DIRECT 15
benefits promised by the hellenistic philosophy of kingship.^47 Presented
with this ideal of rulership in Augustus and Tiberius, says Philo, the
Jews never once broke their legal restrictions and deified them; nor did
these rulers expect or desire the Jews to do so, as witness their unbroken
patronage of the race and recognition that Jews must always give their
first loyalty to Jewish law.^48 Gaius not only showed himself to be of an
other temper in desiring divine honors at all, but he was vicious in his
hatred of the Jews for refusing him such recognition. In his hatred he
was stirred up by legations from the Alexandrians, but especially by one
Helicon, a witty favorite of Gaius, an Alexandrian slave who knew the
laws of the Jews very well,^49 and so could make the most painful home-
thrusts at them.^50
At Alexandria the Jews did not know about this favorite and his
malicious influence with Gaius, and so they decided to send an embassy
to Gaius to renew the protestations of loyalty already forwarded to the
emperor by Agrippa in the honorific decree, and, we understand, on
the basis of those protestations to ask Gaius' intervention in the po
groms. But there seems to be another hiatus here, for the actual sending
of the embassy and its exact mission are most inadequately described.
We suddenly find ourselves in Philo's personal company on the banks
of the Tiber, rather confused at the precise reason for our coming.
It is at this point that it is hardest to fit the narrative of the incidents
of In Flaccum with that of Legatio. In the former it appears that the
pogrom was largely instigated, or, perhaps, patronized, by Flaccus: his
madness was interrupted only by the centurion sent by Gaius to arrest
him and, presumably, to put a stop to the pogrom. Philo gives no rea
son for Gaius' sending the centurion, but implies that he was prompted
to do so by the Jewish decree sent by Agrippa. In Legatio, however,
that decree seems to have done no good: Flaccus is not mentioned at all,
nor any such incident as the mission of the centurion to give the Jews
relief. It would appear that the only hope the Jews had lay in the suc
cess of that embassy of Jews under Philo which sought the intervention
of Gaius himself.
When the two accounts are put together it would seem that Flaccus
himself played an insignificant part in the pogrom. It was instigated
largely by the Greeks in the city, and Flaccus offended only by not re-
- Legat., 138-151. See Br6hier, Les Idees, 18-23, and below, pp. 102 f.
48. Legat., 152-161. 49. Ibid., 170. 50. Ibid., 166-177.