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PHILODEMUS
ON PIETY
PART 1
CRITICAL TEXT WITH COMMENTARY
EDITED BY
DIRK OBBINK
..................................................
CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD
1996
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PREFACE
........................................................
The charred papyri of Philodemus-prcserved in variow states
of disarray,f ragmentation, and physical deterioration swtained
over two millennia- are among the most difficult Greek texts to
edit. The Greek in which they arc written is so esoteric that they
would be hard to control and to translate even if they had come
down to w in perfect condition.
Albert Henrichs
IN c ING a new method of reconstructing the fragmented
T Ro Du
papyrus rolls excavated from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum,
this volume offers a new critical text of the philosophical part of
Philodemus' lIEpt E'1cE{JElatco,g ether with an English translation and
commentary. The best-known among the papyri from Herculaneum,
Philodemus' On Piety was read by Cicero and has received extensive
editorial attention by scholars but has not been available in
a modern critical edition since I 866. I have utilized a new format in
order to present on facing pages the technical details of the papyrus
and a continuous text with running English translation, to which are
attached brief explanatory notes for the benefit of the reader. In the
commentary, new work on ancient religion and philosophy and the
history of atheism is brought to bear on the interpretation of a text
that expounds Epicurus' theory of the gods and cult as an outgrowth
of cultural history.
In 1787 archaeologists cut open and transcribed the first few col
umns of a carbonized papyrus roll which, it was soon recognized,
contain a Hellenistic treatise on religion. The texts dealt enticingly
with charges of atheism against philosophers, but were too fragmen
tary to provide anything in the way of a continuous text. Nearly three
VI PREFACE
decades later, the fragmentary first column of what was thought to be
another papyrus roll was removed in Naples and transcribed. Miracu
lously, it matches perfectly with one of the fragmentary columns
recovered two decades earlier: for both come 6:om the same papyrus
roll.Yet this fact went unnoticed both by the Italian aaademicai nd by
Theodor Gomperz, who produced the editiop rincepsI.t now provides
for the first time the basis for an approximate reconstruction of the
original order of fragments in the treatise.
De pietatec onsists of two parts : one dealing with the philosophy of
religion, rebutting charges that Epicurus was an atheist, and a second
pan (see vol. ii) criticizing the theological views of poets and pre
Socratic and Stoic philosophers. The present volume treats the first
(previously believed to be the second',p hilosophical' part of the trea
tise), which provides details on Epicurean theology, cult practices,
organization of Epicurean groups, accusations of impiety among phi
losophers, and philosophical criticism of mythological poetry. In order
to set out the structure of the treatise, it has been necessary to deal in
places with the second, 'critical' part of the treatise. In many respects
the present volume thus serves as an introduction to De. pietate as
a whole.
A new method of papyrological reconstruction makes it possible to
recover the original order of columns in the treatise, and thus to join
many previously unconnected passages.W e can now read two or even
three continuous columns without a lacuna, where before we could
only read one or half of one. 1 But it would be over-optimistic to
pretend that the new method completely restores the narrative to its
original continuous form. It is rather like being able to see the skeletal
reconstruction of a dinosaur, instead of a mere pile of bones. We can,
within limits, envisage the living, breathing beast, but never quite see it
in the flesh. A major gain, however, is produced in seeing for the first
time the extant columns in their original order, rather than the chaotic
disorder in which they have come down to us. As a result it is possible
to discern the plan and argument of both parts of the treatise as
a unified, organic whole.
The primary objective of the present edition is therefore to present
' The method has since been applied to other Herculaneum rolls opened through the
process of scorzaturt2(s ee below, p . .25) with great success, and promises to afford additional
progress in the future: sec Obbink 1986 and 1989; Delattre 1989 and 1993, endorsed by E.
Pohlmann, 'Philodem, De-musica, 1969-1989', Gnomon, 63 (1991), 481-6 at 484-5 ;Janko
199.2 and 1993 applies it to Philodemus' On Poems.
PREFACE VII
a satisfactory text of the papyrus in such a way as to provide the relev
ant papyrological information contained both in the papyri (where
these survive) and in the original apographs, in order to provide
a reliable basis on which to propose new conjectural readings. Con
straints of space make it necessary to omit here (except in special cases)
both the initial stage of full diplomatic transcription with which the
edition began, and the reproduction of most of the original apographs,
which remain unpublished. The information of a detailed papyro
logical apparatus, in which every uncertain trace is analysed in terms
of all the possible letters it could represent, even if some of these might
appear to be ruled out on philological grounds, has been partially
abridged, or, for crucial passages,l argely relegated to the critical notes.
All previous editions of De pietateh ave been based not on the papyri,
whether existing or lost, but on engraved (and in many cases errone
ous or deficient) reproductions issued by the Neapolitan Academy in
1863. The columns of the text bear new numbers, and continuous
line-numbering has been introduced. For equivalences with the nwn
bcring of previous editions see the Concordances (pp. 639-45). The
present edition is based upon the papyri themselves, wh~re they are
extant, and, in those cases where the papyri have unfortunately per
ished, upon the next closest textual witnesses, the original pencil
drawn facsimiles of the papyrus (disegni)m ade by Italian and British
draftsmen during the process of unrolling.
With its columns arranged in their proper order, the treatise affords
an excellent and. extended example of a large category of ancient
writing on the gods, mythography, and religion, of which only tanta
lizing traces otherwise survive. The treatise presents a defence of Epi
curus' views on the gods, religion, and cultural history, together with
a philosophical rationale for participation in traditional cult-practices
as illustrating an Epicurean theory of the role of religion in the opera
tion of justice and social cohesion. Epicurus is revealed as a thinker
who, like Prodicus and Democritus, regarded cult as an outgrowth of
cultural history (Henrichs 1975a), and who sought to show how far
cultural phenomena (including false beliefs) could be explained along
atomist principles without recourse to the teleology of the Stoics and
Peripatetics. As an intimate of such luminaries as Cicero, Torquatus,
and the Pisones, and the mentor of Vergil, Philodemus touches in the
treatise on such issues as the efficacy of cult, options for religious
pa.~cipation open to individuals, and the role of religion and religious
poetry in society. A central concern of the treatise is the moral and
PREFACE
VIII
epistemological status of atheism, as is the function of religious beliefs
in the affairs of the state and their consequences for the 8,a8Ec,co r
psychosomatic constitution of the individual thinker.
A method of composition by compilation yields a plethora of
illustrative passagesp reserving numerous citations from lost writers. In
addition, the treatise provides an important link in the history of ideas
(via Cicero, who drew directly upon the treatise or its source in the
first book of De Natura Deorum) between pagan philosophical cri
tiques of traditional religion and the arguments of the early Christian
writers against polytheism. It is in this sense that it lives in two worlds,
and looks in two directions at once.
An introductory essay on Epicurus and Greek religion sets out the
significance of the text for our current understanding of Hellenistic
philosophy and intellectual history. The remainder of the Introduc
tion deals with the text's transmission and the reconstruction of its
argument and of the papyrus roll, an important preliminary to any
understanding of the text, especially in the (virtually unique) case of
the Herculaneum papyri, where (unlike the papyri of Egyptian prov
enance) we have to deal with whole papyrus rolls and an entire library
of books, rather than discrete and random fragments. To this are
appended supplementary treattnents of the genre and theme of the
treatise and the style and syntax of Philodemus' Greek.
From time to time I cite other works by Philodemus by way of
comparison. In view of the problems I set forth here, and the alarming
variation in readings from one edition to another, the reader will no
doubt wonder how secure their texts are. Due caution is in order. In
general I refrained from citing any passage the text of which I felt was
seriously in doubt. In some cases I have introduced corrections of my
own devising, as noted.
This edition had its inception in Naples at the XVII Congresso
Internazionale di Papirologia in May 1983 . It grew, from a paper at the
Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in Toronto
in 1984 in which I presented the discovery of the method used to
recover the original order of the eighty-six columns which appear
here,twenty-five of which I included in my 1986 doctoral dissertation,
through a series of articles to its present form. Prolegomena to the
edition appeared in GRBS 30 (1989), 187-223, parts' of which have
been incorporated in revised form in § of the Introduction. In the
1
interim I have lectured on De pietate at UCLA, Tulane, Duke, Prince
ton, the Institute of Classical Studies in London, the University of
PREFACE IX
Texas at Austin, Columbia,NewYork University,in Washington D.C.,
in Copenhagen, and on Capri. The auditors on those occasions
will recognize their numerous insights and criticisms incorporated or
countered in the present volume. Fully to reconstruct my sources of
information, and the contributions of individuals and institutions who
have aided and abetted this project, would be an undertaking greater
than that required for all the Herculaneum papyri taken together.
Professor Marcello Gigante, on whose endless learning and resource
fulness I have drawn throughout, and the Centro Internazionale per lo
Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi, made it possible for me to collate the
extant papyrus texts and original apographs in Naples. A. A. Long,
David Furley, Peter Parsons, David Sedley, Susan Stephens, and
Michael Wigodsky all provided unflagging criticism and sound ad
vice. Knut Kleve (Oslo), the Bodleian Library, and the Biblioteca
Nazionale in Naples generously provided the photography that ap
pears in the plates and important advice on matters of conservation in
working on papyri of which lamentably fewer exist today than did a
century ago, and many of which will probably not survive the next
several decades. Sarah Sheffer produced the line art that appears as fi~.
1-3. Daniel Delattre, Tiziano Dorandi, Leofranc Holford-Strevens,
and Richard Janko lavished their own time ungrudgingly on my work
and saved me from more blunders than anyone cares to remember. For
expert consultation on individual problems I am grateful to Anna
Angeli, Angela Blackburn, Jan Bremmer, Walter Burkert, Mario Ca
passo, Helene Foley, Francesca Longo Auricchio, Annick Monet, D.R.
Shackelton Bailey,a nd Leonardo Taran. I am happy to acknowledge a
similar debt to others in the pages that follow, most of all to Albert
Henrichs, to whom this book is dedicated, v
PIE TAT Is c A s s A .
CONTENTS
........................................................
List of Rlustrations
Xl1
INTRODUCTION
I. Epicurus and Greek Religion I
The Papyrus
2.
(a) Condition 24
(b) Editions 26
(c) Order of Fragments
37
(d) Genuine and Spurious Fragments
54
(e) Apographs and Detached Fragments 58
(f) Stichometry 62
(g) Orthography and Handwriting
73
(h) Corrections and Scholia 76
3. The Work
(a) Literary Form 81
(b) Theme 84
(c) Style 86
(d) Title and Authorship 88
4. The Edition
(a) System of Presentation 99
(b) Conspectus Siglorum
102
<l>I/\0.1HMOY TTEPI EYCEBEIAC TMHMA TTPOTEPON 105
COMMENTARY 279
ConspectusS tudiorum 615
Concordances 639
Index verborum 647
Generali ndex
663
Index locorump otiorum 673
Plates 677
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
........................................................
FIGURES
1 . Papyrus roll in cross-section 39
2. Layout of papyrus roll, showing the fragments of Part 1 43
3. Reconstructed layout of extant texts 46
4. Formation of alpha, eta, epsilon, phi, and omega 7 5
PLATES
(at end of book)
1. Unopened papyrus scrolls carbonized during the eruption of Vesu-
vius in AD 79
2. P.H ere. 1077 Neapolitan fr. 2 (==c ol. 45)
3. P.H ere.2 29 fr. 9 (= =c ols. 56-7)
=
4. Detail of Pl. 3, with stichometric letter
5. Oxonian Apograph of P.H ere. 1077 fr. I (= cols. 52-4)
6. Neapolitan Apograph of P.H ere. 1098 fr. 2 (==c ol. 54)
7. Scorza (P. Here. 1098 fr. 29 ==c ol. 1)
8. Final columns of De pietate (P. Here. 1428 cols. 12-15 + subscriptio)
INTRODUCTION
........................................................
I. EPICURUS AND GREEK RELIGION
AT HE Is M in the ancient world was never a well-defined or ideolo
gically fixed position. 1 The gods themselves constituted the prevailing
centre of attention. Deviation in the proper attitude towards them,
particularly as recipients of cult, could result in a charge of impietyi or
in the suspicion of atheism. We know of numerous atheists in an
tiquity by name, most of them philosophers who taught in or around
Athens in the late fifth century BC. Attention came to be centred on
the explicit denial of the existence of the gods or grounds for believ
ing in them. Philodemus in De pietate gives a detailed classification of
the various kinds of atheist:
1
(i) Those who say that it is unknown whether there are any gods
' Henrichs 1976, .20. Further on atheism: Decharme 1904; Getfcken 1907; F.M authner,
'"'d
Dtr Athtismus stint Gtschichtt im Abmdlandt (Stuttgart, 1920-3); Drachmann 19.2.2;
W.K.C.Guthrie, OCD(ut or 2nd edn.) s.v.'Atheism';W.Nestle,'Atheismus',RACi (1950),
866-70; 0. Gigon, 'Atheismus', Ltxilton dtr alttn J¾ol(t Zurich and Stuttgart, 1965), 370-1;
Fahr 1969; Babut 1974; Henrichs 19756; Dover 1976 = 1988; Meijer 1980; Winiarczyk
1990, and the standard bibliography on the major 'atheists' (including Epicurus), especially
Diagoras,P rodicus, Critias, Anaxagoras,P rotagoras, Euhemerus, and Thcodorus.
Derenne 1930; Rudhardt 196<>M; . Ostwald, FromP opularS ovtrtignty to tht Sovtrtigntyo f
J
l...aw( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986), apps. A-C, pp. 525-50.
1 P.H m. 1428 cols. 14,32-1 S,8 (vol. ii; Henrichs 19740, 25). Sextus' division (Adv. math.9 .
50-1), by contrast, is simply into those who say o~ 8,oiK ,tva.,, and those who, like good
Pyrrhonist sccptics,suspendjudgement on the question. I do not know whence Philodemus'
cwsification derives; perhaps it is his own. It is in any case unlikely to be Academic (e.g.
Carneades or Antiochus) because it avoids the conftation of categories apparent in Sextus'
s
grouping. For a similar division of sceptics see Philod. P.H trc. 12 I col. 3.
