Focus: The search for the lost library of RomeRobert HarrisEven in our age of hyperbole, it would be hard to exaggerate the significance of what is at stake here: nothing less than the lost intellectual inheritance of western civilisation Down a side street in the seedy Italian town of Ercolano, wafted by the scent of uncollected rubbish and the fumes of passing motor-scooters, lies a waterlogged hole. A track leads from it to a high fence and a locked gate. Dogs defecate in the undergrowth where addicts discard their needles. Peering into the dark, stagnant water it is hard to...