Earth-Shattering News!!!

[princenarcissus]

Lost writings of Sophocles, Hesiod, and Euripides have been recovered in just the past few days and more is on the way . . .The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new

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[proximoception]

All Livejournal entries commenting on this end by whispering, "Sappho..."

Considering the date, the nature of the other fragments mentioned, especially the Archilochus, it's not all that unlikely. Not sure why they think there will be "alternative Gospels" in there. Hope, probably. Western secular humanism secretly drooled over the Dead Sea Scrolls at first exterment, hoping it would be the information to end the Christian tyranny.

Ten years ago I would go to the university library every night and read around in those beautiful Loeb Classic volumes... I don't know if what's found will be of great ultimate interest, but this news is acting as a unique infusion for many of us. Like a new year of youth has been added to the shared life.

[lelian]

I can't express my enthusiasm!I really don't know what to say.I knew there was a reason why I was born in this pathetic era and not the Renaissance.I just assumed it was Bowie.
-Lelian the exuberantly happy classicist.

[fervidstreetcar]

Thrill'd about the whole. My caput-et-animus, however, look forward to Archilochos, Hesiod, and Parthenios.

Mox dicamus, mon frere.
The stylus has become dull.
What other-soul cld/ understand this?
We have many libelli to cast ante mortem.

- Br.R.

Trouble, perhaps.

[fervidstreetcar]

Update from /The Blog That Goes Ping/: "So as of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up for disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent’s reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they’re trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news."

Re: Trouble, perhaps.

[fluxofconflict]

Obbink has a new Archilochus fragment out (currently available in the form of a handout from an Aug. 2004 conference; soon to be published) that proves to be quite revolutionary if it truly is Archilochus . It's rather revolutionary due to its use of the Telephus MYTH. A matter of some controversy since Stobaeus liked to excerpt anything but the edifying pieces of his lyric, thus removing much of the narrative character in the work.

Also, West has a new Sappho fragment out, available in the Times Literary Supplement.

But perhaps this is all old news...

[sphinxi]

Exciting news indeed. It's the lost novel that I am chiefly excited about..

[fluxofconflict]

I was under the impression that the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have been worked on for a long time (POxy. = Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, London 1898-.; <-copied from Liddel/Scott 9th edition listing of Papyrological pubs.) and that the fragments, as read have been published in said periodical put out as a subset of the Greek and Roman memoirs put out by the EES.

The effects of the Papyri have been well felt since the 60's in the work of such stellar scholars as D.L. Page (extensive work on the Lesbian poets), and recently for the Tragedian Euripides J. Diggle.