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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   21304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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No good news are coming from anywhere, whether from culture wars or the real ones. As fitting for Friday the 13th.

Except one thing that is large, and good.

First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by 21yo computer science student

Crucified bird thread

For ancient history nerds, this is big, really big. Imagine how will space nerds feel if/when Elon delivers what he promised and gets his Starship to the orbit. This big.

So what is the hype about?

Ancient books were in form of scrolls made of papyrus that had to be constantly rolled and unrolled in order to be read. This was hard on the material, and ancient books had limited shelf time(pun intended).

Ancient libraries needed constant recopying of books to stay functional, and this was laborious and expensive (no need to blame Christians or Muslims for destruction of ancient literature, ordinary daily wear and tear would be sufficient). No surprise that new revolutionary technology of bound book took the world by storm.

All ancient libraries are long gone - except one, found in Herculaneum under 100 feet of volcanic ash. And not ordinary library, but library of wealthy Roman, owner of one of most luxurious villas known from the Roman Empire.

You can visit modern replica in California.

Nearly two thousands of ancient scrolls, unfortunately they now looked like this.

For 250 years, ancient history nerds didn't gave up and tried to find ways to read the scrolls. Mostly destructive ways

Since their discovery, previous attempts used rose water, liquid mercury, vegetable gas, sulfuric compounds, papyrus juice, or a mixture of ethanol, glycerin, and warm water, in hopes to make scrolls readable.

but they sometimes worked.

By the middle of the 20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered.

Now we can finally do better. So what can we hope for?

Do not expect lost masterpieces of classical literature.

Owner of the library was single mindedly dedicated to philosophy, particularly Epicurean philosophy. Expect more writings by Philodemus of Gadara, Zeno of Sidon and Epicurus himself.

Epicureans, these pig ignorant fedora atheists whose teachings can appeal only to the worst degenerates, as Stoics, Jews and Christians said (and as their major competitors, they had to know best)?

(after 2000 years, "epicurean" is still insult used for secular Jews by their observant brothers)

Or Epicureans, founders of science and inventors of modern enlightened values?

The revival of Epicureanism in the 17th century coincided with the growth of scientific rationalism and classical liberalism. There can be no doubt these facts are connected. It may, indeed, be argued that the first was a leading cause of the second two, and that we are now living in a world shaped, in every worthwhile sense, by the ideas of Epicurus.

We could finally find out, we could read Epicurus' and Epicureans own words instead of fragments and more or less hostile refutations. For true ancient history nerd, this would be as exciting as finding new poem by Sappho or new play by Euripides.

That's pretty awesome, thanks for throwing some positive news at us.

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