Aeschylean Fragments in the Herculaneum Papyri: More Questions than Answers. Prometheus Unbound in Philodemus’ On Piety

We know a lot less about theatre production (tragedy, comedy and satyrical drama) during the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. than we would like. Medieval manuscripts have transmitted only a small selection of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. A valuable resource to increase our knowledge of these authors has been the discovery and publication of papyri, which are often damaged but of great importance in the reconstruction of the manuscript tradition, and in understanding the popularity of certain authors and their plays. The majority of papyri derive from the ancient Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, and most of those concerning playwrights are included in the series of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri and of Papiri della Società Italiana. References to the most important of 5/4th century B.C. Athenian dramatists and plays (often with quoted lines) can be found also in the extraordinary collection deriving from the great library of Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. destroyed the town, its citizens and many books which were housed in that important centre for culture and in particular for philosophical studies. The history of the edition of Herculaneum papyri is complicated and still very much a work in progress. There is still need of deep and updated study of the texts’ passages which refer to Greek tragedy. In this paper I aim to provide an overview of the mentions of Aeschylus in Herculaneum papyri, focusing on references, both real and suggested by modern scholars, to the lost Prometheus Unbound in Philodemus’ On Piety. This is part of a current project which aims to provide an edition and commentary of Aeschylean fragmentary tragedies, promoted by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome.