The mystery of Plato’s final resting place appears to have been solved after advanced scanning techniques dubbed a “bionic eye” were able to penetrate a 2,000-year-old carbonised scroll.
Often hailed as the greatest philosopher who ever lived, conflicting accounts exist over Plato’s final years and death around 348 BC.
However, new research claims to have uncovered Plato’s exact burial site: in the garden of his academy in Athens, near to a sacred shrine.
The location was recorded in a text by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, among thousands of ancient texts in the Roman town of Herculaneum that were damaged after nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
A team of experts were able to uncover passages of The History of the Academy written by Philodemus which described the school Plato set up in his name and where he tutored his most famous student, Aristotle.
Costanza Miliani, the director of the Institute of Heritage Science at Italy’s National Research Council, told The Times: “Carbon-based ink was used to write on the scrolls, which were basically themselves turned to carbon by the eruption, making them very difficult to read.”
Although most of this particular document had previously been read following an effort to decipher it in 1991, Ms Miliani’s team was able to uncover about 30 per cent more of the carbonised papyrus.