Abstract

New technologies and recent palaeographical studies on the reconstruction of the ancient scrolls from Herculaneum encouraged new hypotheses on the outline of the ancient library in the «Villa dei Papiri». After a brief overview of the problems involved in the reconstruction of the volumina, this contribution focuses on the work of two scribes -the so-called Anonimo XXI and XXV - who copied many scrolls and collaborated with each other at least in two cases. A passage from Aristophanes’ Clouds, probably from Philodemus’ treatise De vitiis, has been read for the first time. The final part of the article examines shape and structure of the titles of this important treatise.