SoA Forums

History => Ancient and Medieval History => Topic started by: Duncan Head on December 20, 2013, 09:55:27 AM

Title: Recovering literature from Herculaneum
Post by: Duncan Head on December 20, 2013, 09:55:27 AM
There's an interesting piece about scientific efforts to read the scrolls from Piso's villa at Herculaneum on the BBC today - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25106956 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25106956).

And more at http://www.classics.ucla.edu/index.php/philodemus (http://www.classics.ucla.edu/index.php/philodemus) - many of the Herculaneum texts are by Philodemos of Gadara. Unfortunately, not a writer who seems to have been into military history  :(
Title: Re: Recovering literature from Herculaneum
Post by: Jim Webster on December 20, 2013, 05:44:51 PM
According to the wiki " ethics, theology, rhetoric, music, poetry, and the history of various philosophical schools."

Am I allowed to describe him as 'neither use nor ornament'
I'm probably a Philistine (being not bad at metal work) :-)

Jim
Title: Re: Recovering literature from Herculaneum
Post by: Mark on December 30, 2013, 03:28:06 PM
I think the article said that there are 400 or so scrolls still completely unread, and quite a number still believed to be underground. So still some hope.

Interesting to see this come back with relatively little progress - I recall an article about this in the Sunday Times several years' ago and was wondering what had happened.