The Politics of Philo Judaeus: Practice and Theory, with a General Bibliography of Philo

IN CODE 39

the men whom the mother has had as lovers, since no one knows the man
who is their actual father, so the people who live in cities do not know the
truly existing God, and deify an innumerable host of things falsely so called.
Then, since different gods were in honor among different people, the dis­
agreement which prevailed about the Supreme Being begat as well the di­
vergences in all other matters. Moses, who first perceived this, wished to do
his legislating outside of cities.^69

Here are people who have recently, in great civil wars, overturned
land and sea in their great and sinful expeditions against each other;
people who now vaunt themselves in crowns and purple garments, and

humiliate their subjects by treating them like beasts. It seems incredible
that anyone in Alexandria in Philo's day would not have recognized
the Romans. Yet how would Philo have dared circulate such a passage
among the Romans themselves? The only possible answer is that none
of these passages is definite enough to arouse suspicion by itself, and
that Philo thought he might safely risk a single one in a treatise for
gentiles. Under cover of a criticism of their religious vagaries he is even
bold enough to call the Romans a harlot's litter of bastards!

We may conclude this section, in which Philo's covert remarks about

Romans for Jews have been considered, with a passage buried in still

another treatise for the inner circle. He is commenting upon the verse

which we read: "It destroyed every living substance which was on the

face of the earth."^70 The Septuagint reading which Philo is following

has for "living substance" dvdo-re|ja, a strange translation of the He­

brew, but one behind which Philo did not look. For avaarz\ia means

any protuberance or erection. How Philo could take it as a political

reference is made clear from a phrase in Diodorus Siculus, xix, 92,

avaoT/jpa (3aoiAiKov, where it means royal majesty or pomp. The text

then meant to Philo that God would destroy all royal pomp, and he ac­

cordingly explains it:

It is not without reason that [Moses] has used the word dvdoTqja- For this

is the name of ambition and pride, as a result of which men come to despise

not only divine but even human laws. But ambition and arrogance are apt to

69. Deed., 4-9. There is a fragment from the lost fourth book of Philo's LA, which reads: "If
    you take away the material resources from politicians you will find only empty xvepoe;, without
    any intelligence. For so long as there is no lack of external goods, politicians seem attended by
    insight and sagacity; but when they lose their abundance of possessions they seem simultane­
    ously to lose their power to think." Harris, Fragments, p. 7.


70. Gen. vii, 23.