... emendata studio ... J. Gulielmi et J. Gruteri.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero
