Ancient Greek Epigrams: Major Poets in Verse Translation

Chapter 9: Philodemos

184 Nearly 150 years after the appearance of Meleager’s Garland, a second anthology of epigrams was assembled by the poet Philip of Thessalonica, just before or during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. Of all the poets Philip included I have selected only one, who is not only the best of the poets of this second Garland but also one of the very finest of all the Greek composers of epigrams. Philodemos was born around 110 bce, about fifty years after Meleager in the same city of Gadara in Palestine. Like Meleager he left Gadara at an early age, probably driven out with his family by the incessant warfare between Greek and Jewish armies. Philodemos Chap ter Nine Philodemos / 185 He is then known to have made his way to Athens, where he studied with the head of the Epicurean school of philosophy, Zenon (or Zeno) of Sidon, whose lectures Cicero also attended in 79–78 bce. Like many Greek artists and intellectuals, Philodemos eventually went to Italy. We do not know when he arrived or how he got there, but by 55 bce, when Philodemos was in his early to mid-fifties, he was already well-known in Rome. We know this because Cicero delivered a speech in 55 bce in the Senate against a political enemy, L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who was the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. In this speech, which Cicero later published, he describes a “certain Greek” who was practically living with Piso—an Epicurean philosopher who wrote poetry “so merry, so well-composed, and so elegant that nothing could be more quick-witted and clever.” That Greek philosopher and poet was Philodemos, who by this time had found his place in Roman society. In epigram XIX, Philodemos invites Piso to dinner to celebrate the feast of Epicurus, combining in one poem evidence for Philodemos as poet and Epicurean philosopher and for Piso as his friend and eventual patron. Though some of Philodemos’s poetry survived in the second Garland, his philosophical works were entirely lost until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a building now called the Villa of the Papyri was discovered in Herculaneum, a town on the coast of Italy just south of Naples. Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was entirely buried in ash by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 ce. In addition to many statues and wall paintings in this villa, which clearly indicated its ownership by a prominent family, the excavators discovered about a thousand book scrolls, some in a library and some in carrying boxes for transporting them to safety. Carbonized but in many cases at least partially legible, the scrolls consist mostly of Greek texts of Epicurean philosophy, including many works by Philodemos on poetry, rhetoric, music, ethics, theology, and the history of philosophy, which may have been in part the texts of his lectures. One of these books, On the Good King According to Homer, is dedicated to Piso, and many scholars now believe that the Villa of the Papyri originally belonged to Piso, who died more than a hundred years before the 186 / Philodemos eruption. The house and its books may then have remained in Piso’s family until they were buried by the ash and mud of Vesuvius. From these books and from passages in Cicero and other authors, we can put together some notion of the life of Philodemos after his arrival in Italy until his death, perhaps not long after 40 bce. Philodemos appears to have spent most of his time in the region around Naples, which was then the center of the teaching of Epicurean philosophy in Italy. We should picture him sitting with friends on quiet evenings, eating and drinking in moderation as they discussed philosophy, perhaps in the company of women with similar interests. During the day, Philodemos would have written his philosophy books and, every now and then, a poem; he would also have taught the young, giving lectures on the theory of poetic composition and on Epicurean ethics and metaphysics. His friends included not just fellow Epicurean philosophers and upper-class Romans like Piso but also many of the most important names in Roman literature. In one of the books found at Herculaneum, Philodemos addresses Virgil by name, as well as Quintilius Varus, an admired critic and friend of Horace; the poet L. Varius Rufus, who wrote On Death, an epic poem known...