Abstract
Written in the early 70s but never published until now, this paper offers an overview of what we can reconstruct of Seneca the Elder’s Histories. The scant fragmentary evidence handed down to us is analyzed to determine the possible scope and date of this work, while the attitude and the method of Seneca as an historian are assessed based on his extant rhetorical anthology. Particular attention is devoted to the selection and the critical evaluation of sources by Seneca, his philosophy of history, and the purpose and value that historiography had in his eye. The overall reading of our available clues regarding the lost Histories leads us to draw the profile of an independent thinker for his age, interested in the absolute nature of the moral values which he espoused in his work.
