Reading the Herculaneum Scrolls: Secrets from the only surviving Classical library

Few manuals offering guidance for the long-term preservation of a library are likely to recommend burning its contents. That, though, was the fate of hundreds of scrolls stored in a palatial villa to the north of Herculaneum in the autumn of AD 79. As Vesuvius erupted, a plume of dust and poisonous gases rose at least 3km into the atmosphere. Portions of this cloud periodically collapsed, cascading down the flanks of the volcano as pyroclastic flows. The first of these superheated avalanches is believed to have enveloped both Herculaneum and the neighbouring villa during the evening of the initial day of the eruption. The result was a human tragedy on an almost unimaginable scale, as hundred