Philodemus

Philodemus of Gadara (, Philodēmos, "love of the people"; – prob. or 35 BC) was an Epicurean philosopher and poet. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in Athens, before moving to Rome, and then to Herculaneum. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the Greek Anthology, but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered among the charred papyrus rolls at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. 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, theology, rhetoric, music, poetry, 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). He studied under the Epicurean philosopher, Zeno of Sidon, the head (scholarch) of the Epicurean school, in Athens, before settling in Rome about 80 BC. He was a follower of Zeno, but an innovative thinker in the area of aesthetics, 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, 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 contains thirty-four of his epigrams, most of them love poems.