Periodic Reporting for period 3 - GreekSchools (The Greek philosophical schools according to Europe’s earliest ‘history of philosophy’: Towards a new pioneering critical edition of Philodemus’ Arrangement of the Philosophers)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
Our knowledge about Greek philosophical schools is mostly second-hand and based on Diogenes Laërtius’ "Lives of Eminent Philosophers" (3rd century AD) and Philodemus of Gadara’s "Arrangement of the Philosophers" (75-50 BC), an extensive treatise in several books which represents the earliest ‘history of philosophy’ to have reached us directly from antiquity. From this work exclusively preserved by the Herculaneum papyri we may derive a virtually systematic account of the history of Greek philosophical schools, which is in many respects unique and much closer to the facts than Diogenes’ is. Unfortunately, the original manuscripts which transmit it are in a poor state and the currently available editions of them have largely been made obsolete by the latest technological progress. By relying on the most advanced technologies available today, we shall provide a new comprehensive critical edition of Philodemus’ treatise and its different sections, with extensive introductions and commentaries. These are:
(a) the "Academicorum Index" (PHerc. 1691/1021 and PHerc. 164)
(b) the "Stoicorum Index" (PHerc. 1018)
(c) the "Epicureorum Index" (PHerc. 1780)
(d) the "[History of Socrates and the Socratics]" (PHerc. 495 and PHerc. 558)
(e) the "[History of the Pythagorean School]" (PHerc. 1508)
(f) the "[History of the Eleatic and Atomistic Schools]" (PHerc. 327)
In particular, we shall apply Near-Infrared (NIR) and Shortwave-Infrared (SWIR) Hyperspectral Imaging, TeraHertz ((THz)) Imaging, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Macro-X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging (MA-XRF), 3D Microscopy, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Relaxometry and other advanced techniques to both opisthograph and multi-layered papyri from Herculaneum belonging to Philodemus’ "Arrangement of the Philosophers", as well as other papyri, in order to (a) read the text hidden on the verso, (b) detect, classify and replace overlapping layers, and (c) read the text concealed inside the latter. We shall adopt new, sounder philological approaches in order to produce more reliable and substantially improved critical editions of Philodemus’ treatise and its various sections through an innovative editorial system. Finally, we shall produce an open-access electronic edition of it through a pioneering open-source scholarly Web platform, engaging the scientific community in an on-going and on-line collaborative review of our critical edition.
Herculaneum papyri, kept in the National Library 'Vittorio Emanuele III' of Naples, have been exposed for about 270 years since their discovery between 1752 and 1754 to the decay of time. Not only repeated (sometimes destructive) human manipolation for their unrolling, storing, reading and transcribing, but also daily and seasonal thermic excursions have progressively deteriorated these extraordinary manuscripts providentially preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Nowadays, invasive operations of any sort are not allowed any more. This notwithstanding, time elapsing is gradually destroying this unique treasure of culture which has come down to us directly from antiquity. To prevent and slow this process, as far as it is humanly possible, has been a must of conservators ever since.
On the other part, modern scientific technologies today offer powerful tools for diagnostics, conservation, and restoration of cultural heritage artifacts. In particular, as has been shown by recent successful attempts, advanced techniques represent unique opportunities for the conservation of Herculaneum papyri with their millennial knowledge. These carbonised manuscripts are very fragile and any rough handling, careless treatment, or investigation may lead to their irreparable loss together with the priceless information contained in them. Moreover, owing to the uniqueness and fragility of these papyri, it is impossible to provide public access to them. Therefore, critical editions of Herculaneum papyri and storing of digital images of them would help to both preserve their content and solve the problem of their availability to either professionals or a larger audience. In fact, direct access to Herculaneum papyri remains today the privilege of a smallest group of elects.
GreekSchools aims to address these problems by (i) producing open collections of digital images of Herculaneum papyri obtained through various advanced techniques; (ii) making innovative critical editions of these papyri based on both personal inspection and the corresponding digital images; (iii) making both electronic texts and digital sources remotely editable, commentable and accessible online through a new open-source scholarly Web platform, with a single flexible and friendly interface with advanced search capabilities.
(a) the "Academicorum Index" (PHerc. 1691/1021 and PHerc. 164)
(b) the "Stoicorum Index" (PHerc. 1018)
(c) the "Epicureorum Index" (PHerc. 1780)
(d) the "[History of Socrates and the Socratics]" (PHerc. 495 and PHerc. 558)
(e) the "[History of the Pythagorean School]" (PHerc. 1508)
(f) the "[History of the Eleatic and Atomistic Schools]" (PHerc. 327)
In particular, we shall apply Near-Infrared (NIR) and Shortwave-Infrared (SWIR) Hyperspectral Imaging, TeraHertz ((THz)) Imaging, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Macro-X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging (MA-XRF), 3D Microscopy, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Relaxometry and other advanced techniques to both opisthograph and multi-layered papyri from Herculaneum belonging to Philodemus’ "Arrangement of the Philosophers", as well as other papyri, in order to (a) read the text hidden on the verso, (b) detect, classify and replace overlapping layers, and (c) read the text concealed inside the latter. We shall adopt new, sounder philological approaches in order to produce more reliable and substantially improved critical editions of Philodemus’ treatise and its various sections through an innovative editorial system. Finally, we shall produce an open-access electronic edition of it through a pioneering open-source scholarly Web platform, engaging the scientific community in an on-going and on-line collaborative review of our critical edition.
Herculaneum papyri, kept in the National Library 'Vittorio Emanuele III' of Naples, have been exposed for about 270 years since their discovery between 1752 and 1754 to the decay of time. Not only repeated (sometimes destructive) human manipolation for their unrolling, storing, reading and transcribing, but also daily and seasonal thermic excursions have progressively deteriorated these extraordinary manuscripts providentially preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Nowadays, invasive operations of any sort are not allowed any more. This notwithstanding, time elapsing is gradually destroying this unique treasure of culture which has come down to us directly from antiquity. To prevent and slow this process, as far as it is humanly possible, has been a must of conservators ever since.
On the other part, modern scientific technologies today offer powerful tools for diagnostics, conservation, and restoration of cultural heritage artifacts. In particular, as has been shown by recent successful attempts, advanced techniques represent unique opportunities for the conservation of Herculaneum papyri with their millennial knowledge. These carbonised manuscripts are very fragile and any rough handling, careless treatment, or investigation may lead to their irreparable loss together with the priceless information contained in them. Moreover, owing to the uniqueness and fragility of these papyri, it is impossible to provide public access to them. Therefore, critical editions of Herculaneum papyri and storing of digital images of them would help to both preserve their content and solve the problem of their availability to either professionals or a larger audience. In fact, direct access to Herculaneum papyri remains today the privilege of a smallest group of elects.
GreekSchools aims to address these problems by (i) producing open collections of digital images of Herculaneum papyri obtained through various advanced techniques; (ii) making innovative critical editions of these papyri based on both personal inspection and the corresponding digital images; (iii) making both electronic texts and digital sources remotely editable, commentable and accessible online through a new open-source scholarly Web platform, with a single flexible and friendly interface with advanced search capabilities.
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
In the period at issue the papyrological staff has read and made bibliological reconstructions as well as manual transcriptions of most of the papyri belonging to Philodemus’ "Arrangement of the Philosophers". It has produced either complete or partial critical editions of sections (a), (b), (c), (d) (e) and (f) of this treatise, i.e. most of the papyri to be edited in the framework of the project. A new partial edition of PHerc. 1004 (Philodemus, "On Rhetoric", Uncertain Book) was made. Phycisists and chemists from the CNR-Institute of Cultural Heritage and other research institutes have applied to Herculaneum papyri advanced techniques, such as Macro-X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging, Optical Coherence Tomography, NIR-SWIR Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging, in-depth Profilometry, NMR Relaxometry, and High-Resolution Digital Microscopy with important results which have been published in a top-ranking journal and elsewhere. All techniques planned by the project, excepting TeraHerzt Imaging, have been tested by the end of its first biennium. Moreover, two additional techniques have been performed: Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy in external reflection mode (FT-IR) and Technical Photography. A HIROX 001 high-resolution digital microscope and a complete set of Technical Photography were purchased and installed in the Officina dei Papiri of the National Library of Naples for reading and imaging papyri. The goal is to image and analyse through such instruments hundreds of Herculaneum papyri and to store the resulting images in an online open-access repository. Computational philologists and IT engineers from the CNR-Institute of Computational Linguistics have designed and progressively developed a cutting-edge open-source and open-access scholarly Web platform for the ongoing collaborative editions of Herculaneum papyri which receives the anticipation of the classical and the digital humanities communities. The first two (out of three) releases have fully been achieved with valuable results. Moreover, a public viewer has been launched, in which the new critical editions of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers" are searchable and readable open-access. We have inaugurated the new peer-reviewed international journal "Philosophical Papyri. A Journal of Ancient Philosophy and the Papyrological Tradition" (Istituti Editorial e Poligrafici Internazionali, Pisa/Roma)" and the new series of Herculanean texts and commentaries "Papyri Graecae Herculanenses" (Brill, Leiden/Boston). We have organised the two yearly International Workshops "Philodemus, On Rhetoric, Uncertain Book", Capri (Naples), 1-4 September 2021 and "Philodemus' Arrangement of the Philosophers and On Rhetoric", Castiglioncello (Leighorn), 5-9 September 2022. We have started a permanent weekly textual seminar in Naples to discuss and improve in progress our critical editions. We have launched the project Website, which ensures visibility to all its achievements and dissemination activities. We have produced some major publications and have held papers and posters at national and international conferences. We have organised public events and project meetings in Pisa, Naples and online.
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
We published the co-authored article "Layout of ancient Greek papyri through lead‑drawn ruling lines revealed by Macro X‑Ray Fluorescence Imaging" by F.P. Romano et al., SciRep 13:6582 (2023). The use of lead-drawn ruling lines by ancient scribes for the layout of Greek papyrus rolls was known to us only from classical authors and was postulated by a few scholars in modern times. Our application of noninvasive Macro X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging to unrolled papyri from Herculaneum has provided the first direct evidence of such practice in ancient book production. The key experimental proof of periodic lines drawn in lead was gathered by a highly sensitive MA-XRF mobile instrument, which allowed detection of ultra-low trace residues of metals with detection limits that rival synchrotron light instruments. Elemental distribution maps of Pb have revealed three different systems of textual layout in ancient papyrus rolls and have resolved the dispute around so-called Maas’ Law, by delivering experimental proof that slanted text columns were a deliberate aesthetic choice of scribes.
We launched CophiEditor, the new open-source and open-access scholarly Web platform for the ongoing collaborative editions of Herculaneum papyri. The platform was developed according to the FAIR principles as a collection of independent, but strictly interrelated RESTful services by using the microservice architecture. The software was organised following the Domain-Driven Design in order to bind the papyrological conventions to the data model. The capabilities were provided to (i) manage the different types of editions along with the corresponding apparatuses and translation by means of a powerful layout Web framework; (ii) automatically validate and generate XML/TEI standard encoded data from the papyrological texts by exploiting DSL tecnology; (iii) link the Project derived images of the papyri through the IIIF APIs; (iv) authenticate users both via OAUTH2 and SAML; and (v) access and query existing databases of papyrus texts from the platform. The software codebase is hosted via GitHub and deployed using Docker technology. In addition, we have developed CophiViewer, a public viewer in which the new critical editions of sections (a)-(f) of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers" are readable and searchable open-access.
We inaugurated the new peer-reviewed international journal "Philosophical Papyri: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy and the Papyrological Tradition", edited by the PI and published by Istituti Poligrafici e Internazionali, Pisa/Roma. In the past, the editorial work on Herculaneum philosophical papyri and that concerning Graeco-Egyptian ones have always been artificially separated as though they were two different kinds of papyri. Besides, no scientific journal specifically devoted to philosophical papyri as such has never existed so far. The goal of this initiative is to fill in this gap of scholarship and to reconcile both scholarly traditions in one and the same venue. The journal is issued on an yearly basis and is double-blind peer reviewed. In particular, all publications arising from this project are published in gold open-access within the journal.
We inaugurated the new peer-reviewed international series "Papyri Graecae Herculanenses", edited by the PI and published by Brill, Leiden/Boston. The series publishes editiones maiores of works of ancient Greek philosophy, especially Epicureanism and Stoicism, which have been exclusively transmitted by the Herculaneum papyri, with introduction and commentary. Ancient authors range from Epicurus to Chrysippus, from Metrodorus and Colotes to Polystratus, Demetrius Laco, Philodemus, and other Epicurean masters. Novel editorial criteria are adopted and facsimiles of all textual sources are included. The editions benefit from the most recent advancements in the application of noninvasive techniques to Herculaneum papyri. First scope of "Papyri Graecae Herculanenses" is to host the new comprehensive editions of sections (a)-(f) of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers" and "On Rhetoric" planned by the project.
We launched CophiEditor, the new open-source and open-access scholarly Web platform for the ongoing collaborative editions of Herculaneum papyri. The platform was developed according to the FAIR principles as a collection of independent, but strictly interrelated RESTful services by using the microservice architecture. The software was organised following the Domain-Driven Design in order to bind the papyrological conventions to the data model. The capabilities were provided to (i) manage the different types of editions along with the corresponding apparatuses and translation by means of a powerful layout Web framework; (ii) automatically validate and generate XML/TEI standard encoded data from the papyrological texts by exploiting DSL tecnology; (iii) link the Project derived images of the papyri through the IIIF APIs; (iv) authenticate users both via OAUTH2 and SAML; and (v) access and query existing databases of papyrus texts from the platform. The software codebase is hosted via GitHub and deployed using Docker technology. In addition, we have developed CophiViewer, a public viewer in which the new critical editions of sections (a)-(f) of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers" are readable and searchable open-access.
We inaugurated the new peer-reviewed international journal "Philosophical Papyri: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy and the Papyrological Tradition", edited by the PI and published by Istituti Poligrafici e Internazionali, Pisa/Roma. In the past, the editorial work on Herculaneum philosophical papyri and that concerning Graeco-Egyptian ones have always been artificially separated as though they were two different kinds of papyri. Besides, no scientific journal specifically devoted to philosophical papyri as such has never existed so far. The goal of this initiative is to fill in this gap of scholarship and to reconcile both scholarly traditions in one and the same venue. The journal is issued on an yearly basis and is double-blind peer reviewed. In particular, all publications arising from this project are published in gold open-access within the journal.
We inaugurated the new peer-reviewed international series "Papyri Graecae Herculanenses", edited by the PI and published by Brill, Leiden/Boston. The series publishes editiones maiores of works of ancient Greek philosophy, especially Epicureanism and Stoicism, which have been exclusively transmitted by the Herculaneum papyri, with introduction and commentary. Ancient authors range from Epicurus to Chrysippus, from Metrodorus and Colotes to Polystratus, Demetrius Laco, Philodemus, and other Epicurean masters. Novel editorial criteria are adopted and facsimiles of all textual sources are included. The editions benefit from the most recent advancements in the application of noninvasive techniques to Herculaneum papyri. First scope of "Papyri Graecae Herculanenses" is to host the new comprehensive editions of sections (a)-(f) of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers" and "On Rhetoric" planned by the project.