The Archaeologist's Profession

Cyriacus of Ancona was a fifteenth-century Italian merchant and archaeological pioneer, one of the first humanists to undertake the systematic study of remains from the Greek and Roman worlds. Among other things he was the first person in nearly a thousand years to study the site of Delphi. Once as he was poking around some ruins in the Italian town a priest approached him and asked him what he was doing. Cyriacus replied,

It is my profession to wake the dead.