Thanks to the use of new technologies, the project researchers Greek Schools have managed to extract new information from the famous Herculaneum papyri, semi-charred scrolls from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, which contain philosophical texts and the History of the Academy of Athens. The researchers managed to decipher further a thousand words never read before, about 30% of the textamong which the exact location of Plato’s burial also emerged.
The new information gathered revealed key parts of the life of the great Greek philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. In the ten fragments analyzed, it is told how Plato was sold into slavery on the island of Aegina between 404 BC, when Sparta conquered the island, and 399 BC, immediately after the death of Socrates. Until now it was believed that Plato had become a slave in 387 BC, during his stay at the court of Dionysus I of Syracuse.
The project
Furthermore, the texts reveal that it was buried in the garden reserved for him in the Academy of Athens, near the so-called Museion or sacred chapel to the Muses, the goddesses who inspired the arts, and that Plato was very critical of the abilities of a musician originally from Thrace, considered by the ancient Greeks as an area of barbarians. Finally, new information was found regarding the corruption of the oracle of Delphi by the philosopher Heraclides Ponticus and found the correct name of Philo of Larissa, student of the grammarian Apollodorus of Athens, actually called “Philion”.
The Greek Schools project, funded by the European Union, was born in 2021 from a collaboration between the University of Pisa, the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences, the Antonio Zampolli Institute of Computational Linguistics of the National Research Council and the library national of Naples, where the Herculaneum papyri are preserved. The aim of the initiative is to create the most complete version of Philodemus of Gadara’s Review of the Philosophersthe oldest history of Greek philosophy that has come down to us and is preserved in the papyri.
Scrolls damaged by the eruption of Vesuvius cannot be unrolled to be read, because they would risk shattering, which is why the use of new imaging diagnostic techniques is of fundamental help to scholars. These include infrared and ultraviolet optical imaging, molecular and elemental imaging, thermal imaging, tomography, digital optical microscopy, and other techniques, including the use of artificial intelligence to reconstruct the missing parts. All these techniques are non-invasive and allow you to read the text without opening the papyrus, even when it is hidden by many layers.
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