P.Herc. 1788 ([Philodemi] [Philosophorum Historia?]): Introduction, Edition and Commentary

P.Herc. 1788 was unrolled before 1835 and appears today as a fragmentary scorza, undecipherable and in a poor state of repair. However, five Neapolitan disegni of this papyrus have been handed down. They contain 9 fragments, the first 8 of which Wilhelm Crönert thought belong to an Epicurean polemical writing, more precisely the section of a Verteidigungsschrift very similar to Demetrius Laco’s work transmitted by P.Herc. 1012. Most recent studies have tried to attribute P.Herc. 1788 to an unknown work by Philodemus. This Herculanean text is all the more important for citing a large number of Presocratic philosophers, from Thales to Gorgias. In the Vorsokratiker, Hermann Diels, drawing on Crönert’s edition, used P.Herc. 1788 to complete his collection of testimonia concerning Leucippus, Democritus, and Pythagoras. The paper attempts to review the papyrological and philosophical questions raised by this interesting Herculanean text, in order to put forward new proposals for attributing it to a better specified Epicurean work.