The Greek philosopher Plato—Socrates’ student and Aristotle’s teacher—died nearly 2,400 years ago, having produced a voluminous amount of writing on political philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and more (he came up with Atlantis!). This week, researchers announced that they found the burial place of the famous philosopher, as well as details of his final moments, in a near-2,000-year-old document carbonized by an ancient volcanic eruption.
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastThis month, a trio of computer scientists won the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition to use artificial intelligence to reveal four passages of ancient Greek encased for 2,000 years inside a charred scroll. The artifact was found at Herculaneum, a Roman resort town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.. This “kind of thing that happens every half century or so,” Richard Janko, a professor of classics at the University of Michigan a