The Record 2009 - Keble College - University of Oxford

The Life of the College
and processes. Such an approach is likely to be essential in
exploring immunity and certain other biological problems such
as ageing. Gerontology is another area of active research on C.
elegans, because the worm lives normally for only two weeks
and consequently it is easy to detect and study changes in the
process of ageing. With the right kind of genetic manipulation,
its lifespan can be extended to six months, and the Methuselah
worms remain in apparently excellent health, even in extreme
old age (for a worm). One factor contributing to such an
extension of healthy lifespan turns out to be the increased
activity of immune defences, although it is clear that this is
far from the whole story. Whether insights gained using C.
elegans will ultimately allow humans to live for several centuries
remains to be seen.
‘Mission (im)possible?’— Rehabilitating Plutarch as a
historian of philosophy
Eleni Kechagia, British
Academy Research Fellow
How can we know what the ancient Greek philosophers said?
The answer to this question seems fairly obvious: we read
their works! But what happens in those cases (and there are
quite a lot of them) where the ancient philosophers’ works are
irretrievably lost? Three options present themselves here:
We hope that the archaeologists will sooner or later unearth
precious papyri rolls that contain fragments of the ancient
Greek philosophers’ lost books. This is not an Indiana-Joneslike,
thoroughly unlikely scenario — in the 18 th century an
excavation in Ercolano near Naples brought to light a great
number of carbonized papyri rolls which gave us invaluable
fragments from an important work of Epicurus, thus
substantially improving our knowledge of Epicurus’ theories.
The downside of this scenario, however, is that we may have
to wait quite a while before such a remarkable revelation takes
place once again.
We give up hope and settle with the idea that, quite simply, we
cannot find out what the ancient Greek philosophers, whose
works are now lost, said. Reasonable and down-to-earth though
this may sound, it is clearly not an option for a classicist and a
historian of ancient philosophy such as myself.
We dive into the surviving books of other ancient Greek (or
Roman) authors, for example Plutarch (1 st –2 nd century ad), who
discussed, though not always very systematically or charitably,
the views and sayings of philosophers of their past. With a great
deal of philosophical imagination and patience, and with a good
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