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

PHILO'S POLITICS

CHAPTER I

POLITICS DIRECT

A SINGLE incident is known to us from the life of Philo. It comes

f\ from a time when the terrors of a Jewish pogrom raged in

/ \ Alexandria. Conscious of the mad Caligula's desire for divine

JL JL honors, the Alexandrian mob had insisted that Jews put up

cult statues of him in their synagogues. The Jewish refusal gave the

mob an opportunity to plunder and murder at its pleasure; rapine was

sanctified by ostensible horror at the Jewish lese majeste. Jews of the

city, herded by the thousands from their homes, in hourly danger of

death, had only the hope that the insane emperor himself would ex­

empt them from his demand for worship. In their extremity they se­

lected a commission, certainly from their most gifted political leaders,

to take the perilous journey to Rome in late autumn, there to try to win

the respite which only the emperor could give them. Philo was chosen

as head of this group, and upon him and his associates fell the almost

hopeless task. For in Rome the embassy had to trail the mad emperor

month after month, stomaching his jibes, holding their peace and keep­

ing their dignity in the face of unceasing abuse and insult. Philo it was

who had to present the case and give the proper answers to the em­

peror's persiflage. He also had to hold his group steady throughout the

months when upon any or all of them might fall a flippant sentence of

death, and their families and race perish with them. Eventually he ac­

complished the impossible. He won from Gaius a niggardly toleration

for the Jews. The most remarkable part of the story is the sequel: the

man who led this commission is now universally represented as one so

wrapt up in metaphysics that he had no practical sense or interest.

This extraordinary verdict upon Philo, in spite of the character he

showed in the one incident we have from his life, has been built up

from the impression of his writings. For his treatises have relatively lit­
tle to do with social matters, and the passages where he does remark
upon law and politics as aspects of society are couched always in ideal­
istic language. So, apparently without extended examination of this
particular point, his closest students, M. fimile Brehier^1 and Dr. I.

i. Les Idees philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie (hereafter abbreviated as Les
Idees), Paris, 1925, 14-34.