12 PHILO'S POLITICS
treatise, the part which is lost, had nothing to do with Flaccus, and the
traditional title is too harsh. "On the Virtues" is exactly what a poli
tician like Philo would have called this scathing contrast between Jew
ish virtues and the vices of those Romans who, by failing to respect the
Jews, had brought themselves to destruction. For if I have rightly inter
preted the spirit and purpose of In Flaccum, or De Virtutibus, we must
see at once that it was the product of a politician who combined bold
ness with cleverness to an amazing degree. Its author might indeed
have been selected by the Jews of Alexandria to represent them before
Gaius!^30
Philo's Legatio ad Gaium shows the same vigorous political mind as
In Flaccum. Massebieau and Cohn seem to have established that, as we
have it, Legatio is an abridgment of the work on the subject men
tioned by Eusebius as being in five books.^31 So again we are presented
with a long fragment, and the purpose and audience of the original
must be judged entirely from the treatise itself.
The first chapter of Legatio (§§1-7) is itself a fragment. In it Philobegins a general and philosophic discussion of politics whose loss is
much to be deplored. He opens with a rhetorical reproof: men look
with their senses to fortune, TUX/), which is admittedly very fluctuating
and unstable, instead of trying to get with their reasons to the only sta
bility, the things of nature. The great fact of nature, Philo then abruptly
suggests, is God's providential care of mankind, and especially of the
"race of suppliants" (TO IKSTIKOV Y^VOC). This race is, of course, the Jews,
and Philo begins, strangely, to plunge the reader into the Mystery.^32
The Jews are Israel, which means, he says, "seeing God." The mystic
vision given to Jews, vision of that Deity which is beyond all categories,
even the categories of virtue, is hidden from other men, since they have
no higher gift than reason, and reason can rise not even to the Powers of
God, the Creative and Ruling Powers.
How far Philo went on into the Mystery we do not know, since the
continuity suddenly breaks off; but enough has been given for us to
suspect his immediate objective. Philo was clearly going on to present
- Siegfried Ritter, " 'AQETTJ und der Titel von Philos 'Legatio,'" 'EJUTUM-PIOV Heinrich
Swoboda dargebracht, Reichenberg, 1927, 228-237, suggests that the word here is an abbrevia
tion for <XQ8TT| fteov, and so an indication that the virtue being celebrated is that of God in vin
dicating the Jews. Any solution is conjectural. - See notes 17 and 18 above.
- The Jewish "Mystery" is used as a terminus technicus in accordance with the meaning
given the word in my By Light, Light.