BY INNUENDO 61
which is "blind,"^68 and so he stored up in the king's treasury all the silver
and gold which he collected as the price of the grain. He took not a single
drachma for himself, but was content simply with the gifts which the king
graciously gave him for his services.^69
Philo does not labor this matter. He dares only drop a broad hint.
In view of the great elaboration with which Philo has expanded the
story of Joseph from Genesis, it is highly significant that he omits alto
gether the circumstantial account^70 of how Joseph used the desperate
poverty of the populace during the last years of the famine to destroy
all freedom in the lower classes, and to make all Egyptians except the
priests the personal slaves of Pharaoh, tilling land to which not they but
Pharaoh held the title. Philo did not wish the Romans to know that for
such highhandedness one of the great heroes of Jewish history offered
an example and precedent.
With this omitted, Philo tells how, after the death of Jacob, Joseph
continued his magnanimity toward the brothers (the Jews) who had
settled in Egypt. At the end Joseph's character as the ideal monarch is
summarized.^71 The main emphasis is this time laid upon the three royal
virtues of physical beauty, wisdom, and power of speech. Joseph's
beauty of body was witnessed, Philo points out, by the love he excited
in Potiphar's wife. Physical beauty was one of the most familiar attri
butes of the ideal ruler.^72 Joseph's intelligence ($p6vy)oic or ouvsoic) was
witnessed throughout the various vicissitudes of his career in the con
stant power he manifested to introduce attunement into what was dis
sonant (euapMooTiav TOIC dvapiaooxoic;) and concord into discord (0141-
<|>cjv!av TOIC e£ auxCv doun^wvoic). These Pythagorean terms for the
ideal rulership are strikingly reminiscent of the Pythagorean king phi
losophy.^73 Since this royal intelligence was by the thought of the time a
divine thing, Philo has said enough to suggest at once to his readers
that externally and internally Joseph fully conformed to the standards
of the ideal ruler. But one more thing was necessary for the true king or
ruler. He must not only look the part, and have the proper gifts and
- L. Cohn has pointed out that this expression is paralleled in Abr., 25, where J. Cohn
(Philos Wer\e [Bibliography no. 492] ad loc.) notes that the notion came from Plato's Laws,
631c. Wealth which can see is virtue in the soul. Cf., Cont., 13; Agr., 54. - Jos., 258. 70. In Gen. xlvii, 13-26. 71. Jos., 268 f.
- On the king's looking the part see Diotogenes in my "Hellenistic Kingship," 72, and
above, p. 45. - Ibid., 67 ff.