DIRECT 7heart, but they must be handled softly and propitiated by any man who
does not want to ruin himself and his race together. The sarcasm at the
end is obvious. Philo has compared harsh rulers to savage and deadly
animals throughout. When he mentions how in the market place the
Jews have to make place for their rulers and the pack animals alike, it is
part of the very caution he is counselling that he should distinguish be
tween the two, once the rulers in Alexandria have been distinctly re
ferred to, and say that one gives way out of honor to the rulers, but out
of fear to the beasts. If the passage were called into question, he could
insist that the first part was perfectly general and had no reference to
the Romans, while he had properly indicated that one gives way to Ro
mans out of honor. But his Jewish readers would quite well have under
stood that the reason Philo gave way to each was the same, because he
knew that if he did not he would be crushed. And the Jews would also
have understood by the last sentence that if Philo had it in his power to
destroy the Roman power he would gladly have done so. The propitiat
ing attitude he was advising was the only one a sensible Jew or other
non-Roman subject in the Empire could take under existing circum
stances. But he loved the Romans no more than the skipper of a tiny
boat loves a hurricane.
Obviously a man who could write such a passage may have had more
that was important to say of politics. Philo's political writings are of two
types, those which are avowedly discussions of Jewish relations with the
Romans, and those of the sort just quoted, fleeting passages in writings
not generally political in subject matter, where references are made to
society and its problems. The second type, to be considered in the next
chapter, clearly, by the fact that the passages are concealed, follows
Philo's principle of caution. But the openly political treatises, which at
first sight appear much more simple and direct, present curious prob
lems by the very fact that they seem to throw this caution to the winds.
These treatises deal with the crisis of the Jews in Alexandria under
Flaccus the prefect and Gaius Caligula the emperor.
In Vlaccum, the first of these open political writings, tells us that
Flaccus had been appointed prefect of Egypt by Tiberius, and that, in
Philo's opinion, he had been an ideal ruler until the death of Tiberius
and the succession of Gaius had made him uncertain of his own posi
tion at Rome. For Flaccus' friends were precisely those whom Gaius
saw fit to execute as being dangerous or uncongenial, and Flaccus had