The fabulous story of the false papyrus of Artemidorus.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 18271 |
| Format | 12.5 x 20 |
| Détails | 308 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2014 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
At the end of July 2004, a banking foundation in Turin acquired a miraculously rediscovered ancient papyrus for the sum of two million seven hundred and fifty thousand euros. The papyrus contained a previously unpublished fragment of the otherwise lost work of Artemidorus of Ephesus, a geographer of immense renown in Antiquity. Luciano Canfora demonstrates in this lively work that it is a fake. His investigation, conducted on several fronts (forensic science was also mobilized), is, however, essentially philological: it is by reading the text in all its dimensions that the deception will be unmasked. But by identifying the forger (Constantine Simonides, a 19th-century Greek) and restoring him to all his glory, he above all affirms, against the lies of money, the imperative of truth that compels science. A salutary reminder in the prevailing pedantry.
At the end of July 2004, a banking foundation in Turin acquired a miraculously rediscovered ancient papyrus for the sum of two million seven hundred and fifty thousand euros. The papyrus contained a previously unpublished fragment of the otherwise lost work of Artemidorus of Ephesus, a geographer of immense renown in Antiquity. Luciano Canfora demonstrates in this lively work that it is a fake. His investigation, conducted on several fronts (forensic science was also mobilized), is, however, essentially philological: it is by reading the text in all its dimensions that the deception will be unmasked. But by identifying the forger (Constantine Simonides, a 19th-century Greek) and restoring him to all his glory, he above all affirms, against the lies of money, the imperative of truth that compels science. A salutary reminder in the prevailing pedantry.