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5 - The Latin Papyri from the Herculaneum Library

New Results and Fresh Perspectives

from Part I - Philological and Literary Insights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2025

Maria Chiara Scappaticcio
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary

This chapter presents some up-to-date and further reflection on the Latin scrolls preserved in the library of Philodemus (c. 110–40 BCE) found in Herculaneum. The first part takes up the discussion on the better-known and more closely studied (due to its superior material condition) P.Herc. 817 (anonymous Carmen de bello Actiaco) and P.Herc. 1067 (Seneca the Elder, Ab initio bellorum civilium). The supplementary remarks proposed deal with the group of three rolls P.Herc. 78 (falsely assigned to the comic poet Caecilius Statius), P.Herc. 215 (anonymous), and P.Herc. 1475 (anonymous). We now have the benefit of new editions of all of them, completely redone and mostly reliable, insofar as is allowed by the desperately fragmentary source material.All of the Latin scrolls are from the period after Philodemus’ death. It is even possible that, besides the books written in the early Imperial period, there were also older literary texts, or even private or public documents that could have formed a part of the Piso Caesoninus family’s archives. To this day, unfortunately, no trace of either kind of text has come to light.

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