Epicurean arts: the aesthetic theory of Philodemus of Gadara

The aesthetic trilogy of Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher who lived and taught in the first century B.C., is made up of the treatises On music, On poems and On rhetoric. Recent studies have indicated that Philodemus' aesthetic philosophy differs from that of traditional Epicureanism. However, these studies have examined each of the three aesthetic arts as distinct entities. This study proposes a single, unified aesthetic theory as presented in the aesthetic trilogy; a theory which is founded on the concept of the arts as the linguistic expression of philosophy.