The fourth book of Philodemus’ treatise on Rhetoric gives Philodemus’ refutation of the claims made by teachers of rhetoric for the singular importance and usefulness of their art, as well as the teachings of each of its so-called ‘parts’. The last portion of the book, as often with Herculaneum papyri, is the best preserved. There Philodemus attacks each of the parts of the art of rhetoric. The beginning of the book recounted the rhetoricians’ claims, such as that rhetoric is the only teacher of conversation, the mother of all the arts, counselor of war and peace, praiser of the good and blamer of the bad, preparation for political life (PHerc. 1007 cols. 42a.4-44a.11).

The first part of the fourth book survives only in disjointed fragments, almost all preserved only in the drawings made of them in the first half of the 19th century. Among these fragments are three that talk about early Greek philosophers, two of which will be the subject of our seminar: PHerc. 224 fragment 15 and PHerc. 245 fragment 7. We shall examine the text of each fragment, the connection between them, and their context to try to deduce the use of the motif of the persecuted philosopher here.