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Esther's Classic Literature Blog

By Esther Lombardi, About.com Guide to Classic Literature since 2000

Deciphering Lost Masterpieces -- The Latest Literary Discovery

Sunday April 17, 2005
"Eureka" was the first thing that came to mind when I read about the breakthrough that Oxford University scientists have made. In an article for The Independent, David Keys and Nicholas Pyke describe how infra-red technology has helped Oxford's classicists "to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia." The 400,000 fragments include previously unknown texts from Sophocles, Lucian, Euripides, and others. When we think about how few of the great masterworks we really have, these discoveries add to our literary history and knowledge. How exciting!

Read more about the Greeks: We have so few of the great masterworks of Classical Literature! What more have we to discover in these fragments of the past?!?!

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