AI may reveal lost works of Aristotle

Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher passages of the charred and rolled-up Herculaneum scrolls, once buried by a volcanic eruption two thousand years ago.

Researchers used CT scans and artificial intelligence to decipher the text of a damaged papyrus scroll. Picture: Supplied

Deep below a modern Italian city, there are niches dug in the wall of an underground corridor where archaeologists found scrolls that may change the world.

“The scrolls were so badly burnt, they were mistaken for lumps of charcoal and it took a while for them to realise what they had stumbled upon,” Francesco Sirano, an archaeologist, said.

In the 1750s, about 800 scrolls were retrieved from the Roman Villa of the Papyri, which was buried, like the rest of ancient Herculaneum, by volcanic mud when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79.

Experts were able to read only parts of a few of the scrolls, many of which were destroyed by attempts to unroll them.

An unrolled ancient scroll badly carbonised and compacted lies on a table at Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, Italy. Picture: AP

That is, until last week, when three researchers used CT scans and artificial intelligence to virtually unroll a first-century BC Epicurean text on the pleasure of music and food - in particular, capers.

The breakthrough has given classicists hope that lost tragedies by Sophocles, unseen philosophical tracts by Aristotle or crucial Roman histories could be among them.

Many now want to dig beyond the 18th-century tunnels and fully excavate the villa. “We need to explore because it is the only known ancient library where texts have been preserved,” Richard Janko, a papyrologist at the University of Michigan, said. “Until now we were told that if we found more scrolls we would damage them and be unable to read them. That has been taken away.”

The scrolls read so far seem to be part of the collection of Philodemus, a follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, whose patron was Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law and probably the villa’s owner.

The large scale of the villa, more than 200m long, has convinced historians that the library would have been much larger and contained a far greater variety of Greek and especially Latin works.

A Papyri Herculaneum at the National Library of Naples. The National Library of Naples (Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli) houses the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of papyrus scrolls carbonised by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the first century AD. The papyri contain a number of Greek philosophical texts. Picture: Getty

“An average library at the time might have contained 40,000 scrolls, not 800,” Janko said, pointing out that the son of the first-century BC politician Sulla had a library with autographed manuscripts by Aristotle.

“Philodemus refers to Aristotle’s lost work On Poets, suggesting he had access to it, possibly in the Herculaneum villa’s library, and it would be pretty spectacular if we find it,” Michael McOsker, a research fellow in papyrology at University College London, said.

Aristotle was celebrated as a pioneer in the study of logic, biology, ethics, cosmology, metaphysics and poetry, and his work was called a “river of gold” by the Roman philosopher Cicero, but his dialogues are all lost.

Sirano said that digging around the villa in the 1990s had endangered the site and more work could cost $250 million. “I love to dig but my job is to rediscover the history of a place, not hunt for treasure. Let’s focus on the treasures we have - the 800 scrolls,” he said.

Robert Fowler, from Bristol University, disagreed, claiming that part of the ground floor was unexplored, as was the basement, so a dig was crucial.

There was also, he said, the problem of Vesuvius erupting again. “Another eruption is overdue and it would bury everything again. If we can get into the villa now, I think we should.”

The Times