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Some good news:

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:01 pm
by P. Scribonius Martialis
link
Today's Wikipedia front page.

Proof that wikipedia's news pages share my sense of priorities:

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.


I believe the expression most used on the internet to describe these sorts of occasions is 'w00t'.

Now, I'm aware that the emphasis in classical studies has changed somewhat, so that scholars are now somewhat more interested in finding out about the everyday lives of the Roman proles, and less interested in the great literary works than they were formerly, but it still is tremendously exciting.

Even though most of the papyri will be in Greek rather than Latin, I still think this is fantastic news. What treasures would SVR members most like to see unearthed? I think that if we're very lucky we'll get some of Sappho's poetry, perhaps some Tacitus. If we're unlucky, we'll get some of Cicero's poetry. I'm sure noster Scerio will be very pleased to find that there are apparently undiscovered gospels among the remains (surely these will emerge later and may yet outshine those found at Nag Hammadi).

The articles I've been able to find are sketchy at best. If anyone has an in-depth resource/article I'd be ever so grateful if they'd share.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:27 pm
by Quintus Aurelius Orcus
Salve

I found one article on the Online edition of the Independent:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165
It is exciting news.
vale

Quintus

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:28 pm
by Quintus Pomponius Atticus
Salve P. Scriboni

Allow me to repeat you : w00t !!!

To name but one thing (of course I'd like to see a complete ancient gentlemen's library being unearthed one day !), I'd very much like to find more texts by the great 5th century sophists : as much as Socrates, they laid the basis for classical western humanism, but what we know about them, and certainly written by them is very little. More fragments, or - di volentes ! - entire texts could occasion us to more or less rewrite the history of ideas of western civilisation.

Vale,

Atticus

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 6:37 pm
by P. Scribonius Martialis
To name but one thing (of course I'd like to see a complete ancient gentlemen's library being unearthed one day !), I'd very much like to find more texts by the great 5th century sophists : as much as Socrates, they laid the basis for classical western humanism, but what we know about them, and certainly written by them is very little.


Gentleman's library? I understand there is one of those at Herculaneum. At the Villa of the Papyri, on rolls of papyrus underneath a layer of carbonized filth and ash, is supposed to lie the remains of an Epicurean's library. They're already scanning the remains and some of the secrets contained within have been discovered. There should be more forthcoming in the coming years. Hopefully we won't be as destructive as those renaissance scholars who attempted to hack at and manually unroll the papyri. I wouldn't like to see them damaged in any way, but I suppose this is an impossibility with the methods we use now.

Avete.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 8:04 pm
by Cleopatra Aelia
Salve Scriboni,

I understand there is one of those at Herculaneum. At the Villa of the Papyri, on rolls of papyrus underneath a layer of carbonized filth and ash, is supposed to lie the remains of an Epicurean's library. They're already scanning the remains and some of the secrets contained within have been discovered. There should be more forthcoming in the coming years. Hopefully we won't be as destructive as those renaissance scholars who attempted to hack at and manually unroll the papyri. I wouldn't like to see them damaged in any way, but I suppose this is an impossibility with the methods we use now.

Avete.


If you check out page 4 of the *Newsflash* thread at the Collegium Historiae Antiquae you will find on top of that very page my post to this topic.

PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 11:24 pm
by Quintus Pomponius Atticus
P. Scribonius Martialis wrote:Gentleman's library? I understand there is one of those at Herculaneum. At the Villa of the Papyri, on rolls of papyrus underneath a layer of carbonized filth and ash, is supposed to lie the remains of an Epicurean's library. They're already scanning the remains and some of the secrets contained within have been discovered. There should be more forthcoming in the coming years. Hopefully we won't be as destructive as those renaissance scholars who attempted to hack at and manually unroll the papyri. I wouldn't like to see them damaged in any way, but I suppose this is an impossibility with the methods we use now.

Avete.


Salve P. Scriboni,

I've read about the library of the Pisones at Herculaneum. What I've seen of the papyri however is rather fragmentary, so what I said I hoped would be unearthed was a complete, entirely readable gentlemen's library, but unfortunately, even in the best of conditions, that must remain wishful thinking, I'm afraid...

Vale,

Atticus