KINGSHIP 93God which would make him one elect (sKAoyy)) from the human race.^33
Moses became king, but he did so not in the usual way of getting con
trol of the army and navy, the infantry and cavalry; instead, "he was
elected by God with the voluntary concurrence of his subjects, for God
worked in the subjects to bring them to make this voluntary choice."^34
The same contrast between the selection of Moses and the spirit of Ro
man imperial elections is brought out again, with the addition that
Moses was chosen "because of his virtue and nobility and his never fail
ing good will to all, and because God who loves virtue and nobility gave
it to him as a fitting reward."^35
From Philo's figurative use of the king to describe the rule of the
mind over the lower elements in man's constitution much can also be
learned of his political ideas. In one passage he depicts the lawlessness
that can arise in a herd or flock when the herdsman loses control.^36 The
ideal state of the herd, or of a kingdom on that analogy, appears to
involve arrangement, order, steadiness, organization (ra^ic, euKoopia,
euoraOeia, SiaKpioic); but this is all destroyed when the herdsman is
weak. The ideal rulership, "rulership with reason, by which law and
justice are honored," is something that brings social salvation (OWT/J-
piov). Again Melchizedek, as type of the mind, is King of Peace,^37 the
priest-king. The king is the one who promulgates laws (VOMCJV eioy)-
Yy)TK|c). In contrast with the tyrant, who introduces lawlessness and
rules only by grievous force, the king
resorts first to persuasion rather than commands, and then afterwards enjoins
such things as will enable the ship, the living being, to make life's voyage
successfully, piloted by the good pilot, right reason (opGoc Aoyoc).^38
Philo is here following political imagery closely, even though the ship
of state is the individual man (TO £yov). In both of these passages the
ideal rulership is distinguished for its being in harmony with law. As
- Spec, iv, 157. 34. Praetn., 54. 35. Mos., i, 148; cf. Som., ii, 243.
- Som., ii, 152-154. Comparison of the rulership of the mind to the king was an ancient
commonplace. See the Appendix to my By Light, Light, and, for instance, Seneca, Epist., 114,
24: Animus noster modo rex est, modo tyrannus. Rex, cum honesta intuetur,... ubi vero in-
potens, cupidus, delicatus est, ... fit tyrannus. - Cf. Dio, OraU, I, 75.
- LA, iii, 79 f. Heinemann, in Philos Wer\e (Bibliography no. 492), III, 111, n. 1, has cor-
recdy paralleled this passage with Xenophon's Cyropaed., I, iii, 18; Polybius, IV, 3; Dio Chrys.,
Or at., I-IV: but I cannot see why he deduces from these parallels that Philo had his notion from
Stoicism. The Stoics taught a very similar doctrine, but the idea is no more recognizably Stoic
in Philo than it is in Xenophon.