ABSTRACT
Among ancient school groups, Epicureans show a remarkable reverence for their founder-figures and the written texts the founders left behind. For Philodemus, writing in the first century bce, tilting against these authorities on any issue was a grave offense:
For if Epicurus and Metrodorus, as well as Hermarchus say clearly that it {sophistic rhetoric} is an art (technẽ), as we will note in what follows, those writing against them are open to the charge of parricide. 1
