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Philodemus and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

The town of Gadara, on the eastern shores of Galilee, was as famous in the Hellenistic Age for its culture as it afterwards became for its swine. Among its sons were Menippus the Cynic, hero of Lucian and model of Petronius, Meleager, also a satirist but better known as the charming weaver of the Garland, Theodorus, the candid tutor of Tiberius, and lastly, Philodemus. If these four have any quality in common, it is nothing oriental, but rather a certain realism and common sense—Cynicism purged of Cynic squalor by contact with the Seleucid courts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1933

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References

page 146 note 1 (?) Hippias of Elis had argued on the same lines against (?) Damon, the source of the Platonic view. Hibeh Papyri (1906), p. 45, fr. 13.

page 148 note 1 The old fragments of the περὶ ποιημάτων were edited by Hausrath; the new have been edited by C. Jensen with German translation and pertinent commentaries; Philodemus über die Gedichte, Fünftes Buch, Weidmann, Berlin, 1923. See further Rostagni, A., L'Arte Poetica di Orazio (Torino, 1930), Introduction, to which I am much indebted.Google Scholar

page 149 note 1 Inference may be made from (e.g.) Philodemus περὶ ποιημάτων, V, column viii, 1. 33 ff. (Jensen).

page 151 note 1 It is probable, however, that neither Philodemus nor Horace used Neoptolemus at first hand.