Focus: The search for the lost library of Rome

The Sunday Times (UK) ^ | January 23 2005 | Robert Harris

[sassbox]

This is so cool! I'm a philosophy grad student, with great interest in Aristotle's metaphysics, and am just giddy with excitement that we could find some of his lost works. I can't even begin to think of how great an impact finding those lost works would have on the whole discipline. The discovery could do for philosophy what the discovery of DNA did for biology. So exciting!!

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[alessandrofiaschi]

ping & bump.

[x]

Cool! But what if the lost plays are found and they're junk? Or if they're so much alike that they drag down the author's reputation? What if the things we thought great were common and unremarkable at the time? Or is it really going to be true that Aeschylus or Sophocles was so great an artist that he could turn out dozens of great plays?

This could be a great boon for the humanities if that's the case. It would be too much to say that it would bring a new renaissance, but if really important works are found that will give writers and critics and theatrical companies something to do for decades, though it might put out some professors who chose the classics because nothing changes there.

[The Great RJ]

Do you suppose 2,000 years from now scholars will be excavating the Clinton Library?

[Huber]

Now THAT'S cool!

[SunkenCiv]

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

link back to yours:

Focus: The search for the lost library of Rome
Times Online (U.K.) ^ | January 23, 2005 | Robert Harris
Posted on 02/01/2005 10:08:49 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1333554/posts

[blam]

This 79AD event is recorded in the tree-rings worldwide.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

Fascinating. I hope they work fast and go ahead and excavate. It sounds like Vesuvius is on a 2,000 year timetable and the last explosion was 79AD...

[Jinjelsnaps]

Do you suppose 2,000 years from now scholars will be excavating the Clinton Library?

well, condoms don't decompse too easily...they could very well find Clinton's legacy!

[Antoninus]

I think every classicist has their "if only we could find" list, and most of the stuff might potentially be in the Villa of the Papyri. I know one classicist who spent years trying to reconstruct what might have been in the Memoirs of Sulla. Actually finding and being able to read a copy would be stunning.

The missing books of Livy, for starters. Plus, any of the archaic Republican Roman writers. We have so little of their work.

[Antoninus]

Do you suppose 2,000 years from now scholars will be excavating the Clinton Library?

Only if Arkansas gets buried by a volcano. Not out of the question, btw...

[lizma]

The big one before the 79 AD explosion was thought to have occurred around 1200 BC. Sounds like they are over due.

Hope their keeping a close eye on their cats.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

And the irony? More "dead white western males" to be banned from the curriculum by the liberals, cultural Marxists, feminazis, and multiculturalists who are "burning the libraries" and gutting our colleges and universities. [sarcasm]

[concentric circles]

[Physicist]

LOL, just yesterday I dug up that graphic for future bibliopath pings! Here are a couple other good ones I found:

[Physicist]

[Walkingfeather]

Tesla in his lab in colorado springs