Philodemus of Gadara was an Epicurean philosopher and epigrammatic poet of the first century BCE. Born in Gadara in Palestine, he was taught philosophy in Athens by the head of the Epicurean school Zeno of Sidon (c.150–70s BCE) and by Demetrius Lacon, Zeno's younger contemporary. In the 80s or 70s he moved to Italy and earned the patronage of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. He seems to have spent part of his life at Herculaneum in Campania, probably in Piso's villa, and to have formed around him an Epicurean community of pupils and friends. His writings constitute the largest surviving portion of the library of the villa, which was buried beneath the mud and ashes when Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE and was partly excavated in the mid-eighteenth century. Thirty-seven distinct works are known or conjectured to...