From the HN guidelines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

...

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. ... If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."

[EDIT] By the obituary, this person was a master of his esoteric craft as well a talented educator and I found it worthwhile to take a moment to read about his life and to honor his passing.

Here are two reasons:

- He was an intellectual juggernaut in the field of Latin. One in a lifetime kind of guy.

- He never published a book but only provided sheets to his students. His students are now working together to piece together all of his worksheets so that a full catalog can be published. A very interesting project in its own right!

I suspect it has more to do with not knowing the guidelines. Asking "why is this relevant to HN?" is a tired question that pops up too often.

"Tech" is a mean to achieve an end. Most here admire things well done, and other means are interesting.

Plus, as it has been put before , "humani nihil a me alienum puto."