Philodemus of Gadara ( grc-gre, Φιλόδημος ὁ Γαδαρεύς, ''Philodēmos'', "love of the people"; c. 110 – prob. c. 40 or 35 BC) was an Arabic Epicurean

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

, before moving to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, and then to

Herculaneum Herculaneum (; Neapolitan and it, Ercolano) was an ancient town, located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Like the n ...

. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the ''

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ' ...

'', but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered among the charred papyrus rolls at the Villa of the Papyri at

. The task of excavating and deciphering these rolls is difficult, and work continues to this day. The works of Philodemus so far discovered include writings on

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

, and the history of various philosophical schools. Ethel Ross Barker suggested in 1908 that he was owner of the Villa of the Papyri Library.

Life

Philodemus was born c. 110 BC, in Gadara,

Coele-Syria Coele-Syria (, also spelt Coele Syria, Coelesyria, Celesyria) alternatively Coelo-Syria or Coelosyria (; grc-gre, Κοίλη Συρία, ''Koílē Syría'', 'Hollow Syria'; lat, Cœlē Syria or ), was a region of Syria in classical antiqui ...

(in present-day

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

).Blank, David
"Philodemus"
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), accessed 3 June 2020. He studied under the Epicurean Phoenician philosopher, Zeno of Sidon, the head ( scholarch) of the Epicurean school, in Athens, before settling in

about 80 BC. He was a follower of Zeno, but an innovative thinker in the area of

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

, in which conservative Epicureans had little to contribute. He was a friend of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, and was implicated in Piso's profligacy by

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...

, who, however, praises Philodemus warmly for his philosophic views and for the ''elegans lascivia'' of his poems. Philodemus was an influence on Horace's '' Ars Poetica''. The

Greek anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ' ...

contains thirty-four of his

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mill ...

s - most of them, love poems.

The Villa of the Papyri

There was an extensive library at the Villa of the Papyri at

, a significant part of which was formed by a library of Epicurean texts, some of which were present in more than one copy, suggesting the possibility that this section of the library was Philodemus' own. The contents of the villa were buried in the eruption of

Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius ( ; it, Vesuvio ; nap, 'O Vesuvio , also or ; la, Vesuvius , also , or ) is a somma-stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of ...

, 79 CE, and the papyri were carbonized and flattened but preserved. During the 18th-century exploration of the Villa by tunnelling, from 1752 to 1754 there were recovered carbonized

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to ...

rolls containing thirty-six treatises attributed to Philodemus. These works deal with music, rhetoric, ethics, signs, virtues and vices, the good king, and defend the Epicurean standpoint against the

Stoics Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting tha ...

and the

Peripatetic Peripatetic may refer to: *Peripatetic school The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, Aristotle (384–322 BC), and ''peripatetic'' is an adjective ascribed to his followers. ...

s. The first fragments of Philodemus from Herculaneum were published in 1824. In 2019, a scroll on the history of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

's Academy, which had been unrolled and glued to cardboard in 1795, was analyzed using shortwave-infrared hyperspectral imaging. This not only revealed what was written on the back of the scroll, but also illuminated 150 new words on the front. "The difficulties involved in unrolling, reading, and interpreting these texts were formidable. Naples was not a particularly hospitable destination for classical scholars. Finally, the philosophies of the Hellenistic schools were neither well-known nor highly regarded until quite recently. These factors combined to cripple scholarly interest in and use of the Herculaneum papyri. Recently, however, in part due to the efforts of the International Center for the Study of the Herculaneum Papyri, these rolls have been the object of renewed scholarly work and have yielded many findings indispensable for the study of Hellenistic philosophy." Today researchers work from digitally enhanced photographs, infra-red and multiple-imaging photography, and 18th-century transcriptions of the documents, which were being destroyed as they were being unrolled and transcribed. The actual papyri are in the National Library, Naples. Named for the philosopher-poet, the Philodemus Project is an international effort, supported by a major grant from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

and by contributions of individuals and participating universities, to reconstruct new texts of Philodemus' works on Poetics, Rhetoric, and Music. These texts will be edited and translated and published in a series of volumes by Oxford University Press. ''Philodemus: On Poems. I'', edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko, appeared in 2001 and won the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit. "Philodemus’ ''On Poems'', in particular, opens a window onto a lost age of scholarship—the period between

Aristotle's Poetics Aristotle's ''Poetics'' ( grc-gre, Περὶ ποιητικῆς ''Peri poietikês''; la, De Poetica; c. 335 BCDukore (1974, 31).) is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on lit ...

and Horace's Art of Poetry, the works which define classicism for the ancient and modern worlds," Janko has written. The Project's next volumes are scheduled to be: *''On Poems'' V, edited and translated by David Armstrong, James Porter, Jeffrey Fish, and Cecilia Mangoni *''On Rhetoric'' I-II, edited and translated by David Blank *''On Rhetoric'' III, edited and translated by Dirk Obbink and Juergen Hammerstaedt.

Inductive reasoning

In ''On Methods of Inference'', Philodemus comments on the

problem of induction First formulated by David Hume, the problem of induction questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past, or more broadly it questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. This inferen ...

, doubting the reliability of

inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' re ...

from the observed to the unobserved. One problem is the existence of unique events that could never be guessed from what happens elsewhere. "There are also in our experience some infrequent occurrences, as for example the man in Alexandria half a cubit high, with a colossal head that could be beaten with a hammer, who used to be exhibited by the embalmers; the person in Epidaurus who was married as a young woman and then become a man." Induction is also unreliable if it extrapolates far beyond our experience: "We shall not, therefore, use the nferencethat since the men among us are mortal the men in Libya would also be mortal, much less the inference that since the living beings among us are mortal, if there are any living beings in Britain, they would be mortal."Philodemus, ''On Methods of Inference'', pp. 96-99; J. Franklin, ''The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal'' (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 201-2.

List of Philodemus' works

This is a list of the major works of Philodemus found so far at Herculaneum.

Historical works

*''Index Stoicorum'' (PHerc. 1018) *''Index Academicorum'' (PHerc. 164
1021
*''On the Stoics'' (PHerc
155339
*''On Epicurus'' (PHerc
12321289
*''Works on the Records of Epicurus and some others'' (PHerc
1418310
*''To Friends of the School'' (PHerc
1005

Scientific works

*''On Phenomena and Inferences'' (PHerc
1065

Theological writings

*''On Piety'' (PHerc
1428
*''On the Gods'' (PHerc
26
*''On the Way of Life of the Gods'' (PHerc
152
157)

Ethics

*''On Vices and Virtues, book 7 (On Flattery)'' (PHerc. 222, 223, 1082, 1089, 1457
1675
*''On Vices and Virtues, book 9 (On Household Management)'' (PHerc
1424
*''On Vices and Virtues, book 10 (On Arrogance)'' (PHerc
1008
*''Comparetti Ethics'' (named after its first editor; PHerc. 1251) *''On Death'' (PHerc
1050
*''On Frank Criticism'' (PHerc. 1471) *''On Anger'' (PHerc
182

On rhetoric, music, and poetry

*''On Rhetoric'' (on many papyri) *''On Music'' (PHerc
1497
*''On Poems'' (on many papyri) *''On the Good King according to Homer'' (PHerc. 1507)

English translations

*Philodemus: ''On Anger''. (2020), David Armstrong & Michael McOsker. SBL. *Philodemus: ''On Death''. (2009), W. Benjamin Henry. SBL. *Philodemus: ''On Frank Criticism''. (1998),

David Konstan David Konstan (born 1 November 1940) is an American classicist and academic, known for his work on notions of emotion and beauty in the ancient world. Currently a Professor of Classics at NYU, he previously spent three decades teaching at Brown U ...

, Diskin Clay, Clarence, E. Glad. SBL. *Philodemus: ''On Methods of Inference''. 2nd edition. (1978). Phillip Howard De Lacy, Estelle Allen De Lacy. Bibliopolis. *Philodemus, ''On Piety'', Part 1. (1996). Critical Text with Commentary by Dirk Obbink. Oxford University Press. *Philodemus, ''On Poems, Book 1''. (2001). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. *Philodemus, ''On Poems, Book 2, with the fragments of Heracleodorus and Pausimachus''. (2020). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. *Philodemus, ''On Poems, Books 3-4, with the Fragments of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

, On Poets''. (2010). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. *Philodemus, ''On Property Management''. (2013), Voula Tsouna. SBL. *Philodemus, ''On Rhetoric'' Books 1 and 2: Translation and Exegetical Essays. (2005). Clive Chandler (editor). Routledge. *David Sider, (1997), ''The Epigrams of Philodemos. Introduction, Text, and Commentary''. Oxford University Press.

References

External links

Philodemus Project
*
Philodemus
at the

Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri The Digital Classicist is a community of those interested in the application of digital humanities to the field of classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students ...

.
Philodemus: une bibliographie
annotated bibliography by Annick Monet

at ''attalus.org''; adapted from W.R.Paton (1916–18) *David Armstrong, Jeffrey Fish, Patricia A. Johnston, and Marilyn B. Skinner, eds., 2003

condensed introduction on-line *Philodemus' writings (Greek texts): ''Rhetorica'', ed. Sudhaus
vol. 1vol. 2''Academica''
ed. Mekler
''De Musica''
ed. Kemke *Harry M. Hubbel
The Rhetorica of Philodemus
Translation and Commentary, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 23, 1920, 243-382 {{Authority control Hellenistic-era philosophers from Syria Roman-era Epicurean philosophers Classical humanists 110s BC births 30s BC deaths Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology Roman-era philosophers in Rome Roman-era students in Athens 1st-century BC poets 1st-century BC philosophers