TranscriptValeria Piano is a researcher in classical philosophy at the University of Florence. A few years ago, she was studying fragments from one particular Herculaneum scroll at the National Library of Naples, trying to identify its author. But much of the writing was so faded and damaged, it wasn't visible.
Even if they are unrolled, some parts of them couldn't be read. So, technology is essential. In order to read a carbonized papyrus, you have to usually join two kinds of methodologies. The first essential one is to directly read it by using a microscope and using the right angle of visible light. And then, the second crucial methodology is studying the digital images that are produced usually by infrared spectrum.
The Latin scroll Valeria studied had previously been logged as a record of a political speech. But after meticulously studying the text, she spotted a key phrase that convinced her this was actually an important lost book.
The sentence was...
...from the beginning of the Civil War.
For Valeria, this short phrase had huge significance. The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, in his own works, had used this exact sentence to refer to a history of the Roman civil war composed by his father, Seneca the Elder.
We best know Seneca the Elder as a historian. He wrote a history of his own time, from the time of the civil wars. Certainly, he was also interested in cataloguing the political events that were taking place in Rome.
Scholars believed that Seneca the Elder's history of Rome had long been lost forever. But Valeria now thought that the fragments she was looking at could contain writings from this missing work. All she needed was proof. And then, at the very end of the text, she found what she was looking for.
His name, Seneca the Elder, is partially readable at the very end of the papyrus. I was, like, shaking. That was really an unforgettable moment for me.
It’s amazing that “Seneca the Elder” was legible. Who would have thought that a Roman author born in Spain would have known any English at that time? Maybe he picked up some from English tourists going to the Spanish beaches.
Thanks, SunkenCiv, another nice post
I am old and long graduated from college. This is timely for me. For the first time ever, this year I read the “Complete Works of Tacitus.” I am now half-way through Plutarch’s “Roman Lives.”
Victor Davis Hanson’s frequent references to the historians and authors of antiquity, chided me into reading some of them.