20 PHILO'S POLITICS
dication that not only will God strike a man who lacks proper respect
for Jewish ways and people: the Jews themselves, he brings out clearly,
scattered as they are in large numbers throughout the world, constitute
a great menace to the whole Empire in case they should be provoked to
rise in a body. Unquestionably this expectation gave the Jews courage
to attack the Romans a few years later, only to prove a delusion. The
Jews at Alexandria were easily put down during the great war, and
were so hopelessly outnumbered elsewhere that Palestine found itself
isolated against the Roman armies. So Jews were to write with this sup
pressed but confident defiance for only twenty-five years more; there
after such a note, except for the brief days of Bar Cochba, was never to
sound in their writings or speeches again, or, if it did, was to rumble
only in the futile dreams of Messianic retribution. Yet it is interesting
that Philo did not put his threats of Jewish solidarity into personal state
ments of his own. They are cleverly worked into quotations purporting
to come from Petronius and from Claudius' friend, Herod Agrippa. But
their effect is no less telling in the general impression Philo makes by
the treatise.
It seems to me very clear that the author of these two political docu
ments was himself a fearless and experienced politician, whose ideas for
the practice and theory of statecraft are of great importance. We shall
expect little that is outspoken about the Romans, for Philo's "caution"
had to be the better part of his valor. Even here, where he is trying to
make direct suggestions to his rulers he must do so by indirection, point
out faults only in those whose faults had brought them to universal dis
credit, and flay, if he must flay at all, only dead horses. He must always,
as he does, distinguish between the sanctity of political office and the
(dead) villains who have abused their office. It is the fact that Philo
makes exactly these distinctions which marks him as a vivid realist in
politics.
Before reviewing the political theory which Philo has put into these
treatises it will be well to read some of his remarks about the actual
situation from his other writings.