PHILODEMUS

A Greek philosopher of the Epicurean school, of Gadara in Palestine. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who praises his learning, and also his taste as a poet [De Finibus ii 119; in Pisonem, 68, 70]. We have thirty-four epigrams by him chiefly on amatory and indelicate subjects: and considerable fragments of a number of prose writings (on music, rhetoric, syllogisms, vices and virtues, piety, anger, etc.), which have come to light among the Herculanean papyri.