From lockyert@mweb.co.za Sat Nov 24 06:28:31 2001 Received: from mailscan4.cac.washington.edu (mailscan4.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with SMTP id fAOESTn66378 for ; Sat, 24 Nov 2001 06:28:29 -0800 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan4.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Nov 24 06:28:25 2001 -0800 Received: from laibach.mweb.co.za (laibach.mweb.co.za [196.2.53.177]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with ESMTP id fAOESKB01145 for ; Sat, 24 Nov 2001 06:28:22 -0800 Received: from rdg-dial-196-30-234-133.mweb.co.za ([196.30.234.133] helo=al40) by laibach.mweb.co.za with smtp (Exim 3.33 #2) id 167doa-0006Sm-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sat, 24 Nov 2001 16:29:56 +0200 Message-ID: <003501c174f4$3f371020$85ea1ec4@al40> From: "Terrence Lockyer" To: "Classics List" Subject: Herculaneum Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 16:26:48 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Jason Kayes wrote : Hello. Quick question from an undergraduate: I read : the following in C.R. Haines _Sappho: The Poems and : Fragments_, "That a complete copy of Sappho's poems : should ever be recovered is now almost beyond the : bounds of possibility. The sarcophagus of a lover of : Greek learning in Egypt or a poet's library in buried : Herculaneum, is the only place we can look to for such : a joyous resurrection [. . .]" (11). I think the best that can be said of comments like this is that they are products of wishful thinking. There is probably not a classicist, professional or otherwise, anywhere who has not dreamt of someone turning up the rest of Tacitus or Kallimakhos, Ovid's *Medea*, the lost books of Livy (there are also, it seems, some who would rather those *weren't* found :-)), more of Euripides or Aristophanes, and the list goes on. : I have heard a little bit about Herculaneum in class, : but have had trouble finding out more information on : it. I was wondering if anyone knew what the possibilities : are of such discoveries at Herculaneum (Sappho or : other) and, if excavations are not going on right now, : are they planned for the future? Thank you. Herculaneum was buried at the same time as Pompeii but, if I recall correctly, largely by ash (that later solidified into rock) rather than the mud, etc., that engulfed Pompeii. Herculaneum has already been the source of several papyrus finds (some of which have led to publications of formerly lost works, most of these, I think, by the influential first-century BCE Epicurean Philodemus of Gadara, who spent some time in the city), but the task of preserving, unrolling, and reading these is not easy. As I understand it, the gains so far have been mainly in philosophical or technical texts. Given the incompletely excavated state of the site, and the fact that there are still many unread papyri, it is certainly possible that more texts will emerge from Herculaneum, but speculation about what they may be is just that: speculation. Even aside from archaeology, the recovery of previously unknown or previously known, but since lost, manuscripts *does* still happen (the forty or so lines of the previously unknown, and still contested, 'Oxford' fragment of Juvenal's sixth satire were detected only about a century ago, and the last ten years has seen the recovery of the last page of a manuscript of Valerius Flaccus' *Argonautica* that had been known, but lost, for centuries). Such gains as there are, however, are seldom spectacular, and the idea that we may one day recover a major part of a major author, Sappho or another, will always be rather more in the realms of hope than of likelihood. Terrence Lockyer Johannesburg, South Africa .