library has produced. These essays follow a standard type and do not
necessarily reveal the actual man. Even these, however, disclose a man
not wholly confined to the _ipsa verba_ of Epicurus, for they show more
interest in rhetorical precepts than was displayed by the founder of the
school; they are more sympathetic toward the average man's religion, and
not a little concerned about the affairs of state. All this indicates a
healthy reaction that more than one philosopher underwent in coming in
contact with Roman men of the world, but it also doubtless reflects the
tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for
the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism
and acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in its
long contact with the magnificent Seleucid court.

Philodemus was himself a native of Gadara, that unfortunate Macedonian
colony just east of the Sea of Galilee, which was subjected to Jewish
rule in the early youth of our philosopher. He studied with Zeno of
Sidon, to whom Cicero also listened in 78, a masterful teacher whose
followers and pupils, Demetrius, Phaedrus, Patro, probably also Siro,
and of course Philodemus, captured a large part of the most influential
Romans for the sect.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Italiam totam occupaverunt_. Cic. _Tusc_. IV, 7.]

How Philodemus taught his rich Roman patrons and pupils to value not only
his creed but the whole line of masters from Epicurus we may learn from
the Herculanean villa where his own library was found, for it contained
a veritable museum of Epicurean worthies down to Zeno, perhaps not
excluding the teacher himself, if we could but identify his portrait.[3]

[Footnote 3: See _Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 113.]