26o Harry M. Hubbell, Ph.D., 



unskillful emendation, and many of the half sentences would 

 be plain enough if we only knew how the sentence began. Any- 

 one who will take the pains to study the articles in which Sudhaus 

 first published his reconstructions, and notice the steps by which 

 the difficulties were cleared away year after year will appreciate 

 the fact that it is dangerous to dogmatize about Philodemus' 

 obscurity, for a single brilliant discovery may affect the inter- 

 pretation of a whole book. For example, after Sudhaus had 

 published his first volume, he discovered that Papyri 1015 and 

 832 were the upper and lower parts respectively of the same 

 papyrus. The result was the complete reconstruction of the 

 sixth book in his second volume, and a brilliant contribution to 

 the history of rhetoric by von xA-rnim. But allowing for the 

 difficulties arising from the fragmentary condition of the papyrus, 

 many others still remain. Chief among these is the philosophic 

 jargon of the Epicurean school, and the habit, also due to 

 philosophy, of preferring abstract to concrete, and the impersonal 

 to the personal. There is a dreary wordiness and prolixity which 

 is so often characteristic of both philosopher and rhetorician in the 

 period of decline. Characteristic, too, of the period is the hair- 

 splitting, the page after page devoted to quibbles over the meaning 

 of "art," "rhetoric," "sophistic," and the dozen other trifles with 

 which the scholastic age of Greek literature amused itself. 

 Philodemus' interest in expression did not carry him into the 

 refinements of Atticism; his Greek is the typical literary Koine 

 of the day, and he distinctly deprecates any attempt at imitation 

 of the ancients and the cultivation of a special or artificial dic- 

 tion.^^ His theory of style is that there is no style except the 

 ordinary language of every day intercourse.^' A clear use of 

 this provides a better means of expression than is offered by 

 all the schools of rhetoric. Thus while renouncing all theories 

 of style he commits himself to a very far-reaching theory. Free- 

 dom from the frills of rhetoric he certainly attained; one could 

 wish that we might say as much of the clarity of his style. From 

 the smooth, flowing style of the epigrams we might expect a 

 similar ease and sharpness of definition in the Rhetorica. It 

 is however wholly lacking even in the portions which are nearest 



^ I, 151, 6: 'Eiretra el /jl^p firidk eh fjv <pvffiKuii KaXbs \6yoi, fcwj dv ^v dvayKoiov 



dyairdv rbv Kara Bifxa • vvv 8i virdpxovros, AdXiov rb wapi^vTas avrbv iir iKeivov 

 Karavrdv. 



" I, 153, col. X. 



