From helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu Sun Feb 11 10:37:14 2001 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id KAA61934 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:37:11 -0800 Received: from mailgate.ias.edu (mailgate.ias.edu [192.16.204.20]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id KAA22950 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:37:10 -0800 Received: from rain.admin.ias.edu (rain.admin.ias.edu [198.138.242.19]) by mailgate.ias.edu (8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA19477 for ; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 13:37:09 -0500 (EST) Received: from pc117.hs.ias.edu by rain.admin.ias.edu with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.0.1460.8) id CMZL2JBT; Sun, 11 Feb 2001 13:37:11 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: helmadik@nsit-popmail.uchicago.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010211101308.00a1b240@idirect.com> References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010211101308.00a1b240@idirect.com> Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 13:33:39 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Helma Dik Subject: Re: In the latest Explorator Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" dm writes: >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.": > I hope I'm wrong and this is a new development but I'm afraid that a) the works listed are your basic classicist's wish list (key word: *hope* to read), with some skewing toward what is likely to have been in the library, and the researchers' interests. b) 850 is probably the number of badly carbonized hitherto unreadable rolls. If this includes ones still unexcavated, I don't know. What is pretty certain is that these unread papyri *are* literary at least, given their provenance, but whether they will be filling all our favorite gaps is a different question altogether. *And* the technique is indeed a stunning advance on what was available so far (which was your basic Photoshop manipulation, as far as I understand from Philodemons). Background (I do not presume to know all the ins and outs, but this is what I think it comes down to): Funding is needed (surprise!), and this is part of the public relations offensive. May all these dreams come true (and some more Sophocles, please!)- HD Helma Dik Department of Classics University of Chicago helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu http://humanities.uchicago.edu/classics/ 2000-2001: Institute for Advanced Study .