92 PHILO'S POLITICS
the sage is not just a prince, but is "prince of princes, and he is divine
and king of kings, best and magnanimous, who has been ordained not
by men but by God."^31 He alone can be a king who is clever (or hand
some, aoTdoc) and beloved by God: for kingship is "the best of arts,"
and is to be ascribed to a man on the same basis as we should call a man
a pilot, physician, or musician, that is on the basis of his being a master
of his art. For, as Philo paraphrases Plato, to put the tools of those trades
into untrained hands is not to make a man worthy of one of those titles.
A man is not a pilot, for example, merely because he happens to be try
ing to steer a ship; rather is he a pilot who knows how to do so, whether
he have a ship or not. So "he only can be called a king who has skill to
rule" (rex dicendus solus peritus). When God sees a mind properly
purified He gives it the gift of Wisdom, and having so given reckons
the man who has it in the company of the greatest princes and kings.
That is, kingship is essentially a gift of God. And one of the primary
qualities of this gift is constancy, so that the law the king ordains is not
changing like human law but enduring. Most of this, as applied to the
sage in private station, has only figurative significance. Yet the king
philosophy itself comes out in its essential features as a conception very
definitely formulated in Philo's mind.
The reason why the king and the sage are ultimately identical Philo
explains very well. Wisdom is the "art of arts." The great artist is recog
nizable, he says, in whatever medium. It made no difference whether
Pheidias worked in brass, ivory, or gold, the art of Pheidias was always
recognizable because it was the same art in each medium. So the art of
the sage, which is to make things like Nature, can be applied in various
media, in piety, natural science, meteorology, ethics, politics, economics,
banqueting, kingship, or legislation.^32 The point is that if a real sage is
at work the result in any case will be an exhibition of the "art of arts,"
the comprehension of Nature and the power of making things resemble
Nature.
God's selection of a man for the kingly office, like all of God's elec
tions, is not always clearly recognizable. Consequently many usurpers
get into office. Yet Philo never lost faith that a man properly selected by
the voting constituency would be confirmed by an added vote from
- QG, iv, 76: "princeps principum, isque divinus, et rex regum, optimus et generosus, qui
non ab hominibus, sed a deo ordinatus sit." There is Greek for part of the passage in Harris,
Fragments, 36. - Ebr., 88-92.