After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his empire fell apart. The text mentions Seleucus, Macedonian generals who came to rule a large region in the Middle East, and Cassander, who ruled Greece after Alexander’s death.

what is known

• The scroll was found in the Papyri Mansion in Herculaneum, a city destroyed by Vesuvius along with Pompeii.
• The villa had a large library, but the papyrus was charred during a volcanic eruption.
• Researched parchment Presented to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. He delivered the parchment to the Institut de France, one of the oldest scientific institutions in the country, where the parchment is still preserved.
• According to Richard Janko, a professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan, an attempt to open the papyrus in 1986 damaged it.
• a computer program Taught him to detect ink on papyrus by analyzing ancient scrolls with CT scans. So the text becomes more and more legible.

Much of the scroll still remains a mystery. The author of the text is unknown. It is also unusual for the parchment to remain inside the villa: books on philosophy were often stored here, many of which were written by Philodemus, who had lived in Herculaneum a hundred years before the explosion.

Janko suggested that the parchment may have been borrowed and not returned.

One theory is that Philodemus used it as a source for his work On the Good King According to Homer. In this work, Philodemus compares the kings and concludes that the rulers got worse after Alexander the Great. Philodemus’ patron was a man named Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the Roman ruler of Macedonia. Perhaps Philodemus gave Piso an example of good kings so that he could surpass his predecessors.