From goya@racine.vjf.cnrs.fr Sun Feb 11 08:53:33 2001 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id IAA101460 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 08:53:32 -0800 Received: from filer.fr.clara.net (filer.fr.clara.net [212.43.194.74]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id IAA22158 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 08:53:30 -0800 Received: from mail3.freesurf.fr (bastille.freesurf.fr [212.43.206.2]) by filer.fr.clara.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B77492FCE for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 17:53:19 +0100 (CET) Received: from [212.43.225.214] (du-225-214.nat.dialup.freesurf.fr [212.43.225.214]) by mail3.freesurf.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E4AA19007 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 17:53:18 +0100 (CET) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010211101308.00a1b240@idirect.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 17:52:47 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Michael Chase Subject: Re: In the latest Explorator > > THE BIG NEWS > > Okay, I haven't had 'big news' for a while, but this classicist can't > resist this one: The Independent has a report that the excavations at > Herculaneum has brought forth some 850 papyri and "Among the works, which > academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of > Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in > antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by > Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets > Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by > Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, > tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, > Gallus, Macer and Varus.": > > http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Science/2001-02/latin110201.shtml > > >M.C.: Um, not quite. The excavations in question took place in the >mid-eighteenth century. The news story is about new technology which, it's >claimed, will allow previously illegible papyri to be read. It's highly >unlikely that all thirty of Aristotle's dialogues happen to have been >preserved at Herculaneum; it seems to be the author of this article has >just given a wish-list of what the llegible papyri *might* contain. Michael Chase (goya@vjf.cnrs.fr) 31 rue de Poissy Paris 75005 01 43 26 50 25 .