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

BY INNUENDO 45

judgments (Swat) of Zeus, were elaborated in the light of oriental, espe­

cially Persian, conceptions. By this, the king was an incarnation of the

divine spirit of law, a unique individual with a human body but a

superhuman personality. His pronouncements became the code of the

realm because he was the vehicle through whom the divine law could

become explicit. So while he gave law to men, the king's quality of be­

ing lawful was attained by virtue of his being personally a representa­

tion of the higher law. In this sense the term "animate law" (vopoc

£M^VXOC) was applied to him. It seems that it was in this sense too that

he was described as God revealed (im<$>avv)c). The last modern illustra­

tion of this type of ruler is the Roman Pontiff, who is a man, yet by vir­

tue of his office is believed to be filled with the Spirit in so unique a way

that his official pronouncements are the immediate formulation of di­

vine truth, the only infallible vehicle of that truth to men. The theory

seems first to have been elaborated for Greeks by Pythagoreans in South

Italy, was admitted as the theoretical ideal by both Plato and Aristotle,

and was apparently accepted throughout the hellenistic world in appli­

cation to the hellenistic kings.^8 The notion was elaborated to include

many other Persian and oriental elements, particularly the comparison

of the king to the eagle, as being able to gaze at the sun (the divine

source of the spirit-rays which were the spirit-law) ;^9 the notion that the

king is to be a person of majestic appearance, looking the part of one

filled with divinity, and thus resplendent, and aloof from human frailty;
in consequence the belief that he was a dynamic influence in society
for its moral and spiritual elevation, so that to look upon him would

bring spiritual catharsis to the individual. He was the shepherd of his
people, as in Homer and all the orient and Egypt. In view of this belief,
worship of the king was the natural and desirable corollary for a people
ever eager to deify any hero who stood out from his fellows by peculiar

gifts or powers. By recognizing Demetrius as a god, for example, the
Athenians could keep the illusion of their continued independence, for
the Athenian state had always been subservient to the gods.

Brehier recognized the kinship between many of Philo's remarks and
the chief extant sources for this theory of kingship, a series of Pythago-

8. Heinemann has suggested that Panaetius or Poseidonius invented the doctrine of the vojxos
   ^(iipuxog, and that both the Neo-Pythagorean fragments and Philo got the notion thence. See
   his Poseidonius, II, 274 ff. He is unable to bring the slightest evidence for such a statement.


9. It is notable that f3aadeia is gazing at the sun in Dio Chrys., I, 71.