India, July 25 -- Centuries after the Roman Empire left its mark across, many of its stories still sit locked inside damaged stone and pottery. In recent years, researchers faced the daunting problem of reading ancient Latin inscriptions where much of the text had been lost to time. These fragments, once etched for the public or to honour the dead, are now more like half-finished sentences. For historians, each is a puzzle with missing pieces.

Now, a fresh approach is taking shape. Historians have teamed up with Google DeepMind to create a new tool, called Aeneas, that helps fill in the blanks of broken inscriptions. The software owes its name to a character from Roman legend, but its work is entirely grounded in the digital age. Unlike ...