{"id":962,"date":"2024-05-03T09:23:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T09:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/herculaneum.classics.ox.ac.uk\/?p=962"},"modified":"2025-04-12T18:58:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T18:58:16","slug":"platos-last-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/platos-last-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Plato&#8217;s Last Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The remains of Philodemus of Gadara&#8217;s\u00a0<em>History of the Academy\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(the school founded by Plato) preserved in the Herculaneum Papyri have yielded fascinating new information about Plato&#8217;s last days. The text, whose legibility has been dramatically improved by the latest scanning techniques, reveals\u00a0that Plato was buried in the Academy&#8217;s garden, that he received a &#8216;Chaldean visitor&#8217; during his last days, and that in spite of the fever that carried him off he was lucid enough to criticise a musical performance for faulty rhythm. These discoveries have been much in the press lately but we point out here that the new edition of Philodemus&#8217; book was actually published in German a year ago by Dr Kilian Fleischer, a Friend of Herculaneum. His imposing volume is a masterpiece of Herculaneum scholarship and he deserves much of the credit, though almost totally unacknowledged in the extensive press coverage about these discoveries. Dr Fleischer has also published a volume on the chronicle of Apollodorus of Athens, one of the foundational documents for our knowledge of dates in ancient history, in the Society series\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/sozomena\/\">Sozomena<\/a>. This same Herculaneum papyrus contains many quotations from Apollodorus&#8217; book in its original form.\u00a0\u00a0[03\/05\/2024]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brill.com\/display\/title\/64889\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philodemus on the Academy ed. Kilian Fleischer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.degruyterbrill.com\/document\/doi\/10.1515\/9783110703726\/html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apollodorus ed. Fleischer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The remains of Philodemus of Gadara&#8217;s\u00a0History of the Academy\u00a0\u00a0(the school founded by Plato) preserved in the Herculaneum Papyri have yielded fascinating new information about Plato&#8217;s last days. The text, whose [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1079,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}