Thursday, August 3, 2023

So, about Philodemus of Gadara

At Herculanuem there is a building called the Villa of the Papyri, because it was full of papyrus manuscripts that somehow survived when the whole place was buried in pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius. This discovery was greeted with rapturous enthusiasm; what lost ancient masterpieces might be contained in those charred paper logs?

As it turned out, though, most of them were books by the obscure philosopher Philodemus of Gadara (ca. 110–ca. 30 BCE), a follower of Epicurus that most people think has been forgotten for good reasons. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells us, "Philodemus’ claim on our attention does not rest on the originality of his philosophical doctrines." I considered a longer quotation, but trust me, even reading a summary of Philodemus's work is boring.

Which is why I was startled to find an actual quotation from Philodemus online, on a Tumblr devoted to classical art. There is, it seems, a formula called the "four-part cure" that was found at Herculaneum and seems to have escaped from the deadening obscurity that surrounds Philodemus' work. It goes like this:

Ancient Greek

Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός,
ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος
καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον,
τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον

Translation

Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure. 

So, yeah. Justly forgotten.

1 comment:

  1. I've heard the saying in numerous places over the years, yet it's literally the only thing connected with Philodemus I've ever heard, so I suppose that illustrates your point.

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