Before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a massive collection of scrolls sat in what is known today as the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum.

But the speed and fury of the superheated volcanic avalanche wiped out everything in its path, entombing the Villa of the Papyri and everyone still in Herculaneum.

The knowledge within ancient scrolls known as the Herculaneum papyri has now become accessible. This has Classicists chomping at the bit.

The Villa of the Papyri would have given Piso and his friend Philodemus the perfect place to experience otium -- leisure, relaxing, and reading from the library they put together.

Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, Italy(Fotonews/Splash News/Corbis) Herculaneum’s Villa of the Papyri was one of the most luxurious Roman properties to have been buried by the eruption of Mount ...

Herculaneum, buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1973, was discovered in 1709. Pompeii, the better known Vesuvius city was discovered 39 years later and ...

The Herculaneum papyri are a collection of scrolls whose status among classicists approaches the mythical. The scrolls were buried inside an Italian countryside villa by the same volcanic eruption ...

The Herculaneum scrolls are inked documents that were in Herculaneum’s Villa of the Papyri when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79, burying the town and its more famous neighbor, Pompeii, in volcanic ash.

The excavation of the House of the Papyri was a great event of the eighteenth cent-ury, and the Director of Works in charge describes the villa as having "a garden full of statues and fountains ...

J. Paul Getty, the American billionaire, “ a symbol of oil, wealth and power, ” discovered Herculaneum and the Villa of the Papyri early in the twentieth century. He started buying Greek and ...