The Greek philosophical schools according to Europe's earliest history of philosophy. Towards a new pioneering critical edition of Philodemus' "Arrangement of the Philosophers"

Our knowledge about Greek philosophical schools is mostly based on Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives and Philodemus of Gadara’s Arrangement of the Philosophers, a treatise in several books which represents the earliest ‘history of philosophy’ to have reached us directly from antiquity. In particular, from this work preserved by the Herculaneum papyri we may derive a systematic account of the history of Greek philosophical schools which is in many respects unique. Unfortunately, the papyri which transmit it are in a poor state and the currently available editions of them are obsolete. By relying on advanced technologies, the project aims to provide a new critical edition of this treatise, with introduction and commentary. In particular, noninvasive techniques will be applied to opisthograph and multi-layered papyri belonging to Philodemus’ treatise, as well as to other papyri, in order to read the text hidden on the verso, detect, classify and replace overlapping layers, and read the text concealed in them. We shall combine these methods with sound philological approaches in order to produce an improved critical text of Philodemus’ treatise. Finally, we shall produce an open-access electronic edition of it through an open-source scholarly Web platform, engaging scholars in an on-going collaborative revision of it.