{"id":365,"date":"2005-01-26T22:19:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-26T22:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=365"},"modified":"2005-01-26T22:19:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-26T22:19:00","slug":"365","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The lost library of Rome<\/strong><\/p>\n

Classical scholars are calling for more excavation at the Villa of the Papyri<\/a> in Ercolano (Herculaneum<\/a>) because even more ancient books may be buried there.<\/p>\n

Once the villa had been stripped, 200 years ago, the tunnels were sealed. But last week a group of the world\u2019s leading classical scholars gathered in Oxford to demand that the site be reopened. They believe that there is a better-than-evens chance \u2014 \u201cquite likely\u201d, is how Robert Fowler, professor of Greek at Bristol University, puts it \u2014 that the villa may have possessed at least one other library still to be uncovered.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to new technology, ruined scrolls that were unreadable when they were found can now be read:<\/p>\n

[The call] follows the first detailed analysis of the 1,800 papyri, now largely unrolled and deciphered thanks to a technique known as multi-spectral imaging (MSI). What appear to the naked eye as jet-black cinders are transformed by MSI into readable text. Thirty thousand images are now legible on CD-Rom; suddenly poems and works of philosophy are speaking again, 2,000 years after they were sealed in their cedar-wood cabinets in the summer of AD79.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lost library of Rome Classical scholars are calling for more excavation at the Villa of the Papyri in Ercolano (Herculaneum) because even more ancient books may be buried there. Once the villa had been stripped, 200 years ago, the tunnels were sealed. But last week a group of the world\u2019s leading classical scholars gathered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-365","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":412,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=412","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":0},"title":"New classicsThe Independent (UK) newspaper\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"New classicsThe Independent (UK) newspaper reports that a group of ancient, seemingly unreadable documents might contain both Classic works of literature and ancient Christian gospels.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,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7009,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7009","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":1},"title":"New Poems by Sappho","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The possibility of deciphering the carbonized papyrus scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri is exciting. One friend hopes that some day an Etruscan\/Greek or Etruscan\/Latin dictionary will be discovered. (The Etruscan language used Greek letters, but we cannot completely read it, beyond some kings' names, etc.) Me, I hope\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Classics\"","block_context":{"text":"Classics","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=classics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.history.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/herculaneum-scrolls.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14010,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14010","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":2},"title":"What Does ‘Pagan Persistence’ Look Like?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"For more than a century, scholars and Pagans (who are sometimes the same people) have debated the persistence -- or not -- of Pagan ideas and practices into the Chritian era. This is the question that Robin Douglas and Francis Young examine in Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/oaganism-persisting.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7323,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7323","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":3},"title":"Is Everything You Knew about Pompeii and Herculaneum Wrong?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"At Wonders and Marvels, a whole list of guide- and guidebook \"truths\" that may not be so. It starts with this: Myth #1 \u2013 Vesuvius Did Not Erupt on 24 August AD 79. Everybody confidently quotes this as the date of the eruption, but everybody is probably wrong! At the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7171,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7171","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":4},"title":"The Slut, the Priestess, and\/or the Poet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article in The New Yorker, \"How Gay was Sappho?\" re-examines two questions about the famous poet of antiquity: 1. Was her poetry really \"personal,\" as opposed to something like the Iliad, which clearly was created for public performance? 2. Although she lived on the island of Lesbos, was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"sappho painting","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/sappho-painting.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6519,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6519","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":5},"title":"Around the Blogosphere: A Pagan Cat, Multiple Souls, and Idolatry","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 \"I don't want to be rude, but what religion are you?\" A Pagan pet's name produces confusion at the veterinary clinic. \u00b6\u00a0\u00a0 \"The Three\/Four Souls and Their Afterlives.\" Heather at Eaarth Animist\u00a0looks at different traditional accounts to learn what might explain her own experiences: \"It has baffled many Western\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}