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Updated: June 6, 2025
How Philodemus taught his rich Roman patrons and pupils to value not only his creed but the whole line of masters from Epicurus we may learn from the Herculanean villa where his own library was found, for it contained a veritable museum of Epicurean worthies down to Zeno, perhaps not excluding the teacher himself, if we could but identify his portrait.
Indeed there seems to be not a little direct use of Philodemus' works in Cicero's De finibus and the De natura deorum written many years later. In any case, at least Catullus, Horace, and Ovid made free to paraphrase some of his epigrams.
Philodemus was himself a native of Gadara, that unfortunate Macedonian colony just east of the Sea of Galilee, which was subjected to Jewish rule in the early youth of our philosopher.
The Aetna which seems to date from about 47-6 reveals the young philosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotion to his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth Catalepton he was not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainly visible all through these brief poems, there was added the example of Philodemus who wrote epigrams from time to time.
Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. Pandora simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents. But Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.
It is not unlikely that Quintilius Varus, Vergil's elder friend and fellow-Transpadane, who had grown up an intimate friend of Catullus and Calvus, had in these matters a stronger influence than Philodemus. There are, however, certain turns of sentiment in Vergil which betray a non-Roman flavor to one who comes to Vergil directly from a reading of Lucretius, Catullus, or Cicero's letters.
We meet already literati of note in such positions; the Epicurean Philodemus, for instance, was installed as domestic philosopher with Lucius Piso consul in 696, and occasionally edified the initiated with his clever epigrams on the coarse-grained Epicureanism of his patron.
Fr. 141 when Epicurus writes to Colotes: 'Think of me as immortal, and go your ways as immortal too. Usener, from Philodemus, De Rhet. This may be only a playful reference to Plato's phrase about being a πατραλοίας of his father, Parmenides, Soph., p. 241 D. Fr. 163 to Pythocles, παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τὸ ἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, 'From education in every shape, my son, spread sail and fly!
In the theory of poetic art there is in many respects a marked difference between the classical ideals of the Roman group and the rather luxurious verses of Philodemus, but he too recognized the value of restraint and simplicity, as some of his epigrams show.
This fort was commanded by Philodemus, an Argive, who was placed in this situation by Epicydes. Marcellus sent Sosis, one of the regicides, to him. After a long conversation, being put off for the purpose of frustrating him, he brought back word to Marcellus, that Philodemus had taken time to deliberate.
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