http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24096948-25132,00.htm
Link: In search of Western civilisation's lost classics | The Australian.
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"Epicurus's philosophy exercised so widespread an influence that for a long time it was touch and go whether Christianity might not have to give way before it," writes Lawrence Durrell in a tone of lament.
One consequence of Christian hostility, a kind of passive resistance, is a broken tradition. Epicureanism was ignored by the monastic scribes who transferred the works of approved authors from the school of Athens, particularly Aristotle and Plato, from papyrus to parchment and vellum. Only a few letters, sayings and principles survive from the 300 scrolls attributed to Epicurus in antiquity.
A few fragments from Epicurus's lost work, On Nature, inspiration for the Roman poet Lucretius's magisterial poem, On the Nature of Things, have been unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri. But the Herculaneum scrolls are mainly the works of an Epicurean sage named Philodemus, previously known as the author of some rather racy light verse.
These finds are contributing to a revival of scholarly interest in Epicureanism, Europe's first green philosophy, at a time when the West urgently seeks advice on living with less. Epicurean counsel sounds at times like contemporary wisdom; it provides the philosophical language for an eco-friendly art of life. A few lines from Lucretius, penned at the apogee of paganism, are equally applicable in the age of the plasma screen:
But while we can't get what we want, that seems
Of all things most desirable. Once got,
We must have something else.
But there is an exquisite edge to the discovery of this Epicurean library in Herculaneum, and it is honed not so much by the knowledge of what has been found as the fear of what might be lost. An alliance of mainly British and American scholars, convinced that more texts remain to be found at the Villa of the Papyri, are calling for its urgent excavation. They cite the threat posed to the villa, which has never been completely liberated from its prison of rock, by a further eruption of Vesuvius. The volcano's bellows were heard as recently as 1998.
Richard Janko, head of classical studies at the University of Michigan, believes the Villa of the Papyri promises to yield the greatest number of new texts since the discoveries in the 16th century that nourished the High Renaissance and fashioned Western secular humanism. "This is the only place in the world where we know for certain that a Greco-Roman library was entombed in a manner that ensured its preservation," Janko says.
"There are almost certainly more books to be found there."
He points out that many of the scrolls were discovered in carrying containers arrayed in a line, as if being evacuated towards the sea.
Robert Fowler, professor of Greek and dean of arts at Bristol University, hopes that a study recently published by the local archeological superintendent's office on the future conservation of the Herculaneum site, ancient and modern, might show the way forward.
"The villa remains one of the great buildings of the ancient world and it should certainly be excavated," Fowler says. "This would be true even if we were to find no further papyri, though the likelihood that we will find them adds much to the case. The building will certainly contain many other things, and is of unique historical interest. If we know of a site that should be excavated, and we have the capacity, let us get on with it. Of all the sites in the world, this one ranks close to the top of the list for potential and historical importance."
If a significant number of lost classics are found at the Villa of the Papyri it would enlarge the cultural and intellectual tradition, and might even alter its course. Should scholars find the famous lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics, the narrative spring of Umberto Eco's best-selling medieval mystery, The Name of the Rose, the discovery might shift the ground of Western aesthetics. Of Sophocles' 120 plays, only seven are known, and of these the Oedipus trilogy has embossed itself eternally on the Western imagination. The Kypria, a martial epic believed to have been Homer's source material, disappeared some time in antiquity.
All gone. Or perhaps only lost from view....
