When the eruption of Mount Vesuvius swallowed up the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in A.D. 79, it not only froze an ancient civilization, but also preserved the only surviving library from antiquity. Over the course of the last 250 years, various scholarly attempts have been mounted to unroll and decipher carbonized papyrus rolls found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.