A Papyrus Letter about Epicurean Philosophy Books

The J. Paul Getty Museum is housed in a successful recreation of the Villa dei Papyri in Herculaneum. Of the various types of artwork and artifacts bequeathed to the modern world by antiquity and now among the Museum's holdings, however, there was until recently a gap whose filling would have made the correspondence between the two buildings even more nearly complete. There were no papyri in the Museum's collection even though the original Villa was named after its rich library of papyrus rolls, containing mostly Epicurean texts. The first step to improve the situation in Malibu was taken by Mrs. Lenore Barozzi who generously presented the J. Paul Getty Museum with two papyri. One of them, the subject of this note, is particularly appropriate in that its contents concern Epicurean philosophy books.