Scientists have succeeded in reading parts of an ancient scroll that was buried in a volcanic eruption almost 2,000 years ago, holding out the promise that the world's oldest surviving library may one day reveal all of its secrets. The scroll is among hundreds retrieved from the remains of a lavish villa at Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was one of several Roman towns that were destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79. Some of the texts from what is called the Villa of the Papyri have been deciphered since they were discovered in the 1750s.