The Politics of Philo Judaeus: Practice and Theory, with a General Bibliography of Philo

KINGSHIP 105

proved. Philo could himself hardly have had opportunity to know what
passed between Gaius and Macro in these private conversations. Philo
could not have offered the speech as a literal report from Macro, What

Philo is doing is fairly obvious. In the relative security of Claudius'
rule, he is himself taking the opportunity to invent this speech for
Macro so that he could state at length his own philosophy of kingship.
He has been too clever to state it as his own, for that would have been
an impertinence. But under the mask of Macro, whose lack of tact cost

him his life, Philo can give a picture of Gaius as having gone wrong in
directly flouting the true philosophy of kingship, and no Roman could
accuse Philo of himself reading the emperor a lesson. The point is
hardly worth laboring at this stage, but a careful reader of what we
have collected from Philo's own casual statements and from his Neo-

Pythagorean prototypes must see that the passage is an extended and
careful statement of the philosophy of kingship which Philo always
held.^84 It seems to me that Philo is quite in earnest: he saw no other sal­
vation for society except that it have an emperor who was literally the
fulfilment of hellenistic dreams of the ideal king. The Jews were at one

on at least this point with their Greek neighbors.

Philo presents the other side of the theory just as clearly. Gaius' fail­

ure to fulfil this ideal is shown to be the cause of his degeneration.^85
First Gaius resents Macro's trying to teach the science of ruling. Who
ever taught it to Macro? Gaius regards himself as being now quite be­
yond any man's instruction. He is steeped in the long tradition of gov­
ernment of his family, the members of which on both sides had won

dictatorial powers.^86 Further, Gaius thinks that in him is the inherited
royal character, the explanation of which is that

84. That Philo has used Macro simply as the mouthpiece of his own ideal for the emperor is
    strengthened by comparison with other accounts. Tacitus describes Macro as an unmitigated
    villain: AnnaL, vi, 45, 48. That Gaius killed him for being a nuisance and scold is Philo's own
    invention, apparendy, for there were other ways of getting rid of his presence if he were con­
    sidered on other points a valuable man. Dio Cass., LIX, x, 6, says that he had been appointed
    prefect of Egypt by the emperor just before Gaius murdered him: it would look as though there
    might have been some real cause for killing him.


85. Philo is remarkably similar to Suetonius and Dio Cassius, especially the former, in his
    portrait of Caligula, even as concerns the emperor's type of thinking, and hence his account
    would seem to be a true one. Gaius early popularity, especially in the East, is described by both
    Philo and Suetonius with the same enthusiasm and much similar detail. The same is true of the
    accounts of the universal concern over Gaius illness.


86. In Gaius' early years he seems to have been fond of calling himself "autocrat"; Dio Cass.,
    LIX, xvi, 2. But as he advanced in madness this term sounded too human, and so was aban­
    doned: Jtdvxa juaMov x\ avfrQOOJtog avTOXQaxcoQ re 8 OXEIV elvai fifteta; ibid., xxvi, 8.