Herculaneum’s Library in 79 A.D.: The Villa of the Papyri

Information about the library of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum has been published in scattered sources and in various languages across a span of many decades. The present essay unifies this material in briefly discussing the library's setting, its probable use and physical arrangement, and aspects of the papyri as a collection. Books and articles by Italian classicists and papyrologists provided the most important documentation used in this paper, especially the work of Guglielmo Cavallo, who has studied many of the papyri at Herculaneum, and Marcello Gigante, director of the Herculaneum Papyrus Institute in Naples. My purpose is to present a general discussion of the library, not to offer original research concerning either the library or its significance.