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

BY INNUENDO 53

among the malefactors he exerted a most extraordinary influence upon

them. He appeared to them as a solace for their misfortunes, a human
dAefiKaKoc.^38 This term is unusual, and I suspect it was applied to the
ideal king in literature now lost to us. It means a warding off of evil,
and was used of apotropaic charms, and as an epithet of Zeus, Heracles,
and Hermes. It is known that the king was thought to have properly

such an influence upon his subjects. He not only must ward off external
evil from them, but by the goodness of his character he must purify the
souls of his subjects. Diotogenes said of the good king that he is able to
put those that look at him into order: "For to look at the good king
ought to affect the souls of those who see him no less than a flute or
harmony."^39
In just this sense Joseph was an "averter of evils" (aAe&KaKoc). Jailors,
Philo says, are about the most hardened people imaginable. But this
jailor was at once made gentle by Joseph's supreme virtue (KaAoKaya-
0 (a), so that he made Joseph acting jailor with full charge over the pris­
oners. This incident is only a bit changed from Genesis, where God is
said to have acted upon the jailor's heart to make him friendly to Jo­
seph. Philo changes the story to make Joseph's own character the me­
dium of a great transformation in the jailor's soul. With the same pur­
pose, that of making Joseph into a person who transformed the people
and environment about him, Philo gives with fine freedom the next de­
tails. Under Joseph's rule, says Philo, the prison was transformed. The
prisoners

no longer thought it right to call the place a prison but called it instead a re­

formatory.^40 For in place of the tortures and punishments which they had

been enduring night and day as they were beaten and kept in chains and suf­

fered every conceivable affliction, now they were admonished with the for­

mulae (Aoyoi) and teachings of philosophy, and with the conduct of the

teacher which was more effectual than any speech. For into their midst, like a

38. Jos., 80: JtctQTiYOQTma xcov cruiMpoQcov vnoka\i$aytiv &X.e|Cxowcov £VQTpi&vai x6v
    dvdocojiov.


39. See my "Hellenistic Kingship," 72. I should have noted there that music was regarded by
    the Pythagoreans as the medicine of the soul. Aristoxenus (Diels, Frag. Vorso., I, 362, line 25)
    is reported as saying: oi nuftayOQiHOi xaMoaei £XQ&VTO xov u,ev adi\xaxoq 81a Tfjs latQi-
    xfls 8e ipU3C?iS $i& T^IS M-ovouxfjs. Cf. Iamblichus, Vit. Pythag., 163. They took the idea
    probably originally from the use of music, especially of flute music, to cure the soul attacked by
    Corybantic excitements. See Rohde, Psyche (Engl. Transl.), 307, n. 19, and Ecphantus at my
    op. cit., 89. On this whole subject see now Pierre Boyance, Le culte des muses cliez les philoso-
    phes grecs, Paris, 1937.


40. SaxpQOViarnQiov. The word probably comes from Plato's Laws, 90 Sa.