This is the first volume dedicated exclusively to the historiographical work by Seneca the Elder, after the recent discovery of a fragmentary roll from Herculaneum bearing traces of his Historiae. Contributions not only focus on the discovery of the papyrus roll, but also offer a broader view on early-imperial Roman historiography, to which the new perspectives opened by the rediscovery of Seneca the Elder's Historiae greatly contribute.
This is the first volume dedicated exclusively to the historiographical work by Seneca the Elder, after the recent discovery of a fragmentary roll from Herculaneum bearing traces of his Historiae. Contributions not only focus on the discovery of the papyrus roll, but also offer a broader view on early-imperial Roman historiography, to which the new perspectives opened by the rediscovery of Seneca the Elder's Historiae greatly contribute.
Lying between the grammarians` and rhetors` domains, Aesop`s fables were known and employed in the Western and Eastern educational environments mainly for their intrinsically moral essence. Once having explored the literary and grammatical texts concerning the educational role of fables, the book is focussed on the direct witnesses of Latin and bilingual Latin-Greek fables (III-IV AD) coming from the Eastern school environments.
Che il testo prosastico latino del P.Tebt. II 686 (inv. 3010), proveniente da Tebtynis (in Arsinoite) e datato tra II e III secolo, contenesse i nomi di Hercules ed Eurystheus è cosa nota fin dalla trascrizione che Robert Marichal ne diede nelle Chartae Latinae Antiquiores. Erano gli anni '70 del Novecento e da allora, benché oggetto delle indagini di paleografi e papirologi, il testo non è stato mai pubblicato e si è consolidata la consuetudine di riferirvisi come ad un de laboribus Herculis. L'articolo propone una rilettura del papiro dalla quale il campionario onomastico esce indubbiamente ampliato: a quelli di Ercole ed Euristeo si affiancano i nomi di Amphion et Zethus — i due fratelli del mito, figli di Antiope, che animano trame di tragedie e nutrono, con la loro esemplarità, il dibattito filosofico-politico — e quello di C. Laelius, personaggio troppo ciceroniano perché questo testo non stimoli ulteriori interrogativi sull'essenza letteraria stessa del testo. Coming from Tebtynis in Arsinoites and written between II and III AD, the P.Tebt. II 686 (inv. 3010) is known to contain a Latin prose with the names of Hercules and Eurystheus. Robert Marichal gave a transcription of this papyrus in the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, in the 1970s; although it has been studied by papyrologists and palaeographers, since then the text was never published and it has always been known as a de laboribus Herculis. This paper offers new readings of the P.Tebt. II 686's Latin prose. For instance, the number of proper names is undoubtedly increased: the names of Hercules and Eurystheus are flanked by those of Amphion and Zethus — the mythological twin-brothers, sons of Antiope, known also from tragedies and among the examples of the philosophical and political debate — and that of C. Laelius, the latter a too much ciceronian character not to stimulate further questions about the literary essence of this papyrological Latin text.
