Philodemus in Italy: The Books from Herculaneum

Philodemus (ca 110-35 B.C.E.) was an Epicurean poet and philosopher who settled on the Bay of Naples at Herculaneum. He was praised by Cicero, and counted Vergil and Horace among his pupils in the Roman intelligentsia. Philodemus’s epigrams proved him a verbal artist of the first rank, but the remainder of his writings were buried under lava in an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Excavated in 1752, his private library of some 800 papyrus rolls is one of the few libraries of texts recovered intact from the ancient world.

Philodemus in Italy makes available for the first time in English the exciting state-of-the-art research on these ancient manuscripts. Marcello Gigante provides a lively and concise survey of current scholarship on these difficult and fascinating texts.

Gigante’s book relates the histories of the papyri and efforts to unroll and decipher the texts, then outlines content of the texts and the scope of current research about them. The text is enhanced by a gallery of plates depicting the plan of the Herculaneum, the unearthing of the papyri rolls, and the text of various fragments within them.

This English translation will be warmly welcomed by scholars of the ancient world, among whom interest in the texts and library of Philodemus runs high. It will also appeal to those interested in the history of writing, cultural literacy, and libraries.