Stoic (?) scroll recovered from Herculaneum

HERCULANEUM WATCH: AI helps read papyrus scroll burnt to crisp during Vesuvius eruption. Previously hidden text revealed without unrolling scroll discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour (Ian Sample, The Guardian).

The Vesuvius Challenge has yielded up twenty readable columns of a carbonized Herculaneum scroll:

Much of the Herculaneum library was dominated by Philodemus of Gadara, a Epicurean philosopher and poet in the first century BC. But while the title and author of PHerc 1667 remain unknown, its older age and contents point to another author.

Analysis by Nicolardi and her colleagues suggests the text is a stoic treatise, perhaps authored by the Greek philosopher Chrysippus. He was the third head of the stoic school and has other works in the collection. The text refers to his nephew and pupil, Aristocreon.

“At first, we were saying this could be an Epicurean talking about stoic doctrine,” said Nicolardi. “But then I stopped and said, you know, if this was found outside of Herculaneum, we would categorise it as a stoic work.”

Prof. Brent Seales has been working on recovering the Herculaneum scrolls for a long time.

Seales said the challenge had now shifted from the techniques needed to read the burned scrolls to the scholarly work to understand them. “People now know that this can be done and now we’re exploring what [the texts] actually mean,” he said. “For me that’s the World Cup. I just won the World Cup: that’s my victory.”

Amen to that.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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