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  5. Philodemus On Rhetoric
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"Democracy, the worst form of government."

  • Eikadistes
  • June 27, 2024 at 10:19 AM
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    • June 27, 2024 at 10:19 AM
    • #1

    Halfway through Book VII of Philodemus' On Rhetoric, I came across the following, surprising quotation:

    "Rhetors prefer to live in a democracy, the worst form of government."

    I am well aware of Plato's authoritarian politics ... Philodemus seems to identify "The People" with "a vicious mob".

    Granted, this is taken out of context, as are many of Philodemus' fragments.

    Still, it makes me wonder more about Philodemus' political positions, particularly his sympathy toward Julius Caesar. He has a lot to say about civic engagement in On Rhetoric.

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    • June 27, 2024 at 10:35 AM
    • #2

    It would be good to collect references like this and compare them with for example Aristotle. Didn't he have some kind of listing of types of government according to how large was the ruling class, and he also had a classification of good and bad forms of each (?).

    But the main thing is that it would be helpful to collect the sources, including the reference to Philodemus being sympathetic to Caesar.

    I have these two links:

    v.23 (1919-1920) - Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences - Biodiversity Heritage Library

    Philodemi Rhetorica (trans. Hubbell) OPTIMIZED : Hubbell : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
    Philodemus - On Rhetoric - Translated by Hubbell BEST COPY
    archive.org


    Here's the "worst form of government" --- https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/32303#page/385/mode/1up

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    • June 27, 2024 at 10:50 AM
    • #3

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    • June 27, 2024 at 11:44 AM
    • #4

    I've also transcribed it as HTML:

    ΠΕΡΙ ΡΗΤΟΡΙΚΗΣ
    SELECTIONS FROM ON RHETORIC BY PHILODEMUS OF GADARA BOOK I “Some sciences depend entirely on natural ability and need but little practice; some accomplish…
    twentiers.com
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    • June 27, 2024 at 6:09 PM
    • #5

    Excellent work on your website, Twentier, thank you! The only books I have on Philodemus' Rhetoric are Hubbell's translation (that Cassius shared) and Clive Chandler's work on books 1 & 2, did you use/find any other sources?

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    • June 27, 2024 at 7:04 PM
    • #6
    Quote from Bryan

    Excellent work on your website, Twentier, thank you! The only books I have on Philodemus' Rhetoric are Hubbell's translation (that Cassius shared) and Clive Chandler's work on books 1 & 2, did you use/find any other sources?

    Thanks, Bryan! I appreciate your feedback.

    I've only used Hubbell's translation as my resource.

  • Don
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    • June 28, 2024 at 11:13 PM
    • #7

    I am woefully late to the game on this thread, but **finally** feeling well enough to wade (way) back into some of the the threads I missed.

    One thought that came to mind reading this thread is that the word "democracy" didn't mean exactly what we take it to mean today in Ancient Rome and Athens. ...although honestly there are some similarities, both postive and negative. Attempting to cleave to the "no politics" rule of this forum, I'll not go into details. But it seems Philodemus is especially concerned about the people - the hoi polloi, if you will - being able to be swayed by the rhetorical abilities of individuals skilled in the art of speech-making. < sarcasm > I'm glad that's not a concern anymore! < / sarcasm>

    When it comes to Philodemus, I always like to go back and see what we're physically dealing with -- not just translation, but what physical remains are the translators working with. Toward that end...

    Website of Holger Essler

    And one example from that page: Philodemus: De rhetorica 1 (PHerc. 232, 234, 247, 250, 398, 426, 463, 1115, 1427, 1601, 1606, 1612, 1619, 1813), encoded by Claudio Vergara, Corinna Lang, Marcel Moser and Vanessa Zetzmann, revision by Vincenzo Damiani and Holger Essler (WCE)...

    DCLP/Trismegistos 62474 = LDAB 3650

    What I also find fascinating are some of the multi-spectral images of the papyri! fragment right N 1619 fr. 4 (=P.Herc. 1619) (Not a drawing but an actual photographic image. That's cool!)

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    • June 29, 2024 at 9:41 AM
    • #8

    Just for future planning purposes, after a while here in "General Discussion" we'll move this thread to the Philodemus section. I'll probably also link it or create a version of it for the "Justice" section as well, probably to point up the "Typology Chart" that Bryan linked above, so we can have a "forms of government" discussion. Such discussion is fully appropriate given its discussion in the texts, and it won't violate the "no politics" rule so long as we stay clear of discussion modern historical particulars that still evoke lots of emotion.

    Given commonalities with parts of Aristotle at some future point it's probably worth citing to the section of Aristotle where the typology is explained, and then we can compare the full discussion there to the surviving Epicurean material and look for parallels / contrasts.

    There are a lot of interesting statements in this Rhetoric that should be explored but it all seems kind of disjointed due to the fragmentation so we'll have to pull it out carefully.


    Note - We'll want to correlate that with the Boeri book: Interview With Dr. Marcelo Boeri: Theory and Practice In Epicurean Political Philosophy

  • Cassius April 3, 2025 at 3:16 PM

    Moved the thread from forum General Discussion to forum Philodemus On Rhetoric.

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