/lit/ - Literature

If anyone wants to take a crack at it, here's the fragmentary Herculaneum account of Plato's death.

>>23355902
This particular bit has been known for a a little over a century now. Lemme copypasya what I said in a Plato thread the other day:


So everyone's heard in the last week that one of the Herculaneum scrolls being worked on has details on Plato's death different from the wedding party story in Diogenes Laërtius, right? About him criticizing a Thracian girl's musical ability? Well, turns out it's not new, just not really accessible in English. Kilian Fleischer put together a new critical edition of what's called the Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis. I don't know German, so a Google translation will have to suffice, but the frag. from picrel reads:

>...who was an astronomer as well as a secretary and student of Plato, told him (Neanthes): “When Plato was already very old, he received a Chaldean guest. After a few days he developed a fever...gave a dactylic rhythm by loudly tapping to the playing of a local Thracian woman. But he asked Plato, who seemed out of his mind, with questions. But when he said: 'You see how the barbarian creature is completely ignorant, because the barbarian, who carries with her an ear against the rhythm, is not able to learn it from experience,' he was very happy and thought the man was in a good condition, since the same thought had occurred to him." And he (Philipp/Neanthes) continues: "But when his temperature continued to rise as a result of waking up at an inopportune time of night... with a serious expression...

Don't have anything else to add re: Theaetetus, but it'd be a shame to let this thread die with so soon, so I'll add something topic about Plato.

So everyone's heard in the last week that one of the Herculaneum scrolls being worked on has details on Plato's death different from the wedding party story in Diogenes Laërtius, right? About him criticizing a Thracian girl's musical ability? Well, turns out it's not new, just not really accessible in English. Kilian Fleischer put together a new critical edition of what's called the Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis. I don't know German, so a Google translation will have to suffice, but the frag. from picrel reads:

>...who was an astronomer as well as a secretary and student of Plato, told him (Neanthes): “When Plato was already very old, he received a Chaldean guest. After a few days he developed a fever...gave a dactylic rhythm by loudly tapping to the playing of a local Thracian woman. But he asked Plato, who seemed out of his mind, with questions. But when he said: 'You see how the barbarian creature is completely ignorant, because the barbarian, who carries with her an ear against the rhythm, is not able to learn it from experience,' he was very happy and thought he was Man in a good condition, since the same thought had occurred to him." And he (Philipp/Neanthes) continues: "But when his temperature continued to rise as a result of waking up at an inopportune time of night... with a serious expression...