I have no clue how I ran into this site, but for lovers of obscure knowledge, this is cool:
The Philodemus Project
The UCLA Campus magazine, UCLA Today, explains the importance of the project and the little known ancient writer whose name is given to it:
Two-thousand year-old papyri written by a first-century B.C. philosopher and lost in the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum are yielding new insights into the ancient world.
The scrolls were excavated in the eighteenth century after being buried from some 1700 years. Now, for the first time, they are being translated into English and analyzed by a team of scholars led by UCLA Classics Professor David Blank. Co-directors of the project are Richard Janko (University College, London) and Dirk Obbink (Christ Church, Oxford).
The research team is studying the writings of a philosopher and poet named Philodemus, a follower of Epicurus from the first century B.C. who summarized nearly three centuries of wisdom on literary matters that were otherwise lost.
"Philodemus is virtually our only source on poetry and literary criticsm from 300 B.C. to the time of Christ, and those were very important centuries," said Prof. Richard Janko, a member of the team from University College, London.
Blank, chair of the UCLA Department of Classics and an expert on ancient philosophy, said the documents are "comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the insight they give into the ancient world."
If you take a look at the artifacts Prof. Blank and his colleagues are working with, you'll get a sense of the monumental challenges they face. How else but through hard work will Philodemus' works become known to us. Hat's off to the men and women working to pull the ancient world out of the dust and ash. It's a labor of love without much public recognition, and little respect.
