Philodemus of Gadara (, ''Philodēmos'', "love of the people"; – prob. or 35 BC) was an Epicurean

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

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 (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

, before moving to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

, and then to

Herculaneum Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of ...

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

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

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

Villa of the Papyri The Villa of the Papyri (, also known as ''Villa dei Pisoni'' and in early excavation records as the ''Villa Suburbana'') was an ancient Roman Empire, Roman villa in Herculaneum, in what is now Ercolano, southern Italy. It is named after its un ...

. 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 is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

, and the history of various philosophical schools. Ethel Ross Barker suggested in 1908 that he was owner of the Villa of the Papyri Library, although it is far more likely that the owner was in fact his wealthy Roman patron Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.

Life

Philodemus was born , in Gadara, Coele-Syria (in present-day

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

).Blank, David
"Philodemus"
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), accessed 3 June 2020. He studied under the Epicurean 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 (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

, 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, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

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

contains thirty-four of his

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia ...

s, most of them love poems.

The Villa of the Papyri

There was an extensive library at the

, 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 ( ) is a Somma volcano, 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 several volcanoes forming the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuv ...

, 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'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

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

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

Academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

, which had been unrolled and glued to cardboard in 1795, was analyzed using shortwave-infrared

hyperspectral imaging Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. The goal of hyperspectral imaging is to obtain the spectrum for each pixel in the image of a scene, with the purpose of finding objects, identifyi ...

. 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 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 The problem of induction is a philosophical problem that questions the rationality of predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. These inferences from the observed to the unobserved are known as "inductive inferences" ...

, doubting the reliability of

inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning refers to a variety of method of reasoning, methods of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument is supported not with deductive certainty, but with some degree of probability. Unlike Deductive reasoning, ''deductive'' ...

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." The fourth book of Philodemus' On Death (PHerc. 1050) is an important text that sheds light on various aspects of the well-known Epicurean claim that "death is nothing to us".

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''
P.Herc. 229, 242, 243, 247, 248, 433, 437, 1077, 1088, 1098, 1114, 1428, 1609, 1610, 1648, 1788
*''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)

Unpublished works

* PHerc. Paris. 4 *''On Vices and Virtues, book 1'' ( PHerc. 172)https://scrollprize.substack.com/p/60000-first-title-prize-awarded

Editions

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, 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 (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, 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.
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
''Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans''
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 Greek poets 1st-century BC Greek philosophers Ancient Greek philosophers of art