Philodemus c. 110 BC – c. 30 BC

Philodemus of Gadara was a 1st-century BC Greek Epicurean philosopher and poet, who taught in Italy under the patronage of the Roman politician Lucius Calpurnius Piso. His works survive in a remarkable papyrus library buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD at the so-called Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, which has been the source of the most extensive surviving body of Epicurean writing apart from the works of Epicurus himself and Lucretius. He wrote on rhetoric, poetics, music, ethics, theology, and the history of philosophy, defending Epicurean positions in dialogue with rival Hellenistic schools. His poetry, in elegant Greek epigrams, was preserved in the Greek Anthology. His influence on Roman intellectual life, including likely on Virgil and Horace, was substantial.