Seneca the Elder and his rediscovered ›Historiae ab initio bellorum civilium‹ : : New perspectives on early-imperial Roman historiography / / Maria Chiara Scappaticcio.

• Funder: European Research Council (ERC)
• HerausgeberIn: Scappaticcio, Maria Chiara,
• Author: European Research Council (ERC)
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (IX, 425 p.)

The refreshed insights into early-imperial Roman historiography this book offers are linked to a recent discovery. In the spring of 2014, the binders of the archive of Robert Marichal were dusted off by the ERC funded project PLATINUM (ERC-StG 2014 n°636983) in response to Tiziano Dorandi’s recollections of a series of unpublished notes on Latin texts on papyrus. Among these was an in-progress edition of the Latin rolls from Herculaneum, together with Marichal’s intuition that one of them had to be ascribed to a certain ‘Annaeus Seneca’. PLATINUM followed the unpublished intuition by Robert Marichal as one path of investigation in its own research and work. Working on the Latin P.Herc. 1067 led to confirm Marichal’s intuitions and to go beyond it: P.Herc. 1067 is the only extant direct witness to Seneca the Elder’s Historiae. Bringing a new and important chapter of Latin literature arise out of a charred papyrus is significant. The present volume is made up of two complementary sections, each of which contains seven contributions. They are in close dialogue with each other, as looking at the same literary matter from several points of view yields undeniable advantages and represents an innovative and fruitful step in Latin literary criticism. These two sections express the two different but interlinked axes along which the contributions were developed. On one side, the focus is on the starting point of the debate, namely the discovery of the papyrus roll transmitting the Historiae of Seneca the Elder and how such a discovery can be integrated with prior knowledge about this historiographical work. On the other side, there is 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- When tiny scraps cause new chapters of Latin literature to be written -- Roman historical writing in the age of the Elder Seneca -- A ‘historic(al)’ find from the library of Herculaneum: Seneca the Elder and the Historiae ab initio bellorum civilium in P.Herc. 1067 -- Un libro dell’ Ab initio bellorum civilium di Seneca il vecchio e il fondo latino della biblioteca della Villa dei Papiri a Ercolano -- Historiae ab initio bellorum civilium: Exegetical Surveys on the Direct Trans-mission of Seneca the Elder’s Historiographical Work -- Unde primum veritas retro abiit. Riflessioni sull’inizio delle Historiae di Seneca Padre -- Semina belli. Seneca il Vecchio e le cause delle guerre civili -- Looking for Seneca’s Historiae in Suetonius’ Life of Tiberius -- The Lost Histories of the Elder Seneca(1972) -- Bibliographical updates to Sussman’s “The lost Histories of the Elder Seneca” (1972– 2019) -- Point and periodicity: the style of Velleius Paterculus and other Latin historians writing in the early Principate -- La place de Sénèque le Père parmi les sources possibles des Annales 1–6 -- Seneca padre, Tacito e Germanico -- Seneca Padre e il ‘canone dei tiranni’ romani: una questione di famiglia? -- Seneca vs Seneca: generazioni e stili a confronto tra oratoria, filosofia e storiografia -- Di aetas in aetas: considerazioni sulla storiografia di Seneca Padre e Floro -- Appian, Cassius Dio and Seneca the Elder -- Appendix – Testimonia and Fragmenta from Seneca the Elder’s Historiae -- Bibliographical References -- List of figures -- List of Tables -- Index of Passages -- Index of Papyri -- Index of Manuscripts -- Index of Inscriptions