IN CODE 29- Som., ii, noff. 35. Ibid., 123-130.
wonders whether he ever did succeed in separating himself, and
whether he really would have been happy had he actually done so.
Joseph's second dream starts Philo on another important allegory.^34
The sun and moon and eleven stars suggest a bit of astrology not to our
purpose, but then lead to the conception of the man of strife and "empty
opinion," again our Roman, who thinks that the forces of nature were
designed to do him service. Xerxes' overturning the laws of nature to
bridge the Hellespont and put a canal through Athos, and the Ger
mans' taking up arms against the sea, are other examples. But his chief
example is given in plain terms. He tells the story of a certain man
whom he knew personally in very recent years, one of these "rulers"
(yjy^MoviKoi'), indeed "he had Egypt in his charge and under his author
ity" (TT]V npooraolav Kal im\iz\z[av efxev AIYVTTTOU), that is he was the
Roman prefect of Egypt. This person tried to break the Jews' allegiance
to their laws, and directed his attack especially against the Sabbath,
thinking that the other Jewish laws would go with the laws guarding
this one institution. At first he forced the Jews to break the Sabbath, but
could not deflect their allegiance to it. So he tried to persuade them by
pointing out that in time of pestilence, terrible fire, or similar natural
catastrophes the Jews could not thus keep their right hands closed, their
left hands under their shawls, or sit unmoved in their synagogues. In
such an emergency they would have to do the best they could to protect
and save themselves and their belongings. So far as the Jews were con
cerned the prefect insisted that he was himself a great natural calamity,
for he was "fate and necessity not only in name but its very power re
vealed standing near you." Such a man, Philo concludes, was an ex
traordinary phenomenon, a new type of evil brought from over seas or
from some strange universe, for he dared, wretch as he was, to compare
himself to God.^35
The prefect to whom Philo is referring may have been Flaccus, but I
doubt it. It seems inherently improbable that Philo could have written
the great bulk of his corpus after the reign of Gaius, since he was at that
time an old man, and to see Flaccus in this prefect would be to throw a
very large part of Philo's writing into those late years. It will appear
that Philo knew prefects and Roman officers of various kinds. Once an
official had been recalled in disfavor Philo could express himself quite
openly about him, since no one would have risked coming to the fallen