The Scotto Grotto (org)

Getting ever more nifty…

Thank you, discovery channel!

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20010212/scrolls.html

Hundreds of scrolls, reduced to lumps of coal by the 750-degree Fahrenheit cloud that wrapped the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum during Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., are rising from the volcano’s ash in what could be the most significant rediscovery of classical literature since the Renaissance.

Among the works scholars hope to read using the new technology are Aristotle’s lost 30 dialogues, philosophical work by Epicurus, erotic poems by Philodemus, Virgilius’s lost eclogue, scientific work by Archimedes and lesbian poetry by Sappho.