17 April 2005

Holy shit. They've unlocked the Oxyrhynchus Papyri:
For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure--a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament....Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance".
Wha--? A second Renaissance? Where am I? What am I doing at this hedge fund? They're rediscovering pieces of the Epigonoi of Sophocles? The Epigonoi? Half of my senior thesis was devoted to reconstructing an episode from the Epigonoi, and now they up and find it? Oh man. Oh fuck. I've wasted my life. Is it too late to apply to graduate school?

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