Well, speaking of the importance of ancient manuscripts.
We all know that Plato is one of history’s most important philosophers. But for nearly 1,800 years, everything we knew about Plato’s final resting place had come from one single source: The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, written in the 3rd century by the ancient Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius. He noted that Plato was buried somewhere at the Academy. And that was all that we knew about it. Then, in 2024, from the Herculaneum Scrolls (specifically from Philodemus’s History of the Academy, which was retained within the collection), we learned exactly where Plato lies. It’s in a private garden near the Mouseion at the Academy—the sacred shrine of the Muses.
By the way, the new source is approximately 150 - 250 years earlier than the previous source.
The same scroll has done more than pinpoint the grave. It has rewritten parts of Plato’s biography as well. Diogenes told us Plato was sold into slavery in Sicily around 387 BCE. But Philodemus’s History of the Academy informs us that Plato was enslaved nearly two decades before that, either in 404 BCE when the Spartans conquered Aegina, or in 399 BCE immediately after Socrates’ death. Apparently, Plato had angered Dionysius I of Syracuse, who had him sold into slavery. He was taken to Aegina for sale. Within a short time, a man named Anniceris (possibly the Cyrenaic philosopher) ransomed him for twenty or thirty minae and sent him back to Athens. When Plato’s friends tried to repay Anniceris, he refused, using the money instead to buy Plato the little garden in the Academy.
So we have learned a lot about one of history’s greatest philosophers thanks to the Herculaneum Scrolls. The scrolls are roughly 2,000 years old, but they were severely damaged in 79 CE when Mount Vesuvius erupted, and the volcanic pyroclastic flow turned them into fragile, carbonized heaps of charcoal due to its intense 750-degree heat that sucked most of the moisture and oxygen out of them. We have had access to the scrolls since 1752, when they were discovered by workmen excavating the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, Italy. For over 250 years, scholars could only read small fragments that were physically unrolled and often destroyed in the process. A breakthrough in reading them non-invasively came in 2024, when researchers using AI and advanced imaging technology (enhanced X-ray phase-contrast tomography) successfully deciphered substantial text from scrolls.
I recently learned of the Herculaneum Scrolls being read in this way (and some of the information that they revealed about Plato) through watching a video by polýMATHY, the polyglot and Latin and Greek teacher, on his YouTube channel. Not long ago, I shared one of his videos here:
R