Rediscovering a lost roll of Philodemus’ On Poems

Philodemus’ large treatise On Poems consists of five books, of which the conclusion of the fifth and last was the first to be properly published (Jensen 1923). As Jensen demonstrated, in the latter part of Book V Philodemus summarized the views of a whole series of critics that were known to him from handbooks by earlier writers—the unknown Philomelos, the Pergamene critic Crates of Mallos, and his own teacher, the Epicurean Zeno of Sidon. At Herculaneum, the middles of the scrolls, which contained the ends of the texts, are normally better preserved than the outsides, which contained the beginnings of the texts and were easily damaged by the tremendous pressures and heat of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which, paradoxically, preserved them. This is the case in On Poems V.

Book V survives not in one Herculanean scroll only, like the previous four books, but in two different copies that were both preserved in the library of the Villa of the Papyri. The first is P. Herc. 1425, a very long scroll in a rather crabbed hand (Hand 19 Cavallo) with 39 columns and 34–6 lines per column. The second is P. Herc. 1538, a fair copy in a large rounded hand (Group M Cavallo), with c.14 columns and c.30 lines per column. P. Herc. 1538 bears the end-title ‘Philodemus On poems V, second of two’ (see the edition by Mangoni 1993). This means that, in this copy, the whole book occupied two rolls, of which this is the second. Some segments of the earlier parts of Book V do survive in series of detached fragments, amounting to parts of a further 37 columns, that were peeled off the exterior of P. Herc. 1425; these contain first, a summary and rebuttal of the portion of Aristotle’s lost dialogue On Poets, where Aristotle presented his theory of tragic catharsis is discussed, and then a summary of the Stoic critic and of
the views of Crates of Mallos who are rebutted near the end of the Book. These segments of the work will be republished in a better edition in by the Philodemus Translation Project. What has been missing until now has been any trace of the first part of the Book V in the second copy of that work, i.e. the copy represented by P. Herc. 1538. A passing observation by Prof. Roger MacFarlane has now resulted in its fortunate rediscovery in an unexpected location. The discovery will be explained, with the results of a preliminary analysis and consideration of the problems of reconstruction that lie ahead.