Philodemus on Critolaus' account of rhetoric

This chapter analyzes Critolaus’ fragments preserved in the Herculaneum papyri, all of which belong to the Rhetorica of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara. The reference text is Fritz Wehrli’s edition of Die Schule des Aristoteles , Heft X, published in 1969, which is here revised on the basis of a new examination of the sources. Like Wehrli, in this edition of the fragments of Critolaus, it was deliberately decided to cite only the passages in which the name of the philosopher appeared explicitly and to leave aside those passages that might allude to Critolaus but do not mention his name. From these texts, we can partially reconstruct the Peripatetic philosopher’s conception of rhetoric, especially the question of whether or not rhetoric is an art. The main idea seems clear enough: for Critolaus, rhetoric is not a τέχνη.