Philodemus of Gadara ' onMouseout='HidePop("11384")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Coele-Syria">Coele-Syria
Coele-Syria, traditionally given the meaning 'hollow' Syria, was the region of southern Syria disputed between the Seleucid dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty. Rather than limiting the Greek term to the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon, it is often used to cover the entire area south of the river Eleutherus...
, c. 110 BC – probably
Herculaneumthumb|240px|The towns and villages under the likely pyroclastic cloud of the [[Mt Vesuvius]] 79 AD eruption. Herculaneum is visible along the northwestern edge of the shadowed area...
, c. 40 or 35 BC) was an Epicurean philosopher and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He studied under
Zeno of SidonZeno of Sidon was an Epicurean philosopher of the 1st century BC, who was born in the city of Sidon in Phoenicia. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who heard him when at Athens.He was sometimes termed the "leading Epicurean"...
in
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
, before moving to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, and then to
Herculaneumthumb|240px|The towns and villages under the likely pyroclastic cloud of the [[Mt Vesuvius]] 79 AD eruption. Herculaneum is visible along the northwestern edge of the shadowed area...
. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the
Greek anthologyThe Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature....
, but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered among the charred papyrus scrolls at the
Villa of the PapyriThe Villa of the Papyri is a private house in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum . Situated north-west of the township, the residence sits halfway up the slope of the volcano Vesuvius without other buildings to obstruct the view. The abode was owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius...
at
Herculaneumthumb|240px|The towns and villages under the likely pyroclastic cloud of the [[Mt Vesuvius]] 79 AD eruption. Herculaneum is visible along the northwestern edge of the shadowed area...
. The task of excavating and deciphering these scrolls is difficult, and work continues to this day. The works of Philodemus so far discovered include writings on
ethicsEthics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is , how moral values should be determined , how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations , how moral...
,
theologyThe term "theology" literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning 'God', and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse", "theory", or "reasoning"...
,
rhetoricRhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public...
,
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
,
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and the history of various
philosophical schoolsHellenistic philosophy is the period of Western philosophy that was developed in the Hellenistic civilization following Aristotle and ending with Neoplatonism.-Platonism:...
.
Life
Philodemus was born c. 110 BC, in Gadara,
Coele-SyriaCoele-Syria, traditionally given the meaning 'hollow' Syria, was the region of southern Syria disputed between the Seleucid dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty. Rather than limiting the Greek term to the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon, it is often used to cover the entire area south of the river Eleutherus...
. He studied under
Zeno of SidonZeno of Sidon was an Epicurean philosopher of the 1st century BC, who was born in the city of Sidon in Phoenicia. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who heard him when at Athens.He was sometimes termed the "leading Epicurean"...
, the head (
scholarchA scholarch is the head of a school. The term was especially used for the heads of schools of philosophy in ancient Athens, such as the Platonic Academy, whose first scholarch was Plato himself...
) of the Epicurean school, in Athens, before settling in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
about 80 BCE. He was a follower of Zeno, but an innovative thinker in the area of
aestheticsAesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, in which conservative Epicureans had little to contribute. He was a friend of
Lucius Calpurnius Piso CaesoninusLucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was a statesman of ancient Rome and the father-in-law of Julius Caesar through his daughter Calpurnia Pisonis. He also had a son, Lucius Calpurnius Piso known as "the Pontifex"....
, and was implicated in Piso's profligacy by
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
, who, however, praises Philodemus warmly for his philosophic views and for the
elegans lascivia of his poems. Philodemus was the teacher of
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
and an influence on Horace's
Ars PoeticaArs Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name...
. The
Greek anthologyThe Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature....
contains thirty-four of his
epigramAn Epigram is a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. Derived from the "to write on - inscribe", the literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s.
The Villa of the Papyri
Apparently, there was an extensive library at Piso's
Villa of the PapyriThe Villa of the Papyri is a private house in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum . Situated north-west of the township, the residence sits halfway up the slope of the volcano Vesuvius without other buildings to obstruct the view. The abode was owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius...
at
Herculaneumthumb|240px|The towns and villages under the likely pyroclastic cloud of the [[Mt Vesuvius]] 79 AD eruption. Herculaneum is visible along the northwestern edge of the shadowed area...
, 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 Piso's library was Philodemus' own. The contents of the villa were embalmed in the eruption of Vesuvius, 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
papyrusPapyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
scrolls 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
StoicSTOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
s and the
PeripateticThe Peripatetics were members of a school of philosophy in ancient Greece. Their teachings derived from their founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The name refers to the act of walking, and as an adjective, "peripatetic" is often used to mean...
s. The first fragments of Philodemus from Herculaneum were published in 1824.
"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 HumanitiesThe National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
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.
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. 155, 339)
- On Epicurus (PHerc. 1232, 1289)
- Works on the Records of Epicurus and some others (PHerc. 1418, 310)
- To Friends of the School (PHerc. 1005)
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)
Further reading
- Philodemus, (1996), On Piety. Critical Text with Commentary by Dirk Obbink. Oxford University Press
- Philodemus, (2001), On Poems. I, Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press
- David Sider, (1997), The Epigrams of Philodemos. Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford University Press
- Marcello Gigante, Dirk Obbink, (2002), Philodemus in Italy: The Books from Herculaneum. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472089080
- Voula Tsouna, (2007), The Ethics of Philodemus. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199292172
External links
- Philodemus Project homepage
- 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. 1, vol. 2; Academica, ed. Mekler