Herculaneum papyri found during the discovery of the Villa dei Papiri in the XVIII century are our only knowledge about Greek philosophical schools. Unfortunately, the original manuscripts are in a precarious state of conservation and the currently available editions of them have largely been made obsolete by the latest technological progress. The aim of the Advanced Grant ERC project ‘Greekschools’ is to provide a new protocol based on optical methods to increase the text reading and thus allow for a new (...) critical edition of the whole treatise of Philodemus’ "Arrangement of the Philosophers". A multi-disciplinary approach is adopted and non-invasive techniques to Herculaneum papyri investigations such as Macro X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging (MA-XRF), Shortwave-Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging (SWIR), high resolution digital microscopy and Technical Photography were applied to read the text hidden on the verso, detect, classify, and replace overlapping layers and read the text concealed inside them. In this work some first preliminary results will be reported. (shrink)

The volume discusses the notion of space by focusing on the most representative exponents of the Hellenistic schools and explores the role played by spatial concepts in both coeval and later authors who, without specifically thematising these concepts, made use of them in a theoretically original way. Renowned scholars investigate the philosophical significance and bring to light the problematical character of the ancient conceptions of space.

The question of the nature and the scope of Theophrastus’ Characters is one of the most intricated and most desperate puzzles of classical studies. Today many scholars are either sceptical about the possibility of giving a univocal answer to this vexatissima quaestio or prefer not to take position about it. Among the most various interpretations four principal theses arise. According to them, the Characters represent respectively: 1. a complement to a treatise of moral philosophy; 2. a literary work written in (...) an artistic prose with a humorous intention; 3. a rhetorical exercise for training in schools of rhetoric; 4. the appendix to a treatise of poetical theory. Through a historical survey of the relevant scholarship, I will show that the first two positions cannot reasonably be held any more. The last two ones, instead, conserve most of their scientific value and should be used in the next future as a new hermeneutical basis for a possible solution or semplification of the ‘Theophrastean question’. (shrink)