  The treatment of character-types (as in some of the books of On Vices) is in part a continuation of Peripatetic treatises (such descriptions are included, for example, in Aristotle’s Ethics and Rhetoric, the Aristotelian books on Virtues and Vices and Physiognomics), and Theophrastus’ chapter on the obsequious man (Characters 5) is quoted in extenso in On Flattery, while a letter On the Relief of Arrogance by Aristo (very probably the third century Peripatetic scholarch from Ceos, despite renewed arguments that he was rather Aristo of Chius, the Stoic) is summarized in the final fourteen columns of On Arrogance. It appears that Philodemus may have been preceded in his use of character sketches by another Epicurean, perhaps a contemporary of Philodemus, Nicasicrates of Rhodes, with whom he takes issue in various places.