Philodemus of Gadara

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Philodemos ( Greek  Φιλόδημος Philódēmos ; * around 110 BC in Gadara ; † around 40-35 BC probably in Herculaneum ) was an ancient Epicurean philosopher and poet.

Life

Philodemus was a student of Zenon of Sidon in Kepos in Athens. Before he died around 86 BC Went to Athens, he stayed in Alexandria for some time. After his apprenticeship in Athens, he settled in Italy. He was friends with Antiochus of Ascalon and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus , the father of Calpurnia , Julius Caesar's wife . Piso was also a target of the diatribes of Cicero , who saw Philodemus not only negatively ( In Pisonem , 68-70).

He was in contact with Virgil and influenced Horace in his Ars Poetica .

Works

Fragment of the Academica des Philodemos ( Papyrus Herculanensis 1021, column 17 of the Oxford copy)

The Anthologia Palatina , an ancient collection of poems, contains 34 poems by Philodemos, the content of which is mainly erotic.

An extensive Greek library with works of mostly philosophical content was found in the Villa dei Papiri near Herculaneum . A considerable part can be assigned to the Epicurean school, among them numerous hitherto unknown works by Philodemos, which supports the thesis that Piso was the owner of the Villa dei Papiri and that the library is that of Philodemos.

The works of Philodemos found in Herculaneum deal with a wide range of subjects including music, rhetoric and ethics . One of the writings found there ( On Defamation , Papyrus Herculanensis Paris 2) provides evidence of the connections between the circle of Philodemos and the circle of the philosopher Siron , to which, in addition to Virgil, his friends Plotius Tucca , Lucius Varius Rufus and Quinctilius Varus belonged.

Editions, comments and translations

(sorted chronologically in ascending order)

  • Johannes Kemke : Philodemi de musica librorum quae exstant . Leipzig 1884 (digitized at archive.org ).
  • Harry M. Hubbel: The Rhetorica of Philodemus. Translation and Commentary. In: Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 23, 1920, pp. 243-382, online .
  • Philodemus: On Methods of Inference. A Study in Ancient Empiricism. Edited with translation and commentary by Phillip Howard DeLacy and Estelle Allen DeLacy. American Philological Association, Philadelphia, Pa. 1941. Second edition: Bibliopolis, Naples 1978.
  • Annemarie Jeanette Neubecker : Philodemus: About Music, IV. Book. Text, translation and commentary . Naples 1986 ( La scuola di Epicuro 4), ISBN 978-88-7088-119-6 .
  • Konrad Gaiser : Philodems Academica. The reports on Plato and the Old Academy in two Herculanean papyri. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1988, ISBN 3-7728-0971-5 (edition with German translation and commentary).
  • Tiziano Dorandi : Filodemo: Storia dei filosofi. Platone e l'Academia (PHerc. 1021 e 164) (= La Scuola di Epicuro. Vol. 12). Bibliopolis, Naples 1991, ISBN 88-7088-275-8 (critical edition with Italian translation and commentary).
  • Diskin Clay, Clarence Glad, David Konstan , Johan Thom and James Ware: Philodemus On Frank Criticism. Introduction, Translation and Notes. Atlanta 1998
  • Richard Janko : Philodemus on Poems. Oxford University Press, Oxford (critical edition with English translation and commentary).

literature

  • Michael Erler : Philodem from Gadara. In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The philosophy of antiquity , Vol. 4/1: The Hellenistic Philosophy , Schwabe, Basel 1994, ISBN 3-7965-0930-4 , pp. 289–362
  • Annemarie Neubecker: The evaluation of music by Stoics and Epicureans. An analysis of Philodem's De musica . Berlin 1956 (= dissertation; German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Institute for Greco-Roman Classical Studies. Working Group for Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy . Publication No. 5)
  • Graziano Arrighetti : Filodemo fra poesia, mito e storia. In: Michael Erler (ed.): Epicureanism in the late republic and the imperial era. Files from the 2nd meeting of the Karl and Gertrud Abel Foundation on September 30–3. October 1998 in Würzburg. Steiner, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 13–31 ( excerpts from google books ).
  • Francesca Longo Auricchio, Giovanni Indelli, Gianluca Del Mastro: Philodème de Gadara . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques , Vol. 5, Part 1, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2012, ISBN 978-2-271-07335-8 , pp. 334–359.
  • Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-61818-5 , pp. 275–278 (on poetry), pp. 420–425, 721–724 (on philosophy), pp. 873-876 (on rhetoric)
  • Kilian Josef Fleischer: Dionysius of Alexandria , De natura (περὶ φύσεως). Translation, commentary and appreciation. With an introduction to the history of Epicureanism in Alexandria . Brepols, Turnhout 2016, ISBN 978-2-503-56638-2 , pp. 81-104.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Philodemus of Gadara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION epicurean philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH around 110 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH around 40 BC Chr.