The RJietorica of Philodemus. 267 



The following error is found in almost all the arguments : they Col. V. 

 assume from the lack of technical treatises at a given time or 

 place that no art then existed. But it is hardly to be expected 

 that we can find technical works in a period in which the art of 

 writing had not been invented. 



Most, if not all, the arguments do not prove what they claim 

 to prove even if the premises be granted. For if the art of 

 music does not produce the ability to read and write, it may still 

 be the art of other things. Similarly if they assume that sophistic 

 rhetoric does not produce political science or practical rhetorical 

 ability, they are right, but that does not preclude the possibility 

 that sophistic is an art.** 



"Just as dialectic is an art, but accomplishes nothing unless Col. VI. 

 combined with ethics or physics, so rhetoric is an art. but accom- 

 plishes nothing unless combined with politics." There are many 

 other errors in the arguments, but we do not intend to take them 

 up in detail. Col. VII. 



Those Epicureans are to be censured who assume that sophistic 

 is not an art, and thus run counter to the teachings of Epicurus, 

 Metrodorus and Hermarchus. as we shall show later. Such 

 Epicureans are almost guilty of parricide.' 



BOOK II. 



In the second book Philodemus discusses the question : Is rhetoric an 

 art? The fragments fall into two classes. The first consists of one 

 papyrus in ten short fragments and a continuous passage of very consider- 

 able proportions, contained in Volume One, pages 13-146, most of which 

 has been incorporated by Sudhaus in the Supplementum pages 11-62. The 

 second group consists of many fragments mostly unconnected, collected in 

 Volume Two pages 65-130. The content of the first group may be 

 expressed schematically as follows : 



"Here we get the first statement of Philodemus' favorite distinction 

 between ao(pi<TTiKr) priropiKri on the one hand, and ttoXitikt] and €fj.irpaKros pyjTopiK-f] 

 on the other. 



' This paragraph gives an interesting glimpse of the passion for ortho- 

 doxy which was characteristic of the Epicurean school. It also reveals 

 the intensity of the feud between Zeno-Philodemus and the other branch 

 of the sect. 



