Il P.Herc. 1067 latino: il rotolo, il testo, l’autore

The paper presents a new comprehensive study of PHerc. 1067. In addition to illustrating the main features of the roll, gathered from its virtual reconstruction, the article discusses the script and the bibliological parameters which characterize the roll, in an attempt to analyze its mise en page, in the light of other recent studies concerning the layout of ancient Roman book-rolls. In its third and main part, the paper contains a critical edition of the entire papyrus, and discusses a proposal for a new attribution of the text. Challenging the previous attribution of the text to L. Manlius Torquatus and its interpretation as a oratio in Senatu habita ante principem, the palaeographic evidence from the final subscriptio shows that that work was certainly written by a L. Annaeus Seneca. The nature of the text – characterized by a clear predominance of historical and political matter attributable to the first decades of the Roman Empire – suggests Seneca the Elder as the most probable hypothesis for the author of the text. Moreover, elements internal to the text and the tiny traces of ink preserved in the second line of the subscriptio seem to fit the historical work composed by Seneca, rather than the rhetorical one.