The Presocratics at Herculaneum

This volume analyses in depth the reception of early Greek philosophy in the Epicurean tradition and provides for the first time in scholarship a comprehensive edition, with translation and commentary, of all the Herculanean testimonia to the Presocratics. Among the most significant scientific outcomes, it provides elements for the attribution of an earlier date to the attested tradition of Xenophanes scepticism; a complete reconstruction of the Epicurean reception of Democritus; a new reconstruction of the testimonia to Nausiphanes concept of physiologia, Anaxagoras physics and theology, and Empedocles epistemology; new texts for better comparing the doxographical sections of Philodemus On Piety with those of Ciceros On the Nature of the Gods, which update Hermann Diels treatment of this subject in his Doxographi Graeci.