https://www.unipi.it/index.php/presentazione/item/20794-graziano-ranocchiahttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/29/herculaneum-scroll-plato-final-hours-burial-siteNewly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato, a key figure in the history of western philosophy.In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl.Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of Socrates and a mentor to Aristotle, and who died in Athens around 348BC – retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.The decoded words also suggest Plato’s burial site was in his designated garden in the Academy of Athens, the world’s first university, which he founded, adjacent to the Mouseion. Previously, it was only known in general terms that he was buried within the academy.In a presentation of the research findings at the National Library of Naples, Prof Graziano Ranocchia, of the University of Pisa, who spearheaded the team responsible for unearthing the carbonised scroll, described the discovery as an “extraordinary outcome that enriches our understanding of ancient history”.He said: “Thanks to the most advanced imaging diagnostic techniques, we are finally able to read and decipher new sections of texts that previously seemed inaccessible.”The text also reveals that Plato was sold into slavery on the island of Aegina, possibly as early as 404BC when the Spartans conquered the island, or alternatively in 399BC, shortly after Socrates’ passing.“Until now it was believed that Plato was sold into slavery in 387BC during his sojourn in Sicily at the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse,” Ranocchia said. “For the first time, we have been able to read sequences of hidden letters from the papyri that were enfolded within multiple layers, stuck to each other over the centuries, through an unrolling process using a mechanical technique that disrupted whole fragments of text.”Ranocchia said the ability to identify these layers and virtually realign them to their original positions to restore textual continuity represented a significant advance in terms of gathering vast amounts of information.He said the work was still in its nascent stages and the full impact would only become apparent in the coming years.
>>23355902The scroll was preserved in a lavish villa in Herculaneum and discovered in 1750, and is believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.Over the years, scholars have tried to decipher the scrolls found in this villa, known as the Villa of the Papyri.Domenico Camardo, an archaeologist at the Herculaneum conservation project, compared the impact of the AD79 eruption on Herculaneum, an ancient Roman beach town close to Pompeii, to the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during the second world war.Such was the heat of the pyroclastic surge produced by Vesuvius – believed to have been between 400C and 500C – that the brains and blood of victims instantly boiled.
>>23355908Go easy on OP, he's bringing us useful information about Plato
>>23355902>Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of Socrates and a mentor to Aristotle, and who died in Athens around 348BC – retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.what an asshole
>>23355908>t. closet faggot
>In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl.>Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of Socrates and a mentor to Aristotle, and who died in Athens around 348BC – retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.This really puts in perspective the difference between Plato and Socrates. Shortly before dying, Socrates was learning how to play the flute, while Plato was bitching about someone else playing
>>23355902Any scrap of new information will rewrite ten thousand books, and there are thousands of scrolls to decipher. That volcano will turn out to be the best preserver of information for the future. I’m rock hard.
>>23355902FINALLY. Took fucking long enough for something interesting to be discovered from antiquity again.
Interesting
>>23355902>block of garbage text>not a single quote from Plato in itGo fuck yourself >>23355908Plato was anti-homos, read his Laws
>>23355943>>23355956>t. the guillible retards who are the only target of this nothingburger reporting
>>23355993>Plato was anti-homos, read his LawsDoesn't change the fact that he was a homosexual. I will not read him. Heterosexual men are not allowed to willingly read words written by filthy pederasts. My son will NOT be reading Plato.
>>23355997>Doesn't change the fact that he was a homosexual.He wasn't>I will not read him. Didn't ask>Heterosexual men are not allowed to willingly read words written by filthy pederasts. My son will NOT be reading Plato.Cool
>>23355997Trying too hard.
>>23356001Sorry but you are in denial because you want to continue reading homosexual filth. Diogenes Laertius says that Plato wrote love letters to 5 different boys. And it is disgusting how much attention is paid to homosexual pedophilia in Symposium Phaedrus and other dialogues.
>>23356062See >>23356014
>>23355902Goddamn this is great. Criticizing her for lack of rhythm on his deathbed. I fucking love it! Thank you for linking the article OP.
>>23355902>In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl.based. other gayreeks would be banging a twink but not our boy Plato
>>23355996>t. the braindead wage slave
>>23355902This particular bit has been known for a a little over a century now. Lemme copypasya what I said in a Plato thread the other day:So everyone's heard in the last week that one of the Herculaneum scrolls being worked on has details on Plato's death different from the wedding party story in Diogenes Laërtius, right? About him criticizing a Thracian girl's musical ability? Well, turns out it's not new, just not really accessible in English. Kilian Fleischer put together a new critical edition of what's called the Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis. I don't know German, so a Google translation will have to suffice, but the frag. from picrel reads:>...who was an astronomer as well as a secretary and student of Plato, told him (Neanthes): “When Plato was already very old, he received a Chaldean guest. After a few days he developed a fever...gave a dactylic rhythm by loudly tapping to the playing of a local Thracian woman. But he asked Plato, who seemed out of his mind, with questions. But when he said: 'You see how the barbarian creature is completely ignorant, because the barbarian, who carries with her an ear against the rhythm, is not able to learn it from experience,' he was very happy and thought the man was in a good condition, since the same thought had occurred to him." And he (Philipp/Neanthes) continues: "But when his temperature continued to rise as a result of waking up at an inopportune time of night... with a serious expression...
>>23355902>critique the musician for her lack of rhythmThanks for the reminder all of these supposedly great philosophers didn't have such an all-encompassing worldview after all.
DON'T YOU DARE EVER CRITICIZE WAMMEN
>>23356578No, we champion shitposts and shit-everything here, whether it be from a man or a woman.
How slow is this unrolling and why does it take so long?
>>23356551filtered hands typed this
>>23356594The process seems really time consuming. Don't feel like explaining it but if you look it up you'll see how complex and meticulous it is. When they say years they really do mean years
>>23356638I know everything.
>>23356646No, you don't.
>>23356655You got me.
>>23356536You should contact the researchers.
>>23356551Plato wanting music to have harmony and rhythm is entirely in keeping with his general philosophic outlook, have you actually read any of his dialogues?
>>23356698I don't think they're unaware. It depends on whether they're saying they've reconstructed the passage even a little more than it had been a few years ago, or just being misunderstood by the press (so they point to the slavery and burial passages as freshly reconstructed, and mention for interest that the death story is part of this scroll, which gets reported as part of the new findings).In any case, I'm sure Fleischer and his cohort are aware, just as these guys doing the imaging have to know of Fleischer.
>>23355902>slave who has to do all the chores all day ever day, can't play the flute properly>NOOOOOOOO HOW DARE YOU NOT PLAY THE FLUTE LIKE I WANT TOWhat a fucking moron.
>plato is kind of a dick on his way out>just dies ignominiously of a fever in some shitholePlatobros.......
>>23356925t. barbarian creature
>>23356551nietzsche already called him out for his bad prison relationship with music in the birth of tragedy published in 1872
>>23356925in classical europe some slaves were full time artisans. idiot. this board is so dumb which is why i don't post here anymore. i go in literally one thread and it's full of hot takes by illiterates.
>>23356828oh yeah, I forgot how bad news agencies suck on reporting any scientific/academic research
>>23355997Based. Parmenides received his teaching from a Goddess. Daoists receive lessons and texts from divine handmaidens. Platonists... from their old gay lovers. it's over platobros
>>23355902>Graziano Ranocchia>Meaning Grateful Little FrogSomething something meme magicinsert Pepe
>>23355997Your Bait needs more work. Be slightly less obnoxious and with more confidence my man.
>>23356536>I thought Plato was based and in good health but turns out it was just the fever talking
>>23356594imagine trying to unroll a fragile document made of ash
>>23356594It's done digitally. You can't actually unroll and read it, it'd be destroyed if you did that. All it does is 'read' what is on a certain part and try to reconstruct the Greek on it
>>23356925This girl wasn't the one sweeping the floors, but flute girls were prostitutes as well.
>>23355902I call bullshit. That's just too convenient of a find. What are the odds that one of those shit-ash scrolls would have something we actually care about AND which we did not previously know on it? Not good odds at all.
>>23355997You are so obviously a jew falseflagger lmao
What did plasto do?
>>23355902Also this seems more like a /his/ find
>>23358150The computer isn’t making stuff up?
>>23358242get a grip. not everything is a conspiracy. do you post on /pol/ a lot?
>>23358242What are the odds of any discovery?
>>23356594The old attempts tried to literally unroll the scrolls but that destroyed most of the material and could barely be read. The newest solution is digitally scanning it (think MRI scan segments) then “unrolling” it virtually and by analyzing extremely minute changes in density the ink is separated from the page, then analyzed with programs to identify the text (remember these are carbonized fragments, the ink and the page are both burnt so it’s very faint data), and then researchers go through the output and refine it in case there’s ambiguity or things that don’t make sense. The current problem is that this requires a lot of hands on adjustments for each scroll so it’s slow as shit. The goal is to find ways to automate the process and while BRO IT’S AI is a meme right now, LLM is good at exactly this task, so they’re working to get machine reading of the scan results that don’t need to be fiddled with - at which point mass scanning of scrolls can begin. Only a small portion of the library has been excavated and we’re talking about thousands of scrolls. Most of it will be the private collection of a minor philosopher, but there could be anything in the scrolls. Lost books, even references or quotes from them could change what we know. There’s possibly an additional room of other works that could be a main library and the sky is the limit there.
>>23358242> What are the oddsConsidering we only have a small handful of a texts from that era, the odds are extremely good? Your weasel wording of “we care about” is just designed to hide that you’re a retard and whatever you don’t understand is something “we” don’t care about. Eat shit, fuckwit.
>>23355997>he was a homosexualbasedfuck women
>>23355902What's the fever, though?
>>23358556Malaria.
>>23358556Poison.From the flute slave.Plot twist.
>>23358556Aids.
>>23358556Cancer.
>>23358556ligma
You think she was cute?
>>23358638
>>23355925>Socrates was learning how to play the flutesource?
>Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of Socrates and a mentor to Aristotle, and who died in Athens around 348BC – retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.
>>23355902I miss the thracians brosTatargarians must leave>>23355943And? Nothing will actually change lmao>books>>23356925Shut up faggot>>2335694799% of ancient deaths are like this. The dead were then remembered but their deaths were nothing special. They just had less car accidents>>23358869Ruined by >30% slavshit dna>>23355925Fagcrates just liked the sucking dick feeling of it, Chadto hanged out with slave girls and gave them shit for being incompetent. Alpha shit
>>23358888
>>23355902I can't wait till Vesuvius erupts again and cakes Pompeii and Herculanium in tephra so these secrets stay hidden for 1200 more years.
*displays a plucked chicken in your path*
>>23359022Dr Stone petrification, vesuvius version.
>>23358888https://youtu.be/pUxJdxv-COM?si=-MWpGIwb1pQjGjvQ
>>23358439Sounds exciting desu
>>23359186Take gene rays timecube at face value now. Does the universe support me?
>>23359193I will probably get you in a moment due to aforementioned and earn that reward. Good. You'll do more than 16 lives right soon because of how shit you were. It pisses me off that any of you think you're hard. You're completely shit and involved with cheats which lots want to punish you for. You'll do all this today
Damn 4chan is dead, how has there not been a wojak/pepe edit of this all ready.
>>23355925>Shortly before dying, Socrates was learning how to play the flute, while Plato was bitching about someone else playingNot true, all we know is that in his last days Socrates composed some dithyrambs, something he never did before.Also Plato was extremely well versed in music, he studied it for decades. His deep knowledge of music theory can be seen in Timaeus, and his deep love for the art form can be seen in Republic. Chastising Plato for not caring about music is possibly the most retarded point you could have made.
>>23359330>how has there not been a wojak/pepe edit of this all readyIs there actually much of a precedent of this, or is this merely a covert attempt to get someone to do something that you're incapable of doing yourself?
>>23355902It's a euphemism for svcking his BGC. The Thracian ladyboy just didn't have good rhythm while doing it. This angered Plato and likely contributed to his demise.
>>23359363Yep, per Neanthes reporting Philip of Opus' (editor of Plato’s Laws and possible author of the Epinomis) account:>“When Plato was already very old, he received a Chaldean guest. After a few days he developed a fever...[he] gave a dactylic rhythm by loudly tapping to the playing of a local Thracian woman. But [Philip] asked Plato, who seemed out of his mind, some questions. But when [Plato] said: 'You see how the barbarian creature is completely ignorant, because the barbarian, who carries with her an ear against the rhythm, is not able to learn it from experience,' [Philip] was very happy and thought the man was in a good condition, since the same thought had occurred to him."
How do we know this guy wasn't just writing ancient fanfiction about Plato?
>>23359445It's part of a manuscript that's either Philodemus' history of the Academy or his notes for that purpose (a collection of excerpts from various writings; this has been discussed a bit in modern scholarly literature, though I'm not fully clear on which this is), quoting Neanthes who's himself quoting an account by Philip of Opus, Plato's "secretary" at the end of his life. So, strictly, we don't know, since it’s neither Philip's direct account, nor Neanthes' direct account, but this is more or less the way with most ancient historical works and sources.
>>23359445>>23359469To add, here's Kilian Fleischer discussing this work from a paper of his about the Academy head Carneades:>The so-called Index Academicorum comprising the history of the Academy from Plato until Antiochus’ Old Academy is commonly deemed to represent a book of Philodemus’ Σύνταξις τῶν φιλοσόφων, a work about the history of philosophy in at least ten books. The Index Academicorum has come down to us in two papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum. Whereas P.Herc. 164 preserves some very scanty remains of the final version, the other scroll, P.Herc. 1021 (and P.Herc. 1691), represents a preliminary draft and Philodemus’ actual working manuscript. There are several marginal notes, additions above and below the columns intended to be inserted in the final version, authorial and transposition signs, doublets, word-by word excerpts – like the one from Apollodorus’ Chronica – and corresponding prose paraphrases. Furthermore, several columns were written on the back of the papyrus (opisthograph) and were intended to supplement or replace the text in the final version. The value of the Index Academicorum (this means basically P.Herc. 1021) for philosophical historical research can hardly be overestimated, since it contains much otherwise lost information about the Academy and its most prominent figures, in particular about Academic sceptics of the second century BC.
Kinda wild what kind of retarded shit people are getting free money to pretend they're doing while others are starving to death because they don't have a rich uncle to set them up with a cushy gig like this.
>>23360003
>>23360003plebian resentment be crazy tho nigga fr fr
>>23359378Pepe and Wojak died around 2018, all of the content involving them comes from the sharty.
I read this as "recounted in stroll found in vesuvius ash" as if he went for a walk by the mountain. Im so dumb
>>23360003>others are starving to deathbased
>>23355943Cooled off lava is not rock, but I comprehend the geographic word play.
>>23358891>nothing will actually change lmaoAlready the fact that Plato was lucid enough to critize someone playing can be used as an argument to say he was lucid enough to have been written the Laws and that the editing intervention of Philip of Opuntes is limited, just to name the first thing that come to mind. Plus if he was already sold as a slave in 404b.C. or even 399b.C. one could hypothesize that it was in relation to Socrates' trial, letter VII is to be re-interpreted, and so on a lot of things. I don't even read Plato that deeply, I can only imagine what a better read scholar could do with these info
>>23360324I'm convinced they've misunderstood something about the slavery story, since Plutarch's account of him being enslaved by Dionysius the Elder already asserts he was given to a Spartan to sell on Aegina. The range of 404-399 for dating being explained by the Spartans having taken Aegina then seems like they're unaware of the Plutarch passage, saw "Spartan" and "Aegina" and leaped at something else without knowing better.
>>23360342I'm going to correct myself. Looking back through Kilian Fleischer's edition of the Index Academicorum, this version of the slave story with a wavering around 404-399 is in fact in there, and that dating is related to some obscure reference to Archelaus of Macedon, the king who died in 399. Fleischer's comments on it admit of confusion in the reading because of how fragmented the passage is.But, beyond that, I also found the passage about Plato being buried in the garden of Mousaion near where he lived. This edition was published last year, but that also means these Italian researches are bullshitting about *any* of this being new: almost all of this was known to anyone who knew of the edition of the Index Academicorum published in the early 1900s, and it's certainly the case that this was all published last year in German already. So not a single new revelation here.
>>23355902Retained enough lucidity to tell a foid she couldn't do anything right. A true philosopher's death.
>>23360324LARPers on the internet who view philosophy, religion, and ideology like sportsteams often underestimate just how slowly intellectual consensuses change. For example, it took over 200 years for Aquinas's theology to go from "literally excommunicated heretical nonsense" to "the defacto theology of Catholicism".
>>23355914Honestly it fits with his philosophy and he was making an important esoteric point if you understand he’s speaking on two levels.
>>23355997Jewish post
>>23355902>"You sing like shit.">*dies*Based beyond measure
>>23359445We don'tThis holds true for 90% of classical history
>>23360003>niggas caint be feedin dey kids>but whitey on da moon
>>23360849Exactly. Just like the canonical gospels and the various gnostic gospels are all fan fiction giving totally different accounts of the life and death of Jesus Christ. In all seriousness I would not be surprised if there was not even a historical Plato who wrote all of his works just as there was no historical Shakespeare or Homer either. True genius comes from another dimension of reality entirely. In fitting with his key philosophical ideas, the true Plato is a divine Form.
>>23360299>Cooled off lava is not rockRetard
>>23355902Nietzsche bros, we won
>hid behind Socrates' persona>of the opinion that anyone exploring sin ought to be outcast from society>philosophers can't have opinionsPlato was a bitch and didn't even practice what he preached.
>>23360003t. negroid
>>23362598Tbf that's a misleading statistic that doesn't take into account the insane level of true inflation and actual movements of money. We sacrificed the stars for the tumorous federal bankster class. It wouldn't actually cost even 1% of 5 trillion to feed all of Africa for centuries.
I hope this technology will give us a full transcription of a surviving scroll with Heraclitus' full-length work on it.One can only hope.
>>23355902>>23355910>1750lol
>>23355902Any chance we find more of Pherecydes of Syros?He seems to be the missing link between hesiod and the pre-socratics.
>>23362951>>23363044No one could say for certain, but the library seems to belong to the Epicurean Philodemus, and the text being recovered in OP is actually not even a finished text, but a working draft Philodemus used to put together a history of philosophical schools with all sorts of excerpts and notes to himself on the arrangement and use, so we may get luck and find both primary texts he used and all manner of texts we didn't even know about. So no guarantees, but there's much to hope for, and it doesn't seem like it'll be collections of ancient sales receipts like a good number of Egyptian and Akkadian scrolls and tablets have turned out to be.
>>23360414That's funny, thanks for looking. I know I heard the part about the flute player before somewhere. The Derveni papyrus is another one to watch that has been read progressively more extensively recently.
>>23363924You know, I think Eric Voegelin mentions the flute story at the end of his chapter on Plato in one of the volumes of Order and History.Found it.>Plato died at the age of eighty-one. On the evening of his death he had a Thracian girl play the flute to him. The girl could not find the beat of the nomos. With a movement of his finger, Plato indicated to her the Measure.(Nomos here also sometimes meaning not just "law" or "custom", but "song." Plato uses and plays on this meaning in the Laws.)A much more dignified take on it than what we actually have, Plato grumbling, "dis fuckin' so-and-so."
>>23363962That actually is what I remember it from, hah. Voegelin was like a quasi-ancient Platonist reborn in Germany.
>>23355910>The scroll was preserved in a lavish villaWhich?
>>23363086>the library seems to belong to the Epicurean PhilodemusGreat, so it's the library of a proto-redditor. This puts a damper on things.
>>23365372The stoic cope is strong with you.
>>23365383I'm a platonistchad, sorry.
>>23366126Hmm, thought I was downwind of cumgenius, nihil olet. No need to apologize, anything found from classical antiquity is always interesting, regardless of school of thought. All the more interesting if it belonged to Julius Caesar's father in law or was part of a collection from a school of thought that suffered the ravages of time. Perhaps I owe you the apology.