CHAPTER IV
STATESMAN AND PHILOSOPHER
U
P to this point Philo's writings seem to have shown him talk
ing about the state under three different auspices. Before the
Roman rulers he has defended the Jews openly from pagan
attacks, and indicated to those rulers his notion of what offi
cial policy should be in regard to the Jews. He has also been caught
whispering his scorn and hatred of the Romans to his intimate friends
in the Mystery, and again giving political advice to, or over the heads
of, gentile proselytes. If the inferences from his writings have been cor
rect Philo was an extremely able judge of political matters, and in all
probability he became so as a result of much practical experience. In
spite of the fact that the great bulk of Philo's writings are so abstractly
mystical as to seem to come from a man of quite a different type, I am
convinced that Philo spent a considerable part of his life in active and
successful political administration of some kind.
Philo is known to have come from a family which made political ac
tivity almost inevitable as society was then organized. For it can never
be forgotten that Philo's brother, Alexander,^1 was one of the wealthiest
Jews of the world, so much so that when Herod Agrippa was at the
lowest point in his apparently hopeless vagabondage Alexander lent to
him, because he admired the spirit of Agrippa's wife Cypros, the king's
ransom of two hundred thousand drachmae.^2 Large a sum as this was,
it must have been only a small portion of Alexander's fortune, since
Alexander was under no compulsion to advance the money, could have
had no real hope of its ever being returned, and so could not have
risked a large part of his capital. It is no wonder that in another pas
sage^3 Josephus says that Alexander was "foremost among his contem
poraries at Alexandria both for his family and his wealth." In the Ro
man world great wealth involved great public obligation: hence it is
- The references to Alexander (some mss. read Alexander Lysimachus) are collected by
Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, I, 1441 (no. 26).
- Josephus, Antiq., XVIII, 159 f. (vi, 3). Alexander did not even trust him not to spend it
all before he had left Alexandria, for he would give Agrippa only five talents outright, along
with an order for the rest when he reached Dicaearchia in Italy.
- Ibid., XX, 100 (v, 2).
