ABSTRACT
There is no doubt at all that, in the composition of his treatise On Arrogance, Philodemus borrows heavily from Aristo. He mentions him by his first name and, although he does not identify him further, it seems to me very likely that the philosopher in question is the Peripatetic Aristo from Ceos, not the Stoic Aristo from Chios. 1 The first explicit 280reference to Aristo is found in the context of a discussion intended to dispel the impression that the wise man is affected by arrogance. At the outset, Philodemus corrects Aristo’s assumption that good fortune is the principal source of the vice by pointing out that the practice of philosophy constitutes an additional reason on account of which some people may appear arrogant; Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Empedocles and Socrates are notorious cases at hand (10.10–25). All the same, however, Philodemus subsequently undertakes to summarise the substance of Aristo’s “book of letters” (ἐπι[στ]ολ̣[ικά], 10.12–13). 2 He describes the strategies that Aristo proposes for the therapy of the vice 3 and corroborates them with examples extracted from a recognisably Peripatetic stock.
