Battle for the books of Herculaneum
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=638222
Buried deep in the Villa dei Papiri, covered by the molten lava of
Vesuvius, lies one of the finest libraries of the ancient world. But
excavation may destroy more than it saves
By Peter Popham
14 May 2005
They look like lumps of coal, and when the Swiss military engineer and
his team who first explored the buried town of Herculaneum in the 18th
century encountered them, that was how they were treated: as ancient
rubbish, to be dumped in the sea.
But before being hit by a cascade of molten volcanic rock at more than
400C (the so-called pyroclastic flow that inundated the town), these
now-blackened and nondescript objects were part of the library of the
grandest villa in the town, where the father-in-law of Julius Caesar
was regaled with the epigrammatic gems of his in-house Epicurean
philosopher, Philodemus.
.
|
