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Grant Sought to Recover “Lost Latin Library”

British and Italian archeologists are poised to begin restoration of parts of the 2,000-year-old sister city of Pompeii that could include excavation of a library that one scholar calls "the holy grail of Latin scholars," the London Times reported August 8.

An international committee is optimistic about receiving a $100-million grant from the Packard Humanities Institute, a California foundation, that would allow work to begin at Herculaneum, which is less than 10 miles from the more famous Pompeii. Both towns were overwhelmed by ash and lava spewed out during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The houses and streets of Pompeii have been excavated; work at Herculaneum began in the 18th century but has been hampered because much of the ancient city is buried beneath the modern town of Ercolano.

Herculaneum was a city of patrician villas, including that of Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, which is said to contain a celebrated "lost Latin library" of the works of such poets as Horace and Virgil. Many upper stories of buildings in the buried city have been preserved, said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School at Rome, and "who knows, the great library may have been equally well-preserved over 2,000 years."

American Libraries, October 2000, p. 29