txt/Second Temple/Philo/Against Flaccus/English/Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1941.txt

Against Flaccus
נגד פלאקוס
Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1941
https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI

Against Flaccus

Introduction

INTRODUCTION TO <i>IN FLACCUM</i>
The story told in this treatise is as follows.
Flaccus, whose misgovernment and cruelty to the Jews and ultimate fate are here described, was appointed prefect of Alexandria and Egypt in or about A.D. 32 near the end of the principate of Tiberius. Philo tells us that he showed considerable ability and industry during his first five years of office. He remarks that he praises him to exhibit his villainy in a clearer light, and he might have added that his description goes to prove that his toleration of the abominable cruelty shown to the Jews by the Alexandrian populace was not due to weakness but to definite intention (1–7). He had stood well with Tiberius, but the accession of Gaius in 37 endangered his position, for he had been a partisan of Tiberius Gemellus, the rival candidate for the succession, had been concerned in the steps taken to prosecute Agrippina, Gaius’s mother, and was friendly with Macro, who, though he had done much to protect Gaius from the distrust and dislike of Tiberius, soon fell into disfavour with Gaius and was put to death (8–15). This last event reduced Flaccus to despair, and it was at this point that according to Philo the anti-Semitic party in Alexandria, though they included some who at bottom were his enemies, approached him and suggested that if he would give them his support they and the city as a whole would stand by him to protect him against the hostility of the Emperor (16–24). All this may be partially or even wholly true, but it is compatible with the view held by some, who have more right to pronounce an opinion than I, that behind it lies a movement on the part of the Jews to enlarge to full citizenship the special privileges which they had as a πολίτευμα, and that it was this which roused the Greeks to take action and enlist Flaccus’s support.
Philo represents Flaccus as only gradually throwing his lot in with them and exhibiting his hostility to the Jews (24). The climax came when Herod Agrippa, recently appointed by Gaius to the kingship of his uncle Philip’s tetrarchy, visited Alexandria on his way to his kingdom, and the Alexandrians deeply resenting this exaltation of a Jew and (though Philo does not tell us this) further exasperated by the enthusiasm with which the Jews welcomed their compatriot, staged an insulting mockery by bringing the lunatic Carabas into the Gymnasium and greeting him with royal honours. Philo does not accuse Flaccus of taking an active part in this, and, indeed, admits that in public he behaved to Agrippa with courtesy and friendliness, but charges him with abetting it in as much as he took no steps to suppress the demonstration or punish the offenders (25–40).
The Alexandrians, presumably aware that they might compromise themselves by insulting Gaius’s favourite, then proceeded to a step which would naturally be gratifying to the Emperor. They desecrated the synagogues by setting up images of Gaius in them. We are told very little about this in this treatise. Philo enlarges upon the consequences it entailed, on the danger of such a movement extending beyond Alexandria, and on its futility because the desecrated synagogues would cease to exist as synagogues and the Jews would be unable to pay the homage which they were accustomed to pay by dedicating them in honour of the Emperor or installing such emblems as had been lawfully installed in them in the past (41–52). He passes on to a second wrong, a certain proclamation issued by Flaccus. This which is vaguely described as denouncing the Jews as foreigners and aliens may be fairly connected with the eviction from four of the five “letters” or quarters of the city which is mentioned in the same section (53–54). Then comes a third wrong. He permitted the mob not merely to evict the householders but to plunder their houses, and one consequence of the evictions was that the Jews were unable to carry on their businesses. In fact, a regular pogrom ensued and its brutalities are described in lurid terms. The items selected are somewhat different from those of the <i>Legatio</i> but the story is substantially the same (54–72). One point on which Philo dwells with considerable length is the treatment of the Jewish senators. Apparently these as a body were accused of some offences and, though only about half of the members were arrested, they were cruelly flogged. In particular some of them had lost all their property in the sack, and though Flaccus had already been informed of this they were scourged none the less (73–77). A further indignity was the instruments used. Alexandrian citizens were scourged with blades, and hitherto Alexandrian Jews had had the same privilege, but on this occasion there were substituted the scourges used on the Egyptians (78–80). Further, apparently all this took place on or about the Emperor’s birthday, which was usually considered an occasion for mercy, but on this occasion brutal treatment of Jews was actually made part of the birthday celebrations (81–85).
The next outrage seems far less serious. The Jews or some of them were accused of having stocks of arms. Their houses were searched and according to Philo none were found, in marked contrast to the huge number taken when a similar investigation had been held of the Egyptians. His indignation seems overdone, and, indeed, the only specific complaint he makes is that the modesty of the women was offended by a military investigation of their intimate belongings, and in connexion with this he mentions other ill-treatment which the women had received in the pogrom (86–96).
The last item in the list of Flaccus’s crimes is that he suppressed the resolution of congratulation which the Jewish senate had passed at Gaius’s accession and which he had promised to transmit to the Emperor. The Jews suspecting that he had not sent it on had consulted Agrippa when he visited Alexandria and received from him an undertaking which they believed that he had carried out (97–103).
So much for Flaccus’s offences. We pass on to his punishment. The story of his arrest with a detailed account of the circumstances and of the exultation felt by the Jews, is related with all the vividness of which Philo is a master. We note that this occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles, not much more than a month after the birthday of the emperor and that his journey to Rome, during which he suffered from stormy weather, was at the beginning of winter (104–125). We do not know exactly what he was charged with, but are told that Isidorus and Lampo, who were mentioned earlier as leaders of the faction which urged him to secure his position by persecuting the Jews, now appeared as his accusers (126–127). And here Philo interrupts his narrative to tell us something about these two. His tirade against Lampo amounts to a charge that as secretary to the prefect acting as judge he persistently perverted justice, though we also incidentally learn that he had been for a time in serious trouble under Tiberius (128–134). As to Isidorus, we have a lengthy account of an incident belonging to the early days of Flaccus’s prefectship. Flaccus had originally shown him considerable favour. When he became less cordial Isidorus took umbrage and organized a gathering of his touts, who brought baseless slanders against Flaccus here represented as behaving with moderation and good sense. A meeting to which the respectable part of the people were summoned brought the whole city together full of indignation against the slanderers and sympathy with the governor. Isidorus was completely exposed and had to flee from the city (135–145). He must have reappeared and, surprising as it seems, must, if Philo’s account is true, have persuaded Flaccus that he was a friend on whose advice he could rely. What charges he and Lampo brought against Flaccus we are not told, but a trial was held in which Flaccus was condemned, his property confiscated and himself sentenced to deportation (146–150).
From this point the story proceeds straightforwardly to the end. We are given an account of his journey to Andros and his miserable plight after his arrival, interspersed with speeches and soliloquies in which he laments his fall and acknowledges that his punishment is just. Whether this last represents his feeling may be doubted. We have not and probably Philo had not any means of judging. The end came when Gaius, who is said to have come to the conclusion that the life of the deported was too mild a punishment for him, determined to have him executed. The treatise closes with a description of the way in which this was carried out, followed by the assertion that the fate of Flaccus shows that God still watches over the Jews (151–191).
The Flaccus has considerable literary merits. The narrative, particularly in the last forty sections, is exceedingly vivid. It is also, no doubt, historically valuable in so far as it gives a substantially true account of events of which we know very little from other sources. How far it is good history, in the sense of giving a reliable account of the motives and feelings of the actors in the story, I leave to those more competent than myself to assess. Also it is a powerful embodiment of that profound conviction that the nation is under the special Providence of God which has been the life and soul of Judaism throughout the centuries. This conviction naturally entails a belief that the enemies of Judaism are the enemies of God and their punishment a divine visitation. But this belief has its evil side, which seems to me to be very strongly exhibited in this treatise. In § 117 the Jews are represented as saying “We do not rejoice at the punishment of an enemy because we have been taught by the Holy Laws to have human sympathy.” This is easily said but not so easily done, and if Philo believed that he himself had learnt this lesson I think he deceived himself. He gloats over the misery of Flaccus in his fall, exile, and death, with a vindictiveness which I feel to be repulsive. While, as I have said in the preface, none of the treatises in this volume have any great value nor would probably have survived but for the high esteem given to his main work, this is the only one which those who admire the beauty and spirituality so often shown both in the Commentary and Exposition might well wish to have been left unwritten.





Chapter 1

[1] The policy of attacking the Jews begun by Sejanus was taken over by Flaccus Avillius. He had not like his predecessor the power to ill-treat outright the whole nation, for he had less opportunities of doing so, but those whom he reached suffered the direst misery from the stabs which he dealt to them one and all. And, indeed, though his assault appeared to be only partial, by employing craft rather than power he brought them all wherever they were within the scope of his hostility. For persons naturally tyrannical who have not the addition of strength achieve their malignant designs through cunning. 
[2] This Flaccus then, who had been given a place in the suite of Tiberius Caesar, was after the death of Iberus, who had been prefect of Egypt, made prefect of Alexandria and the country round it. He was a man who at first gave to all appearance a multitude of proofs of high excellence. He was sagacious and assiduous, quick to think out and execute his plans, very ready at speaking, and at understanding what was left unspoken better even than what was said. 
[3] So in quite a short time he became thoroughly familiar with Egyptian affairs, intricate and diversified as they are and hardly grasped even by those who have made a business of studying them from their earliest years. His crowd of secretaries were a superfluity, since nothing small or great was beyond the reach of his experience, so that he not only surpassed them but thanks to his mastery of detail became the teacher instead of the pupil of his erstwhile instructors.
[4] And all matters connected with accountancy and administration of the revenue he managed successfully. These indeed, great and vital though they were, did not supply proof that he possessed the soul of a leader of men, but in a more open way he displayed qualities which revealed a more brilliant and kingly nature. Thus he bore himself with dignity, for outward pomp is very useful to a ruler. He judged important cases with the help of those in authority, humbled the arrogant and prevented any motley promiscuous horde of people from combining in opposition. The sodalities and clubs, which were constantly holding feasts under pretext of sacrifice in which drunkenness vented itself in political intrigue, he dissolved and dealt sternly and vigorously with the refractory. 
[5] Then when he had fully established good order throughout the city and the country he began to turn his attention to supporting the armed forces. He set them in array, drilled, exercised them, cavalry, infantry and light-armed alike, training the officers not to withhold the pay of their men and so incite them to pillage and rapine, and also each single soldier not to interfere in things outside his military duties but remember that he had been appointed also to maintain the peace.

Chapter 2

[6] Possibly someone may say “My dear sir, after deciding to accuse a man you have stated no charge but come out with a long string of praises. Are you out of your senses and gone quite mad?” No, my friend, I have not gone mad and I am not a silly person who cannot see what the sequence of an argument demands. 
[7] I praise Flaccus not because I thought it right to laud an enemy but to show his villainy in a clearer light. For to one who sins through ignorance of a better course pardon may be given, but a wrongdoer who has knowledge has no defence but stands already convicted at the bar of his conscience.

Chapter 3

[8] Flaccus held his prefectship for six years and for the first five of these while Tiberius Caesar was alive maintained peace and held command with such activity and vigour that he excelled all his predecessors. 
[9] But in the last year when Tiberius was dead and Gaius had been appointed Emperor he began to let everything slip from his hands. This may have been due to his profound grief at the death of Tiberius. For how greatly he mourned the loss of one whom he looked on as his closest friend was shown by his constant depression and the stream of tears which poured ceaselessly from him as from a fountain. Or it may have been the ill-will he bore to his successor, since he had been a devoted partisan of the actual rather than the adopted children. Or again as he had been one of those who had attacked Gaius’s mother when she lay under the charges for which she was put to death, his fear of being held guilty on this count caused him to neglect his duties.
[10] And for a time he held out and did not entirely lose his grasp of affairs, but when he heard that the grandson of Tiberius, who shared the sovereignty, had been killed by Gaius’s orders, this misfortune was so terrible a blow that he threw himself down and lay speechless, and for a considerable time before this his thinking powers had become feeble and paralysed. 
[11] For while the youth lived, his hopes of preserving his own safety were still alight, but with his death it seemed that his personal hopes had died also, even though some little waft of possible assistance still reached him in his friendship with Macro, who originally was all-powerful with Gaius, said to have contributed more than anyone to his gaining the principate and still more to his preservation. 
[12] For Tiberius had been often minded to get Gaius out of the way as a person ill-disposed and devoid of natural gifts for rulership, and also because he was concerned for his grandson, who he feared might at his death be got rid of as an encumbrance. But Macro often tried to eliminate his suspicions and would praise Gaius as straight-forward and free from vice and liberal and particularly devoted to his cousin, so much so that he would willingly relinquish the principate to his sole charge, or, at any rate, the premier place.
[13] Deceived by these representations Tiberius unwittingly left behind him an implacable enemy to himself, his grandson, his family, Macro the intercessor and all mankind. 
[14] For when Macro saw him straying from the regular way and letting his impulses range unbridled anywhither and in any way he would admonish and exhort him, thinking that he was the same Gaius who while Tiberius still lived was reasonable and docile. But, alas, poor wretch, for his excessive goodwill he paid the extreme penalty, being slain with his whole house, wife and children as a burden, a superfluity and a nuisance. 
[15] For whenever Gaius caught sight of him at a distance he would talk in this strain to his companions, “Let us not smile, let us look downcast, for here comes the monitor, the stickler for straight speaking, who has begun to take charge as tutor of a grown man and an emperor, at this very time which has dismissed and set aside those who tutored him from his earliest years.”

Chapter 4

[16] So when Flaccus learnt that Macro too had been put to death he completely lost any hope that he still had and could no longer keep any grip of affairs, so utterly enfeebled was he and incapable of solid judgement. 
[17] And when the ruler despairs of keeping control the subjects necessarily at once become restive, particularly those who are naturally excited by quite small and ordinary occurrences. Among such the Egyptian nation holds the first place, accustomed as it is to blow up the tiniest spark into grave seditions. 
[18] Flaccus, thus left without help or resources, was much agitated and at the same time as his reasoning powers deteriorated made changes in all his recent policy, beginning with his treatment of his closest companions. For he suspected and repelled those who were well disposed and particularly friendly to him, while he allied himself to those who from the first had been his avowed enemies and took them for his counsellors in every matter. But their rancour was still there. 
[19] The apparent reconciliation was a counterfeit, existing only in words. In real fact they cherished an implacable vindictiveness and acting as in a theatre the part of genuine friends they carried him off into complete captivity. The ruler became the subject, the subjects leaders, who put forward very pernicious proposals and straightway set on them the seal of reality. 
[20] They proceeded to confirm all their plans, and took Flaccus like a masked dummy on the stage with the title of government inscribed upon him merely for show, to be an instrument in the hands of a popularity-hunting Dionysius, a paper-poring Lampo, an Isidorus, faction leader, busy intriguer, mischief contriver and a name which has gained special currency—state embroiler.
[21] All these combining concerted a plot of the most damaging kind against the Jews and coming to Flaccus privately said, 
[22] “Lost are your prospects from the boy Tiberius Nero, lost too the hope that you had next to him in your comrade Macro, and your expectations from the Emperor are anything but favourable. We must find you a really powerful intercessor to propitiate Gaius. 
[23] Such an intercessor is the city of the Alexandrians which has been honoured from the first by all the Augustan house and especially by our present master; and intercede it will if it receives from you some boon, and you can give it no greater benefaction than by surrendering and sacrificing the Jews.” 
[24] Though on hearing these words it was his duty to repulse and frown upon the speakers as sedition-makers and enemies of the commonwealth he subscribed to their suggestions. At first he showed his hostile intentions in a somewhat less obvious way by refusing to give a fair and impartial hearing to the parties in disputes and leaning to one side only, while in all other matters he gave them no right of free speech, but whenever any Jew approached he turned away, while to all others he made himself easily accessible. But later he also showed his ill-will openly.

Chapter 5

[25] The infatuation due to instruction from others rather than to his own nature, which thus was shown in his conduct, was further strengthened by the following incident. Gaius Caesar gave to Agrippa, the grandson of King Herod, the kingship over that third part of his grandfather’s territory, the revenues of which were taken by Philip the tetrarch, Agrippa’s paternal uncle. 
[26] When he was about to set out thither Gaius advised him not to undertake the voyage from Brundisium to Syria which was long and wearisome but wait for the etesian winds and take the short route through Alexandria. He told him that thence there were swift-sailing merchant vessels and highly skilled pilots who manage them as a charioteer manages race-horses and provide a straightforward passage along the direct route. Agrippa did as he was told, partly out of deference to his lord and master, and also because the course he enjoined seemed to be advisable. 
[27] He went down to Dicaearchia, and seeing there some ships of Alexandria lying at anchor and ready to sail he embarked with his retinue, and after a good voyage came to land a few days later without being expected or his purposes detected. He had ordered the pilots when they sighted Pharos in the late afternoon to furl the sails and lie outside round about it and not far off until the evening had well set in, and then by night to put in at the harbour, so that he might disembark when everyone had settled down to sleep and reach the house of his host without anyone seeing him. 
[28] His reason for making his visit in such an unassuming way was that he wished if possible to slip out of the city quietly and unobserved by the whole population. For he had not come to see Alexandria as he had stayed there before on his voyage to Rome to join Tiberius, and he only wanted to get a short route for his journey home. 
[29] But jealousy is part of the Egyptian nature, and the citizens were bursting with envy and considered that any good luck to others was misfortune to themselves, and in their ancient, and we might say innate hostility to the Jews, they resented a Jew having been made a king just as much as if each of them had thereby been deprived of an ancestral throne. 
[30] And the unhappy Flaccus was again stirred up by his companions with incitements and appeals calculated to make him as envious as themselves. “His stay here,” they said, “is your deposition. The dignity of the honour and prestige which invest him surpasses yours; he is attracting all men to him by the sight of his bodyguard of spearmen, decked in armour overlaid with gold and silver. 
[31] Was it right for him to come to another ruler’s domain when a fair wind could have carried him safely by sea to his own? For if Gaius gave him permission or rather put compulsion on him to do so, he ought to have earnestly entreated to be excused from coming here, so that the governor of the country would not be thrown into the background and lose prestige.” 
[32] Such words made his temper rise still more, and while in public he played the part of friend and comrade to Agrippa through fear of him who had sent him there, in private he vented his jealousy and gave full utterance to his hatred by insulting him indirectly since he had not the courage to do so outright. 
[33] For the lazy and unoccupied mob in the city, a multitude well practised in idle talk, who devote their leisure to slandering and evil speaking, was permitted by him to vilify the king, whether the abuse was actually begun by himself or caused by his incitement and provocation addressed to those who were his regular ministers in such matters. 
[34] Thus started on their course they spent their days in the gymnasium jeering at the king and bringing out a succession of gibes against him. In fact they took the authors of farces and jests for their instructors and thereby showed their natural ability in things of shame, slow to be schooled in anything good but exceedingly quick and ready in learning the opposite. 
[35] Why did Flaccus show no indignation? Why did he not arrest them? Why did he not chastise them for their presumptuous evil-speaking? Even if Agrippa had not been a king, yet as a member of Caesar’s household, did he not deserve to have some precedence and marks of honour? No, these are clear proofs that Flaccus was a party to the defamation. For it is evident that if he who could have chastised or at the very least stopped them did nothing to prevent them from acting in this way they did it with the full permission and consent of him himself. And if the undisciplined mob get a starting point for their misconduct in any direction, they do not halt there but pass on from one thing to another, always engaging in some fresh form of violence.

Chapter 6

[36] There was a certain lunatic named Carabas, whose madness was not of the fierce and savage kind, which is dangerous both to the madmen themselves and those who approach them, but of the easy-going, gentler style. He spent day and night in the streets naked, shunning neither heat nor cold, made game of by the children and the lads who were idling about. 
[37] The rioters drove the poor fellow into the gymnasium and set him up on high to be seen of all and put on his head a sheet of byblus spread out wide for a diadem, clothed the rest of his body with a rug for a royal robe, while someone who had noticed a piece of the native papyrus thrown away in the road gave it to him for his sceptre. 
[38] And when as in some theatrical farce he had received the insignia of kingship and had been tricked out as a king, young men carrying rods on their shoulders as spearmen stood on either side of him in imitation of a bodyguard. Then others approached him, some pretending to salute him, others to sue for justice, others to consult him on state affairs. 
[39] Then from the multitudes standing round him there rang out a tremendous shout hailing him as Marin, which is said to be the name for “lord” in Syria. For they knew that Agrippa was both a Syrian by birth and had a great piece of Syria over which he was king. 
[40] When Flaccus heard, or rather saw all this, it was his duty to take and keep the madman in charge, to prevent him from providing an occasion to the railers for insulting their betters and then to punish those who had arrayed him thus, because they had dared both in word and deed both openly and indirectly to insult a king, a friend of Caesar’s, a person who had received Praetorian honours from the Roman Senate. Instead of this not merely did he refrain from chastising them but even shrank from restraining them, thereby giving immunity and free-play to those who displayed evil intentions and hostile feeling by pretending not to see what he saw nor hear what he heard. 
[41] When the crowd perceived this, not the peaceful, public-spirited crowd, but the crowd which regularly fills everything with confusion and turmoil, which by its love of meddling, its eager pursuit of the worthless life, its habitual laziness and idling, is a thing that means mischief, they streamed into the theatre at early dawn, and having Flaccus purchased by the miserable price which he crazy for fame and ever-ready to be sold took to the destruction not only of himself but of the public safety, called out with one accord for installing images in the meeting-houses. 
[42] What they proposed was a breach of the law entirely novel and unprecedented and knowing this, quick-witted as they are for villainy, they cunningly glozed it by using the name of Caesar as a screen, that name with which no guilty action can lawfully be associated.
[43] What then did the governor of the country do? He knew that both Alexandria and the whole of Egypt had two kinds of inhabitants, us and them, and that there were no less than a million Jews resident in Alexandria and the country from the slope into Libya to the boundaries of Ethiopia; also that this was an attack against them all, and that ancestral customs cannot be disturbed without harm, yet he disregarded all these facts and permitted the installation of the images though there were a host of considerations all tending to caution which he might have set before them either as orders from a ruler or advice from a friend.

Chapter 7

[44] But since he worked hand in hand with them in all their misdeeds he did not scruple to use his superior power to fan the flames of sedition perpetually by still more novel additions of evil, and as far as lay in his power filled, one may also say, the whole habitable world with racial conflict. 
[45] For it was perfectly clear that the rumour of the overthrowing of the synagogues beginning at Alexandria would spread at once to the nomes of Egypt and speed from Egypt to the East and the nations of the East and from the Hypotaenia and Marea, which are the outskirts of Libya, to the West and the nations of the West. For so populous are the Jews that no one country can hold them, 
[46] and therefore they settle in very many of the most prosperous countries in Europe and Asia both in the islands and on the mainland, and while they hold the Holy City where stands the sacred Temple of the most high God to be their mother city, yet those which are theirs by inheritance from their fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors even farther back, are in each case accounted by them to be their fatherland in which they were born and reared, while to some of them they have come at the time of their foundation as immigrants to the satisfaction of the founders. 
[47] And it was to be feared that people everywhere might take their cue from Alexandria, and outrage their Jewish fellow-citizens by rioting against their synagogues and ancestral customs. 
[48] Now the Jews though naturally well-disposed for peace could not be expected to remain quiet whatever happened, not only because with all men the determination to fight for their institutions outweighs even the danger to life, but also because they are the only people under the sun who by losing their meeting-houses were losing also what they would have valued as worth dying many thousand deaths, namely, their means of showing reverence to their benefactors, since they no longer had the sacred buildings where they could set forth their thankfulness. And they might have said to their enemies 
[49] “You have failed to see that you are not adding to but taking from the honour given to our masters, and you do not understand that everywhere in the habitable world the religious veneration of the Jews for the Augustan house has its basis as all may see in the meeting-houses, and if we have these destroyed no place, no method is left to us for paying this homage. 
[50] If we neglect to pay it when our institutions permit we should deserve the utmost penalty for not tendering our requital with all due fullness. But if we fall short because it is forbidden by our own laws, which Augustus also was well pleased to confirm, I do not see what offence, either small or great, can be laid to our charge. The only thing for which we might be blamed would be that we transgressed, though involuntarily, by not defending ourselves against the defections from our customs, which even if originally due to others often ultimately affect those who are responsible for them.” 
[51] It was by saying what he should leave unsaid and leaving unsaid what he should say that Flaccus treated us in this iniquitous way. But what were the motives of those whose favour he was seeking? Was it that they really wished to honour the Emperor! Was there then any lack of temples in the city, so many parts of which are consecrated and give all that is needed for the installation of anything they wished? 
[52] No, what we have described is an act of aggression by bitterly hostile and crafty plotters in which the authors of the outrages would not appear to be acting unjustly and the sufferers could not oppose them with safety. For surely, my good sirs, there is no honour given by overthrowing the laws, disturbing ancestral customs, outraging fellow-citizens and teaching the inhabitants of other cities to disregard the claims of fellow feeling.

Chapter 8

[53] When then his attack against our laws by seizing the meeting-houses without even leaving them their name appeared to be successful, he proceeded to another scheme, namely, the destruction of our citizenship, so that when our ancestral customs and our participation in political rights, the sole mooring on which our life was secured, had been cut away, we might undergo the worst misfortunes with no cable to cling to for safety. 
[54] For a few days afterwards he issued a proclamation in which he denounced us as foreigners and aliens and gave us no right of pleading our case but condemned us unjudged. What stronger profession of tyranny could we have than this? He became everything himself, accuser, enemy, witness, judge and the agent of punishment, and then to the two first wrongs he added a third by permitting those who wished to pillage the Jews as at the sacking of a city. 
[55] Having secured this immunity what did they do? The city has five quarters named after the first letters of the alphabet, two of these are called Jewish because most of the Jews inhabit them, though in the rest also there are not a few Jews scattered about. So then what did they do? From the four letters they ejected the Jews and drove them to herd in a very small part of one. 
[56] The Jews were so numerous that they poured out over beaches, dunghills and tombs, robbed of all their belongings. Their enemies overran the houses now left empty and turned to pillaging them, distributing the contents like spoil of war, and as no one prevented them they broke open the workshops of the Jews which had been closed as a sign of mourning for Drusilla, carried out all the articles they found, which were very numerous, and bore them through the middle of the market-place, dealing with other people’s property as freely as if it was their own. 
[57] A still more grievous evil than the pillaging was the unemployment produced. The tradespeople had lost their stocks, and no one, husbandman, shipman, merchant, artisan, was allowed to practise his usual business. Thus poverty was established in two ways: first, the pillaging, by which in the course of a single day they had become penniless, completely stripped of what they had, and secondly, their inability to make a living from their regular employments.

Chapter 9

[58] Unbearable though these things were, yet compared with subsequent actions they were tolerable. Poverty, indeed, is grievous, particularly when it is effected by enemies, but it is less grievous than bodily injuries if suffered through wanton violence, even the slightest. 
[59] But so excessive were the sufferings of our people that anyone who spoke of them as undergoing wanton violence or outrage would be using words not properly applicable and would I think be at a loss for adequate terms to express the magnitude of cruelty so unprecedented that the actions of conquerors in war, who are also naturally merciless to the conquered, would seem kindness itself in comparison. 
[60] Those conquerors do seize property and take numerous captives but they have run the risk of losing their own if they were defeated. And indeed, multitudes of the prisoners of war, whose ransoms are provided by their kinsfolk and friends, are released by their captors, not perhaps because they have weakened towards mercy, but because they cannot resist their desire for money, though of that one might say, “to the benefited the method of their rescuing is a matter of indifference.” 
[61] Observe, too, that enemies fallen in war are allowed burial. The mild and humane give it at their own expense and those who extend their hostility even to the dead restore the bodies under a truce, that they may not lack the final boon which the established rites supply. 
[62] This is what enemies do in war. Let us see what was done in peace by our friends of yesterday. After the pillaging and eviction and violent expulsion from most parts of the city the Jews were like beleaguered men with their enemies all round them. They were pressed by want and dire lack of necessities; they saw their infant children and women perishing before their eyes through a famine artificially created, 
[63] since elsewhere all else was teeming with plenty and abundance, the fields richly flooded by the overflow of the river and the wheat-bearing parts of the lowlands producing through their fertility the harvest of grain in unstinted profusion. 
[64] Unable any longer to endure their privation, some of them contrary to their former habits went to the houses of their kinsmen and friends to ask for the mere necessities as a charity, while those whose high-born spirit led them to avoid the beggar’s lot as fitter for slaves than for the free went forth into the market solely to buy sustenance for their families and themselves. 
[65] Poor wretches, they were at once seized by those who wielded the weapon of mob rule, treacherously stabbed, dragged through the whole city, and trampled on, and thus completely made away with till not a part of them was left which could receive the burial which is the right of all. 
[66] Multitudes of others also were laid low and destroyed with manifold forms of maltreatment, put in practice to serve their bitter cruelty by those whom savagery had maddened and transformed into the nature of wild beasts; for any Jews who showed themselves anywhere, they stoned or knocked about with clubs, aiming their blows at first against the less vital parts for fear that a speedier death might give a speedier release from the consciousness of their anguish. 
[67] Some, made rampant by the immunity and licence which accompanied these sufferings, discarded the weapons of slower action and took the most effective of all, fire and steel, and slew many with the sword, while not a few they destroyed with fire. 
[68] Indeed, whole families, husbands with their wives, infant children with their parents, were burnt in the heart of the city by these supremely ruthless men who showed no pity for old age nor youth, nor the innocent years of childhood. And when they lacked wood for fire they would collect brushwood and dispatch them with smoke rather than fire, thus contriving a more pitiable and lingering death for the miserable victims whose bodies lay promiscuously half-burnt, a painful and most heart-rending spectacle. 
[69] And if the persons enlisted to get brushwood were too slow, they would burn the owners with their own furniture taken out of the spoil. Costly articles, indeed, they appropriated but anything that was not very useful they put on the fire to serve instead of ordinary wood. 
[70] Many also while still alive they drew with one of the feet tied at the ankle and meanwhile leapt upon them and pounded them to pieces. 
[71] And when by the cruel death thus devised, their life ended, the rage of their enemies did not end, but continued all the same. They inflicted worse outrages on the bodies, dragging them through almost every lane of the city until the corpses, their skin, flesh and muscles shattered by the unevenness and roughness of the ground, and all the parts which united to make the organism dissevered and dispersed in different directions, were wasted to nothing.
[72] While those who did these things like actors in a farce assumed the part of the sufferers, the friends and kinsmen of the true sufferers, simply because they grieved over the misfortunes of their relations, were arrested, scourged, tortured and after all these outrages, which were all their bodies could make room for, the final punishment kept in reserve was the cross.

Chapter 10

[73] Having broken into everything like a burglar and left no side of Jewish life untouched by a hostility carried to the highest pitch, Flaccus devised another monstrous and unparalleled line of attack worthy of this perpetrator of enormities and inventor of novel iniquities. 
[74] Our Senate had been appointed to take charge of Jewish affairs by our saviour and benefactor Augustus, after the death of the ethnarch, orders to that effect having been given to Magius Maximus when he was about to take office for the second time as Governor of Alexandria and the country. Of this Senate the members who were found in their houses, thirty-eight in number, were arrested by Flaccus, who having ordered them to be straightway put in bonds marshalled a fine procession through the middle of the market of these elderly men trussed and pinioned, some with thongs and others with iron chains, and then taken into the theatre, a spectacle most pitiable and incongruous with the occasion. 
[75] Then as they stood with their enemies seated in front to signalize their disgrace he ordered them all to be stripped and lacerated with scourges which are commonly used for the degradation of the vilest malefactors, so that in consequence of the flogging some had to be carried out on stretchers and died at once, while others lay sick for a long time despairing of recovery.
[76] The great lengths of malevolence to which the plan was carried have been fully proved in other ways, but all the same they will be shown still more clearly by the following statement. Three members of the Senate, Euodus, Trypho and Andro, had become penniless, having been robbed in a single inroad of all that they had in their houses; and that they had been so treated was known to Flaccus, who had been so informed when on an earlier occasion he sent for our magistrates, ostensibly to reconcile them with the rest of the city. 
[77] Nevertheless, though he knew quite well that they had been deprived of their property, he beat them before the eyes of their despoilers. Thus, while they suffered a twofold misfortune, poverty and the outrage to their persons, the others had a twofold pleasure, enjoying the possession of the wealth which was not their own and sating themselves with gloating on the dishonour of those from whom that wealth was taken.
[78] One point in the deeds committed at this time I mention only with hesitation, lest by being considered an insignificant matter it may detract from the magnitude of these horrors. Yet even if it is a small thing it is an evidence of no small malignancy. There are differences between the scourges used in the city, and these differences are regulated by the social standing of the persons to be beaten. The Egyptians actually are scourged with a different kind of lash and by a different set of people, the Alexandrians with a flat blade, and the persons who wield them also are Alexandrians. 
[79] This custom was also observed in the case of our people by the predecessors of Flaccus and by Flaccus himself in his first years of office. For it is surely possible when inflicting degradation on others to find some little thing to sustain their dignity, or when wantonly maltreating them, to find some accompaniment to counteract the wantonness, if one allows the nature of the case to be determined on its own merits and does not import some personal feeling of malice which removes and dislodges all ingredients of the milder type. 
[80] Surely then it was the height of harshness that when commoners among the Alexandrian Jews, if they appeared to have done things worthy of stripes, were beaten with whips more suggestive of freemen and citizens, the magistrates, the Senate, whose very name implies age and honour, in this respect fared worse than their inferiors and were treated like Egyptians of the meanest rank and guilty of the greatest iniquities.
[81] I leave out of account the point that if they had committed a host of crimes he ought to have postponed the punishments in respect for the season, for rulers who conduct their government as they should and do not pretend to honour but do really honour their benefactors make a practice of not punishing any condemned person until these notable celebrations in honour of the birthdays of the illustrious Augustan house are over. 
[82] Instead he made them an occasion for illegality and for punishing those who had done no wrong, whom he could have punished at a later time if he wished. But he hurried and pressed on the matter to conciliate the mob, who were opposed to the Jews, thinking that this would help to bring them to make his policy their own. 
[83] I have known cases when on the eve of a holiday of this kind, people who have been crucified have been taken down and their bodies delivered to their kinsfolk, because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them the ordinary rites. For it was meet that the dead also should have the advantage of some kind treatment upon the birthday of an emperor and also that the sanctity of the festival should be maintained.
[84] But Flaccus gave no orders to take down those who had died on the cross. Instead he ordered the crucifixion of the living, to whom the season offered a short-lived though not permanent reprieve in order to postpone the punishment though not to remit it altogether. And he did this after maltreating them with the lash in the middle of the theatre and torturing them with fire and the sword. 
[85] The show had been arranged in parts. The first spectacle lasting from dawn till the third or fourth hour consisted of Jews being scourged, hung up, bound to the wheel, brutally mauled and haled for their death march through the middle of the orchestra. After this splendid exhibition came dancers and mimes and flute players and all the other amusements of theatrical competitions.

Chapter 11

[86] But why dwell on these things, for he had a second plan of spoliation hatching. He desired to use the large body of soldiers serving under him as a weapon against us, and to do this he invented a strange calumny to the effect that the Jews had stocks of every kind of arms in their houses. Accordingly having sent for a centurion named Castus, whom he especially trusted, he bade him take the most intrepid soldiers in the company under him and without loss of time and without giving notice enter and search the houses of the Jews to see whether they had any arms stored there. 
[87] Castus hurried off to do what he was told. The Jews as they knew nothing of the scheme at first stood dumbfoundered in consternation, while their women and children clung to them bathed in tears in the fear of being taken into captivity. For they lived in expectation of this which was the one thing left to complete the spoliation. 
[88] When they heard one of the searching party say “Where do you stock your arms?” they revived somewhat and laid open everything, even the contents of the recesses. 
[89] In one way they felt pleased, in another deeply pained. They were pleased that the refutation of the calumny would be self-evident but indignant first that such grave slanders, fabricated against them by their enemies, were so readily believed, secondly that their women kept in seclusion, never even approaching the outer doors, and their maidens confined to the inner chambers, who for modesty’s sake avoided the sight of men, even of their closest relations, were displayed to eyes, not merely unfamiliar, but terrorizing through the fear of military violence. 
[90] And after this careful investigation, what an enormous amount of defensive weapons was discovered, the helmets, breastplates, shields, daggers, pikes, outfits of armour, piles of which were produced, and on another side, the missile kind, javelins, slings, bows and arrows! Why! absolutely nothing, not even the knives which suffice the cooks for their daily use. 
[91] This last in itself showed clearly the simplicity of the life led by people who discarded the expensive habits and luxury which naturally breed that satiety, whose child is the wanton insolence which is the source of all evils.
[92] And yet not long before, when the Egyptians in the country districts had their weapons collected by one Bassus, on whom Flaccus had laid this task, there was a great array of ships to be seen which had sailed to the bank and moored in the harbours of the river brimful of all manner of weapons, also a great number of beasts of burden with spears tied in bundles hung on each side to balance equally. Also there was a procession of waggons sent from the camp, nearly all full of outfits of armour, moving regularly one after the other so as to form a single ordered line, all visible at once, and the space between the harbours and the armoury in the palace where the arms had to be deposited was, taken altogether, about ten stades long. 
[93] Those who procured these equipments might well have had their houses searched, for they had often revolted and were suspected of favouring sedition. Indeed, the authorities ought to have copied the sacred contests by instituting new triennial celebrations for the collection of arms, so that the Egyptians would not have time to provide them or at least only a few instead of this great quantity, as they had no opportunity for replacing them. 
[94] But why should we have been subject to anything of the kind? When were we suspected of revolting? When were we not thought to be peacefully inclined to all? Were not our ways of living which we follow day by day blameless and conducive to good order and stability in the State? Indeed, if the Jews did have arms in their possession, they had been dispossessed from over four hundred houses from which they were driven to wander by those who seized their property. Why then did not their despoilers have their property searched, since they would have, if not arms of their own, at any rate those which they had seized?
[95] But the whole proceeding was as I have said a malicious plot, due to the ruthlessness of Flaccus and the turbulent outbreaks, the effect of which was felt by women also. For they were seized like captives not only in the market-place but also in the middle of the theatre and taken on to the stage on no matter what calumnious charge, meanwhile being subjected to outrage of an intolerable and most barbarous kind. 
[96] Then, if they were recognized to be of another race, since many were arrested as Jewesses without any careful investigation of the truth, they were released. But if they were found to be of our nation then these onlookers at a show turned into despotic tyrants and gave orders to fetch swine’s flesh and give it to the women. Then all the women who in fear of punishment tasted the meat were dismissed and did not have to bear any further dire maltreatment. But the more resolute were delivered to the tormentors to suffer desperate ill-usage, which is the clearest proof of their entire innocence of wrongdoing.

Chapter 12

[97] To all these we have to add that Flaccus had before this been seeking to utilize the emperor to supplement his own efforts to injure us and laid his plans accordingly. We had decreed and ratified with our actions all the tributes to Gaius which were possible and were allowed by the laws and had submitted the decree to Flaccus, begging him since he would not have granted our request for an embassy to provide himself for its transmission. 
[98] He read it and nodded his head several times in assent at each point, smiled gently, and looked pleased or pretended to be pleased, and said “I commend you all for your piety, and I will send it as you ask or will fulfil the duties of an envoy myself that Gaius may learn your gratitude. 
[99] I will also testify myself from my own knowledge to your abundantly orderly and loyal behaviour without adding anything else, for the truth in itself is all-sufficient praise.” 
[100] When we heard these promises we rejoiced and were thankful, feeling in our hopefulness as though Gaius had already read the decree. The hope was reasonable, since any communication sent by a viceroy with urgency secures a prompt decision by the head. 
[101] But Flaccus, dismissing all consideration for our intentions and his own words and agreements, detained the decree in his own possession so that it might be supposed that we alone among men who dwell under the sun were hostile. Do not these actions show long unsleeping vigilance and careful preparation of the insidious attack against us and that it was not improvised in a fit of insanity, in an ill-timed outburst due to some perversion of the reason?
[102] But God, it is clear, who takes care for human affairs, rejected his flattering words so elegantly framed to cajole and the treacherous counsels against us debated in his lawless mind and in His compassion before long provided us with grounds for thinking that our hopes would not be disappointed. 
[103] For when King Agrippa visited Alexandria and we told him of Flaccus’s malignant action, he rectified the matter, promised us that he would have the decree transmitted and took it and as we understand sent it, apologizing also for the delay and stating that we had not been slow to learn the duty of piety to the house of our benefactors; on the contrary we had been eager to show it from the first but had been deprived of the chance of proving it in good time by the spite of the Governor. 
[104] At this point justice, the champion and defender of the wronged, the avenger of unholy men and deeds, began to enter the lists against him. For in the first place he was subjected to an unprecedented indignity and disaster such as had not befallen any of the viceroys in the past since the Augustan House assumed the sovereignty of land and sea.
[105] Some, indeed, of those who held governorships in the time of Tiberius and his father Caesar, had perverted their office of guardian and protector into domination and tyranny and had spread hopeless misery through their territories with their venality, robbery, unjust sentences, expulsion and banishment of quite innocent people, and execution of magnates without trial. But these people on their return to Rome, after the termination of their time of office, had been required by the emperor to render an account and submit to scrutiny of their doings, particularly when the aggrieved cities sent ambassadors. 
[106] For on these occasions the emperors showed themselves impartial judges; they listened equally to both the accuser and the defender, making it a rule to condemn no one offhand without a trial, and awarded what they thought to be just, influenced neither by hostility nor favour but by what actually was the truth. 
[107] Flaccus, on the other hand, not after his time of office, but in advance of the regular date, was encountered by justice, who hates evil and was indignant at the boundless excesses of his unjust and lawless actions.

Chapter 13

[108] The manner of his arrest was as follows. He supposed that Gaius had been by now propitiated as to the matters on which he was under suspicion, partly through his written dispatches, which overflowed with flattery, partly through the obsequiousness of his public harangues, in which he span together fawning words and long screeds of insincere encomium, partly again by the high esteem in which he was held by the chief part of the city. 
[109] But he little knew that he was deceiving himself, for the hopes of the wicked are without foundation. Their prognostications are favourable but their experiences fraught with evil omens are what they deserve. A centurion named Bassus was sent from Italy by Gaius’s appointment with the company of soldiers which he commanded. 
[110] Having embarked on one of the swiftest sailing ships he arrived in a few days at the harbours of Alexandria, off the island of Pharos, in the late afternoon and bade the pilot wait at sea outside till sunset, his scheme being to avoid observation, so that Flaccus might not get knowledge of it beforehand and by planning some act of violence, make his mission unsuccessful. 
[111] When it was evening the ship was brought to land and Bassus disembarking with his men went forward without recognizing or being recognized by anyone. And finding on the way a soldier belonging to the quaternions acting as sentries, he ordered him to show him the house of the military commander. For he wished to communicate his secret instructions to him so that if a strong force was required he might have someone to support him in the contest. 
[112] And learning that the commander as well as Flaccus was feasting with someone, he hurried with unabated speed to the house of the giver of the feast, by name Stephanio, one of the freedmen of Tiberius Caesar. It was in his house that the two were being entertained, and Bassus keeping in the background a little way off sent on one of his men to reconnoitre attired as an attendant, hoping by this artifice to maintain secrecy. The soldier made his way into the dining-hall in the guise of a servant of one or other of the visitors and having taken a careful look all round returned with his information to Bassus. 
[113] He, learning the unguarded condition of the entrances and the scantiness of Flaccus’s retinue, for barely ten or fifteen of his household slaves had accompanied him, gave the signal to his companions and rushed in suddenly. Some of the soldiers taking their stand along the dining-hall, with swords in their girdles, surrounded Flaccus before he saw them, since he was drinking the health of some particular person and toasting the company. 
[114] But when Bassus came forward into the middle of the room he saw him and was at once struck speechless with consternation. He wished to rise but when he surveyed the guard around him, he knew even before he heard it what Gaius wanted to do with him and what orders had been given to the newcomers and what would be his fate in the immediate future. For the mind has a marvellous power of seeing all at once and hearing altogether the successive events which will cover a long space of time. 
[115] As for his fellow-guests, each of them rose shuddering and petrified with fear lest their presence in his company at the feast was a crime destined for punishment. For it was unsafe to fly and, moreover, impossible, since the entrances had been occupied in advance. Flaccus himself at Bassus’s orders, was led away by the soldiers. Thus it was from a convivial gathering that he made his final departure, for it was only right that a hospitable hearth should be the scene where justice first fell on one who had destroyed numberless hearths and homes of persons that had done no wrong.

Chapter 14

[116] Such was the unprecedented blow which fell upon Flaccus, carried off like a prisoner in war in the country which he was governing. It was caused, I am convinced, by his treatment of the Jews, whom in his craving for aggrandisement he had resolved to exterminate utterly. We have a clear proof of this also in the time of his arrest, for the Jews were holding then the national feast of the autumn equinox, in which it is the custom of the Jews to live in tents. 
[117] But nothing at all of the festal proceedings was being carried out. The rulers after suffering deadly and intolerable injuries and outrages were still in prison and their misfortunes were regarded by the commoners as shared by the whole nation, while the special sufferings which each of them experienced individually made them extremely depressed. 
[118] For painful sensations are apt to double themselves most especially at feast time in persons who are unable to observe the feast, both because they are deprived of the cheerful gaiety which the festal gathering demands and also because they communicate to each other their sorrow—sorrow which in this case laid them prostrate through their powerlessness to find any remedy for their great miseries. 
[119] They were in this very painful condition oppressed by an overwhelming burden when there came to them while crowded in their houses, because night was falling, some messengers who announced the arrest that had been made. They supposed that it was no true story but something fabricated to try them and were still more pained at what seemed a mockery and a snare. 
[120] But when a tumult arose in the city and the night-watch were running up and down and horsemen busily riding backwards and forwards at full speed to and from the camp, some of them, stirred by so unusual an event, advanced from their houses to get information of what had occurred. For it was clear that there was some upheaval. 
[121] And when they learnt of the arrest and that Flaccus was now within the toils, with hands outstretched to heaven they sang hymns and led songs of triumph to God who watches over human affairs. “We do not rejoice, O Lord,” they said, “at the punishment meted to an enemy, for we have been taught by the holy laws to have human sympathy. But we justly give thanks to Thee because Thou has taken pity and compassion on us and relieved our unbroken and ceaseless afflictions.” 
[122] All night long they continued to sing hymns and songs of praise and at dawn pouring out through the gates, they made their way to the parts of the beach near at hand, since their meeting-houses had been taken from them, and standing in the most open space cried aloud with one accord 
[123] “Most Mighty King of mortals and immortals, we have come here to call on earth and sea, and air and heaven, into which the universe is partitioned, and on the whole world, to give Thee thanks. They are our only habitation, expelled as we are from all that men have wrought, robbed of our city and the buildings within its walls, public and private, alone of all men under the sun bereft of home and country through the malignancy of a governor. 
[124] Thou givest also a glimpse of cheering hopes that Thou wilt amend what remains for amendment, in that Thou hast already begun to assent to our prayers. For the common enemy of the nation, under whose leadership and by whose instruction these misfortunes have befallen it, who in his windy pride thought that they would promote him to honour, Thou hast suddenly brought low; and that not when he was afar off, so that they whom he ill-treated would hear it by report and have less keen pleasure, but just here close at hand almost before the eyes of the wronged to give them a clearer picture of the swift and unhoped-for visitation.”

Chapter 15

[125] Besides the two circumstances which I have mentioned there is a third which seems to me to have been brought about by divine providence. He had started on his voyage in early winter and endured a multitude of hardships, tasting of the terrors of the sea also, a just fate for one who had filled the elements of the universe with his impious deeds. When with difficulty he arrived in Italy the charges against him were taken up by two of his worst enemies, Isidorus and Lampo. 
[126] It was not long since these men had ranked as his subjects and hailed him as their master and benefactor and saviour and the like. But now they appeared to plead against him with a strength which was not a mere match for his but vastly more powerful. For not merely had they confidence in the justice of their case but their most important advantage was that they saw that he who presided over human affairs was his mortal enemy, who would assume, indeed, the guise of a judge to save himself from appearing to condemn anyone by anticipation and without trial, but in his actions would be revealed as an enemy, who forestalled the accusation and defence by condemning him already in his soul and had fixed his punishment at the uttermost. 
[127] And no lot is so hard as for superiors to be accused by inferiors and rulers by their former subjects; as well might masters be accused by the slaves whom they have bred in their house or purchased with their money.

Chapter 16

[128] But this as we shall see was a lighter evil compared with another still greater. For they were not simply in the position of subjects who suddenly attacked him and by mutual agreement addressed themselves to accusing him. On the contrary, throughout the greater part of his time of governorship of the country, they were above all others his bitterest enemies. Lampo had been put on his trial for impiety to Tiberius Caesar and as the trial had dragged on for two years he had broken down under it. 
[129] For the ill-will of his judge had concocted postponements and delays, as he wished, even if he was acquitted on the charge, to keep hanging over him for as long as possible the fear of the uncertain future, and so render his life more painful than death. 
[130] Afterwards when he appeared to have won his case he declared that he was the victim of an outrageous attack upon his property. For he was forced to act as gymnasiarch and protested that he had not sufficient means to meet the great expenses of the office. The excuse may be due to meanness and illiberality in spending his money, or it may be that he really had not the means, and though before the test he had pretended to be quite rich he was shown under examination to be not very wealthy, owning in fact hardly anything beyond the proceeds of his iniquitous deeds. 
[131] For he stood beside the governors when they were giving judgement, and took the minutes of the cases which he introduced in virtue of this position. He would then expunge some of the evidence or deliberately pass it over and sometimes insert statements which had not been made, sometimes, too, tamper with the documents by remodelling and rearranging them and turning them upside-down, while he picked up money at every syllable, or rather at every jot and tittle, like the paper-porer that he was. 
[132] Frequently the whole people, truly and appropriately, denounced him as a pen-murderer, whose writings had done multitudes to death and made more miserable than the dead multitudes of the living, who, when they might have won their case and enjoyed abundance, had suffered a defeat and poverty utterly undeserved, both purchased by their enemies from this cheapjack and vendor of other people’s property. 
[133] For it was impossible that the governors who had the management of so large a territory should keep in mind the perpetual flood of new cases private and public, particularly as they not only acted as judges but received the calculations of revenues and tributes, the scrutiny of which took up the greater part of the year. 
[134] But Lampo, who was commissioned to guard the most vital trust, justice and the verdicts based with all sanctity on justice, traded on the short memory of the judges and recorded defeat for those who should have had victory and for those who should have been defeated a victory in return for the accursed fee, better described as hire, which he received.

Chapter 17

[135] Such was the Lampo who appeared against Flaccus as an accuser. And with him was Isidorus nothing behind him in villainy, a mob courter, popularity hunter, practised in producing disturbance and confusion, a foe to peace and tranquillity, an adept at creating factions and tumults where they do not exist and organizing and fostering them when made, ever at pains to keep in contact with him an irregular and unstable horde of promiscuous, ill-assorted people, divided up into sections, or what might be called syndicates.
[136] In the city there are clubs with a large membership, whose fellowship is founded on no sound principle but on strong liquor and drunkenness and sottish carousing and their offspring, wantonness. “Synods” and “divans” are the particular names given to them by the people of the country. 
[137] In all or most of the clubs Isidorus held the first place and was called the feast ruler or divan master and state embroiler. Then when he wished to get some worthless project carried out, a single call brought them together in a body and they said and did what they were bidden. 
[138] And at one time being annoyed with Flaccus, because, whereas at first he seemed to be regarded by him as a person of some importance, he afterwards found himself no longer in the same favour, he hired the beggarly lot who regularly served him as vocalists, the people who sell their yells as in a market to willing purchasers, and ordered them to come to the gymnasium. 
[139] They filled the building and launched accusations against Flaccus with no foundation, inventing against him things which had never happened and spinning long lying screeds of ribald doggerel, so that not only Flaccus but everyone else was utterly astonished at so unexpected an onset and conjectured, as indeed was the case, that there was surely someone whom they wanted to gratify and that they had never themselves suffered any injury past mending nor had real knowledge of any offence committed against the rest of the State. 
[140] Then on deliberation the authorities decided to arrest some and ascertain the cause of so reckless and sudden an outburst of insanity. The persons arrested without being put to the question confessed the truth and also added the proofs supplied by the facts, the payment agreed upon, both what had already been given and what was to be given afterwards according to the promises; the persons chosen as ringleaders of the agitation to distribute the money, the place and occasion where and when the act of bribery had taken place. 
[141] And as everyone was naturally indignant and the city felt annoyed that the senselessness of some persons should also set its stamp upon her name, he decided to summon the most highly respectable part of the public on the morrow and set the dispensers of the payment before them so that he might both expose Isidorus and defend his own administration against the aspersions unjustly cast upon him. But on hearing the summons there came not only persons in high position but the whole city except that part whose acceptance of payment was to be exposed. And those who had served in this glorious capacity, 
[142] being set on a platform so that in this conspicuous elevation they might be recognized by all, gave proof that Isidorus was responsible for the tumults and slanders against Flaccus and had employed them to supply both money and wine to no small number of people. “Whence,” they asked, “could we have had all this money to squander? 
[143] We are poor people scarcely able to provide the daily wage needed to purchase absolute necessaries. What terrible grievance had we suffered from the governor that we should be compelled to cherish a grudge against him? No! The author and creator of all these things is that Isidorus ever envious of the prosperous and the foe of law-abiding tranquillity.” The audience, recognizing the truth of this, 
[144] since the statement clearly represented and indicated the motives and intention of the accused, shouted out some for disfranchisement, some for banishment, some for death. These last were the majority and the rest came over and joined them so that they all cried out with one heart and voice, “Slay the ruiner of all alike, who ever since he came to the front and wormed his way into state affairs, has let no part of the city remain untainted.” 
[145] Fearing arrest, Isidorus fled conscious-stricken, but Flaccus took no trouble about him, thinking that, since he was out of the way by his own freewill, the life of the city could now go on undisturbed by faction and intrigue.

Chapter 18

[146] I have described these events at length, not in order to recall long-past iniquities but to extol the justice which watches over human affairs, because, to those who had been hostile to him from the first and of all his foes the most bitter it also fell to conduct his arraignment and so magnify his afflictions to the uttermost. For arraignment is not by itself so grievous as when it is brought by admitted foes. 
[147] Not only was he accused, a ruler by his subjects, a potentate who but now had the life of both in his hands by inveterate enemies, but he was also condemned, suffering thereby a mighty twofold blow in that his fall was coupled with the laughter of gloating enemies, which to men of good sense is worse even than death.
[148] Then there came to him a rich harvest of misfortunes. He was at once deprived of all his property, both what he inherited from his parents and what he acquired himself. For his taste for things ornamental was quite exceptional. Wealth was not with him as it is with some rich men inert matter, but everything had been carefully selected for its elaborate workmanship, his cups, clothes, coverlets, utensils and all the other ornaments of the house, 
[149] all were of the choicest: besides these the staff of household slaves had been picked as the best for comeliness of form and fine condition and the faultless way in which they ministered to the needs of their master. For whatever tasks they were severally appointed to do they excelled in, so that they were held to stand either first among those who performed the same functions or certainly second to none. 
[150] A clear proof of this is that while a vast number of properties belonging to condemned persons were sold by public auction, that of Flaccus alone was reserved for the emperor, a few articles only being excepted so as not to run counter to the law enacted about persons convicted on these grounds. 
[151] And when his property had been taken from him he was sentenced to banishment and expelled not only from the whole continent, which is the larger and better section of the habitable world, but also from every one of the islands in which life can prosper. For he was to be exiled to the most miserable of the Aegean islands, called Gyara, had he not found an intercessor in Lepidus who enabled him to exchange Gyara for Andros, the island which lies nearest to it. 
[152] He then again travelled along the road from Rome to Brundisium which he had travelled a few years before at the time when he had been appointed a governor of Egypt and its neighbour Libya, so that the cities which then beheld him puffed with pride, parading the grandeur of his good fortune, might once more behold him covered with dishonour instead. 
[153] As fingers pointed at him and reproaches poured upon him he was oppressed by the heavier afflictions caused by the change which had overwhelmed him, for his misery was ever being renewed and rekindled by the accession of fresh troubles which also forcibly brought back, like symptoms recurring in sickness, recollections of past mishaps which seemed for a while to have been dulled.

Chapter 19

[154] Having passed through the Ionian Gulf he sailed upon the sea which extends to Corinth, a spectacle to the Peloponnesian cities on the seaboard when they heard of his sudden change of fortune. For whenever he disembarked the people flocked thither, the baser natures out of malice, the rest, whose way is to find lessons of wisdom in the fate of others, to sympathize. 
[155] And crossing the Isthmus from Lechaeum to the opposite coast and coming down to Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, he was forced by his guards, who refused him any kind of intermission, to embark at once on a small merchant vessel and put to sea, where under the violence of a contrary wind he suffered a thousand discomforts and only with difficulty arrived storm-tossed at the Peiraeus. 
[156] When the tempest ceased he coasted along Attica to Cape Sunium and then continued his journey along the series of islands, namely Helene, Cia, Cythnus and the rest, which lie in a row one after the other, to that which was to be the end of his journey, the island of the Andrians.
[157] When he saw it afar off the miserable man let a stream of tears pour down his cheeks as from a fountain and smiting his breast with bitter wailing cried “Oh my guards and escort, it is for this fine land of Andros, this unblest island that I exchange happy Italy, 
[158] I, Flaccus, who was born and reared and educated in sovereign Rome, the school-mate and familiar associate of the grandsons of Augustus, chosen at the court of Tiberius to be among his foremost friends, entrusted for six years with the charge of Egypt the greatest of his possessions? 
[159] This great reversal what does it mean? A night in daytime as in an eclipse has taken possession of my life. This petty island what shall I call it? My home of exile, or a new fatherland, a hapless haven and refuge? A tomb would be its truest name, for as I journey in my misery it is as though I were bearing the corpse that is myself to a sepulchre. For either through my afflictions I shall break the thread of my miserable life, or even, if I am able to survive die a long drawn-out death in which consciousness still lives.” 
[160] In such wise did he lament and when the ship put in at the haven he got out with his whole body bowing down to the ground, as people do under the pressure of an exceedingly heavy load, his neck over-weighted with his misfortunes, lacking either the strength even to lift his head, or else the courage to face those who met him and came to gaze at him as they stood in front on either side of the road.
[161] His escort brought him to the popular assembly of the Andrians and exhibited him to them all, calling them to witness to the arrival of the exile at the island. 
[162] Then having fulfilled their service they departed, but Flaccus having no longer before his eyes any familiar face felt his sufferings renewed thereby more poignantly as his imaginations grew more vivid. And gazing at the wide desolation around him, in the midst of which he was isolated, it seemed to him that a death by violence in his native land would be the lighter evil, or rather in comparison with his present plight a welcome boon. His wild gesticulations were just like those of a madman. He would often jump about, run up and down, clash his hands together, smite his thighs, fling himself on the ground and often cry out, 
[163] “I am Flaccus, who but now was governor of Alexandria, that great city, or multitude of cities, ruler of the highly blest land of Egypt, to whom so many thousands of inhabitants paid regard, who had among his subjects great forces of infantry, cavalry, naval, not a mere lot of counters but all men of the best-proved excellence, who every day when I proceeded forth went escorted by a host of followers. 
[164] But was this then a phantom, not the truth? Was I asleep and dreamt the light-heartedness of those days, saw but spectres moving in a void, figments of a soul which recorded as we may suppose things which had no existence as though they were? Yes, I have been deluded. 
[165] They were the shadow of realities, not the realities themselves, a counterfeit of clear vision, not the clear vision which exposes the falsehood to the light. For just as when we wake up we find nothing of what we saw in our dreams, but all are gone and have taken flight together, so, too, that brightness which surrounded my life has been quenched in one short moment of time.”

Chapter 20

[166] Such were the thoughts which held him ever firmly in their grip and so to speak flung him prostrate to the ground. He shunned meeting with people in large numbers because of the sense of shame which accompanied him. He did not go down to the harbour nor bring himself to enter the market but shut himself at home and there lay hidden not having even the courage to pass the threshold. 
[167] Sometimes, too, in the dark hours of the morning when everyone else was still in bed he would come out without a soul seeing him and advance outside the wall and spend the day in the solitude, turning aside if anyone was about to meet him, his soul lacerated, poor wretch, and devoured by the vivid memories of his calamines. Then when the night had quite closed in he would go indoors, praying in his endless and boundless sorrow that the evening might be morning, so much did he dread the darkness and the weird visions which it gave him, if he chanced to fall asleep. So in the morning again he prayed for evening, for to the gloom that surrounded him everything bright was repugnant.
[168] A few months later he bought a small piece of ground and spent much of his time there in solitude, bewailing with tears and groans that such should be his fate. 
[169] It is said that once about midnight he became possessed as in a Corybantic frenzy, and coming out of the shelter put up there turned his eyes to heaven and the stars, and beholding that veritable world within a world, lifted up his voice. 
[170] “King of gods and men,” he cried, “so then Thou dost not disregard the nation of the Jews, nor do they misreport Thy Providence, but all who say that they do not find in Thee a Champion and Defender, go astray from the true creed. I am a clear proof of this, for all the acts which I madly committed against the Jews I have suffered myself. 
[171] I allowed them to be robbed of their possessions by giving free licence to the plunderers. For that I had taken from me my heritage from father and mother and all I received by way of benefactions and gifts and other possessions which do not fall under this head. 
[172] I cast on them the slur that they were foreigners without civic rights, though they were inhabitants with full franchise, just to please their adversaries, a disorderly and unstable horde, whose flattery, to my sorrow, deceived me, and, therefore, I have lost my rights and have been driven in exile from all the habitable world to be shut up here. 
[173] Some I marched into the theatre and ordered them to be maltreated before the eyes of their bitterest enemies unjustly, and, therefore, justly was I maltreated in my miserable soul rather than in my body, with the utmost contumely; I was not indeed marched into one theatre or one city but was paraded through all Italy to Brundisium and through all the Peloponnese to Corinth and past Attica and the islands to Andros my prison. 
[174] And I have a clear conviction that this is not the limit of my misfortunes but there are others in reserve to complete the sum and counterbalance all that I did. I killed some and when others killed them took no steps to punish the murderers. Some were stoned, some while still alive were burnt to death or dragged through the middle of the market-place till nothing at all was left of their bodies. 
[175] That their avenging furies await me I know full well. The ministers of punishment are already as it were standing at the barriers and press forward eager for my blood; every day or rather every hour I die in anticipation and suffer many deaths instead of the final one.” 
[176] He often became frightened and scared and while the limbs and members of his body shivered and shuddered, his soul shaken with his pantings and palpitations quailed with dread. For the one thing which is naturally capable of consoling human life, the comforter hope, he had lost. 
[177] No favourable omen was vouchsafed to him, only all of evil omen, sinister sounds and voices, his waking hours spent in weariness, his sleep full of terrors, his solitude as the solitude of the beasts of the field. Then was life in the crowd what he craved for most? No, staying in a city was most hateful of all. Did his lone rural life, a slur though it was, bring safety? No, danger menacing with shameless insistence. Someone approaches quietly, he suspects him: “He is plotting something against me,” 
[178] he says. “This one who comes walking fast surely has no other purpose for his hurry than to pursue me. This bland agreeable person is laying a snare. This frank talker is showing his contempt. My food and drink are given to me as to animals to keep them for the slaughter. 
[179] How long shall I steel my heart against all these misfortunes? Yet I know that I do not boldly face death. For my destiny in its malignancy does not permit me to cut abruptly the thread of my wretched life, because there is still a huge stock of deadly ills which it treasures against me as boons to those whom I treacherously murdered.”

Chapter 21

[180] Such were the wild thoughts that he revolved as he waited anxiously for the fated end. And continual pangs kept his soul reeling in confusion. But Gaius, naturally ruthless and never satisfied with the revenges he had taken, did not like some others show clemency to those who had been punished once, but always in his unceasing anger was preparing some great new blow to inflict upon them. He hated Flaccus especially, so much so that in his dislike of his name he looked askance at all who shared it with him. 
[181] He was often seized with regret that he had condemned him to exile instead of death and censured his intercessor Lepidus, in spite of the respect which he had for him, so that Lepidus was prostrate with fear of finding himself punished. For he naturally dreaded that by helping to lighten the sentence of another he would himself incur one still more severe. 
[182] So as no one had any longer the courage to plead for mercy Gaius allowed his fierce passions to range unsoftened and unbridled, passions which were not blunted, as they should be, by time, but grew still more sharp-edged like relapses in bodily disease, which are more severe than those which preceded them. 
[183] And so they say that one night as he lay awake his thoughts turned upon the exiles of high rank, how though nominally they were supposed to be people in misfortune they had really secured a life of release from business, of tranquillity and true liberty. 
[184] He proposed also to change the title from exile to residence abroad, “for,” said he, “the banishment of such people is a sort of residence abroad where they have abundance of necessaries and can exist released from business and in general well-being and it is preposterous that they should luxuriate in the enjoyment of peace and the advantages of the philosopher’s life.” 
[185] He then ordered that the most distinguished and those who were held in the highest account should be put to death and gave a list of the names headed by that of Flaccus. When the persons appointed to execute him arrived at Andros, Flaccus happened to be passing from the country to the town, and the party from the harbour came forward to meet him. 
[186] When they were at some distance they saw him and he saw them and thence inferred the purpose which was urging them on. For the soul of every man is highly prophetic, particularly in distressing circumstances. He struck out from the road and raced away from them through the rough ground forgetting, perhaps, that Andros is not the mainland but an island in which speed is no use since it is enclosed by the sea. For there are only two possible alternatives, to go on farther and fall into the sea or to be caught on arriving at the very edge. 
[187] And surely if we compare two evils it were better to perish on the land than in the sea, since nature has assigned the land to men and all the creatures that dwell on it as the most appropriate place not only in their lifetime but at their death; it received them when they first came into existence, it should also receive them when they finally depart from life. 
[188] The assassins never lost a moment in pursuing him. When they caught him some of them at once dug a pit while others violently dragged him along, resisting and screaming and struggling hard, the result of which was that as wild beasts do, he ran upon the blows and had his whole body pierced with wounds. 
[189] For, as he clutched hold of the slaughterers and was so entangled in the scramble with them that they had no room to apply their swords directly but dealt their blows downwards and sidewards, he caused himself to suffer more severely, and with hands, feet, head, breast and sides slashed and cut to bits, he lay carved like a sacrificial victim. For it was the will of justice that the butcheries which she wrought on his single body should be as numerous as the number of the Jews whom he unlawfully put to death. 
[190] The whole place was flooded with the blood which poured out like a fountain from the many veins which one after the other were severed, while as his corpse was dragged into the pit which had been dug, most of the parts fell asunder as the ligaments which bind the whole body together in one had been rent. 
[191] Such was the fate of Flaccus also, who thereby became an indubitable proof that the help which God can give was not withdrawn from the nation of the Jews.

Appendix

APPENDIX TO <i>IN FLACCUM</i>
§ 1. <i>Sejanus</i>. According to Eus. <i>Hist. Eccl.</i> ii. 5, Philo related in his “Embassy” that “Sejanus, who had the greatest influence with the Emperor, was zealous to destroy utterly the whole Jewish nation.” In <i>Legatio</i> 160 he says that Sejanus brought charges against the Jews in Rome, the falsity of which was recognized by Tiberius after Sejanus’s fall and execution. Sejanus had invented these calumnies because he knew that the Jews would defend the Emperor against his treason. I have not seen elsewhere any support of these statements.
§ 10. (Tiberius Gemellus.) Gemellus was the son of Drusus, Tiberius’s son who had died in A.D. 23. He was therefore one of the γνήσιοι while his cousin Gaius was the son of Germanicus, Tiberius’s nephew, who had been adopted (θετός) into the Gens Julia. The story of the murder of Gemellus, or, more strictly speaking, his enforced suicide, is told by Philo in <i>Legatio</i> 22–31. Philo is somewhat inaccurate in speaking of him as κοινωνὸς τῆς ἀρχῆς here and in <i>Legatio</i> 23, 28. Tiberius had left his property to the two equally, but had said nothing about the succession to the principate. This, however, might be taken to imply that he wished the two to share the sovereignty, and Gemellus’s partisans, no doubt, claimed that this was his rightful position. Indeed, though Gaius obtained from the senate the cancellation of the will, he according to Philo declared his wish that Gemellus should ultimately be his partner, but that as he was a mere child (he was actually 17 or 18, and only seven years younger than Gaius), he needed to be educated for this and he therefore made him his adopted son.
There seems to be another inaccuracy in the statement that Gaius’s mother, Agrippina, was put to death. She and her son, Nero, had been condemned and exiled in A.D. 33. The statement made by both Tacitus and Suetonius that she starved herself to death seems to be generally accepted, though Tac. <i>Ann.</i> v. 25 suggests that possibly food was refused her.
§ 20. <i>Dionysius</i>. Dionysius is presumed to be identical with the Gaius Julius Dionysius or Dionysius son of Theon, mentioned in the recently discovered letter of Claudius, see the text with translation and commentary in H.$I.$Bell’s <i>Jews and Christians in Egypt</i>, pp. 23 ff. The letter was written in answer to the embassy sent by the Alexandrians, primarily to congratulate Claudius on his accession, but also to present their defence for the recent anti-Jewish disturbances. Dionysius is named among the ambassadors and also the zeal with which he pleaded his case is especially mentioned.Our knowledge of Isidorus and Lampo is not confined to the activities described by Philo, see Introduction, pp. 299 f. They reappear in another interesting document. This is a fragment of what Bell calls the Alexandrian Propagandists’ Literature, known as the “pagan acts of the martyrs.” This fragment probably belongs to some twelve years later. It appears that Isidorus, now gymnasiarch, and Lampo are still the protagonists of the Greek cause. They have brought charges against Agrippa the Second, but have lost their case and are themselves put to death. In this literature the arch-rogues and villains have become the true patriots who with-stand the pernicious influence of the Jews and the tyranny of Rome.
In another fragment, apparently of the same type, described by Box, p. Ivi, Dionysius appears with Isidorus as having an interview with Flaccus, in which they procure from him a permit to leave the country. This does not appear to do more than confirm Philo’s statement that Dionysius was one of Isidorus’s leading supporters.
§ 25. <i>Agrippa</i>. Agrippa the First is a subject of a long biographical notice in Jos. <i>Ant.</i> xviii. 6 and other notices elsewhere, but he is also well known to multitudes, who have never heard of Josephus, from Acts 12. He is the Herod who figures there as persecutor of the early church and dying miserably. A grandson of Herod the Great, his early life was one of extravagance, and when reduced to destitution he had on a visit to Alexandria borrowed a large sum from Philo’s brother, the alabarch Alexander. This visit is mentioned by Philo in § 28, though he discreetly says nothing of the circumstances. At Rome he had made friends with Gaius but got into trouble with Tiberius and was imprisoned. But Gaius on his accession released him and gave him as Philo tells us the territory which Philip had ruled as tetrarch as well as the title of king. Philip, the “best of the Herods,” had died three years before and Tiberius had annexed the tetrarchy to the province of Syria, but under the condition that the revenues should be kept separate, and these presumably fell into Agrippa’s hands. Josephus adds that Gaius gave him at the same time the tetrarchy of Lysanias, and, finally, after Gaius’s death, Claudius gave him also Judea and Samaria, so that he held all the dominions over which his grandfather had ruled. Agrippa’s loyalty to his nation appears again in <i>Legatio</i> 261–332, where Gaius while praising his candour blames him for his complaisance (ἀρέσκεια) to his fellow nationals, thus agreeing with the author of the Acts when he tells us how Agrippa slew James the brother of John with a sword, and because he saw that it pleased (ἀρεστόν ἐστι) the Jews proceeded further to take Peter also.
§ 45. (κατάλυσις.) Up to this point we should think that the overthrow or destruction consisted in the desecration caused by the installation of the images. But in § 53 this is expanded into “Flaccus seizes them without even leaving them their name.” And in <i>Legatio</i> 132 the Alexandrians, thinking that Gaius would approve their action, destroy and burn all the synagogues in which the Jews did not make an effective resistance and installed the images in the others. How are we to reconcile these statements? I should suggest as most probable that Flaccus had merely ostentatiously abstained from interfering when the Alexandrians tried to install the images by force. These attacks resulted in riotous conflicts in which many synagogues actually were destroyed, and the statement quoted above from § 53 merely means that the Jews felt that they had lost their holy houses and considered that Flaccus was ultimately responsible. On the other hand, H.$I.$Bell in <i>Cambridge Ancient History</i>, vol. x. p. 310, takes the statement in § 53 more literally and says that Flaccus forbade the Jews the exercise of their religion, closing the synagogues. See also note on § 54.§ 48. (Footnote <i>a</i>, p. 328.) When I wrote this note I had not sufficiently considered Box’s translation and note. He translates “they have no sacred precincts in which they could set forth their gratitude” and gives as a note “the Jews of the Diaspora had no temples,” <i>i.e.</i> the προσευχαί are not ἱεροὶ περίβολοι, whereas I understand Philo to say that they are holy until they are desecrated. His explanation has the great merit that he gets rid of the difficulty mentioned in my footnote, but it seems to me to raise other difficulties. It is true that the synagogues were not temples, that is to say sacrifices could not be offered in them, but that they were ἱεροὶ περίβολοι is implied by the very fact that they could be desecrated. Box seems also to suggest a distinction between the pagan temples and the synagogues in that inscriptions to benefactors could not be placed in them, and loyalty could only be shown by dedications and emblems in honour of the imperial power. I dare say he may have evidence of this, but it seems rash to assume that the phrase ἐνδιαθήσονται τὸ εὐχάριστον would not apply to dedications and emblems. If it does not, then neither were the Jews deprived of the means of showing their loyalty, for they never had it. I still prefer my view and explain the μόνοι ἀπεστεροῦντο to mean that the Jews were the only people who would be deprived of their places of worship by the introduction of images and thus also be deprived of the means of showing their gratitude. It is badly and obscurely expressed, but so is much in these sections.
§ 54. (The edict.) The purport of this is obscure and I can do little more than record some recent suggestions on the subject. Box, p. xliv, looks upon it as a pronouncement that the Jews would retain only legal rights assured by a competent authority, and that every merely prescriptive right or concession would be withdrawn. Among these were the right to live in other quarters than the one originally granted, and the privilege of being beaten by blades, mentioned in § 78. Balsdon, <i>The Emperor Gaius</i>, p. 132, says that the Alexandrians pleaded that the Jews had no right to live in Alexandria at all and that what Flaccus did was to lay down that this right was limited as above. I do not know what evidence he has that the Alexandrians proposed anything so extreme. Both these views imply, I suppose, that when Philo says that the edict deprived the Jews of their political rights in general, it is merely a rhetorical exaggeration.
The fact that the edict was issued a few days after the demand for desecrating the synagogues suggests that the two things are connected. Accordingly Bell in <i>Cambridge Ancient History</i>, vol. x. p. 310, says that Flaccus welcomed the proposal and on the inevitable refusal by the Jews branded them as aliens and intruders. This hint started the pogrom, the blame for which Flaccus cast on the Jews and in consequence closed the synagogues. Box and Balsdon, so far as I can judge, would hold that these two things were separate though practically simultaneous attacks organized by the Alexandrians.
Another possibility, more or less favoured by Bell, in his <i>Jews and Christians</i>, p. 16, is that at the bottom of both, but kept in the background by Philo, is a claim made by the Jews of full citizenship. This may have been formally made by the Jews or formally repudiated by the Alexandrians; if so, the edict is exactly what it stated, a specific answer to a specific question. The Jews are aliens and incomers and, as Claudius worded it some years afterwards, live in a city “which is not their own.” It need not, though it may have added, “but there are certain ancient privileges which they may retain.” In this case, the two things have the very close connexion, that the Alexandrians strengthened their case by bringing out the disloyal refusal of the Jews to give the honours to the Emperor which the true citizens give.
§ 56. <i>Drusilla</i>. The mourning for Drusilla is not the ordinary tribute to the death of a royal person. She was especially beloved by Gaius, who was believed to live incestuously with her, and on her death he proclaimed a <i>iustitium</i>, during which it was a capital crime to laugh, bathe, dine, with parents or wife or children (Suet. <i>Gaius</i> 24).
§ 130. <i>Great expenses of the office</i>. “The gymnasiarch had to maintain and pay the persons who were preparing themselves for the games and contests in the public festivals, to provide them with oil and perhaps with the wrestlers’ dust, also to adorn the gymnasium or the places where the <i>agones</i> took place” (<i>Dict. of Ant.</i>). This is said of Athens, but the statement here and the particular expense of the oil mentioned in <i>De Prov.</i> 46 show that much the same held in Alexandria. Bell (<i>Camb. Anc. History</i>, vol. x. p. 299) says that in the capitals of each nome in Egypt the Roman rule established a superior class known as the Gymnasium Class and “only members of this were entitled to that education in the gymnasium which was as much the hall-mark of social superiority as a public school education has been in England.” If this is to be extended to Alexandria, we can understand that the official who catered for so select a body would naturally feel bound not to skimp the expenses. Lampo’s protest is perhaps to his credit.
§ 131. (εἰσάγων ὡς or εἰσαγωγέως.) Mr. Box is too modest over this emendation; textually it is obviously satisfactory, getting rid of a serious, if not a fatal, difficulty, at a minimum cost. In his note in <i>Class. Quart.</i> 1935, he refers to papyri for the use of the term εἰσαγωγεύς. I am not sure that these help him as far as the functions are concerned, but they show, at any rate, that the word was in use in Egypt, and if so it is only natural that the persons who εἰσάγουσι τὰς δίκσς should be called εἰσαγωγεῖς. He quotes also a parallel from Lucian, which is worth quoting for itself, though since Lucian does not actually use the word εἰσαγωγεύς it does not strengthen his case. Lucian, <i>Apol.</i> 12, says that he at one time held a post in Egypt, which was important, lucrative, and likely to lead to high promotion. In this he introduced the cases (εἰσάγει τὰς δίκας), assigned the order, taking minutes of the proceedings (ὑπομνήματα τῶν πραττομένων καὶ λεγομένων γράφεσθαι), arranged (ῥυθμίζειν) the speeches of the pleaders, preserved the decisions of the magistrates, clearly, faithfully and accurately, and transmitted them to be kept for ever.
§§ 136, 137. (κλίνη and κλινάρχης.) On the question of the exact meaning of these terms, the lexicon speaks with uncertain sound. The original L.$&amp; S.$gives for the second “one who takes the first place,” with reference to this passage. The revised repeats this misleading, indeed, erroneous entry, but adds (for κλίναρχος) “president of an Isiac fraternity.” For κλίνη the original edition noted ἱερὰ κλίνη, the <i>lectisternium</i> or <i>pulvinar deorum</i> of the Romans,” and the revised while repeating part of this has added the example κλίνη τοῦ κυρίου Σαράπιδος, and finally κλίνη is used “generally for a banquet.” Under πρωτοκλίναρχος, a word unknown to the original edition, it gives “president of a κλίνη, <i>i.e.</i> a religious association.” This and the other references added by the revised are all from papyri or inscriptions. Stephanus gives nothing on the subject; Box adds more references from similar sources. The natural conclusion seems to be that originally the couch is that on which the divine image is laid (<i>cf.</i> the couch of Adonis in the fifteenth <i>Idyll</i> of Theocritus), and the extensions to the festal meeting and further to the associates themselves are quite intelligible. The present passage suggests that the religious side was often left very much in the background. The words are untranslatable, “couch” is meaningless, and the substitution of “divan” on the grounds that the word connotes both a couch and a collection of people is perhaps not much improvement.§ 138. (ἀλειφόβιος.) A rare word of which only one other example from a fragment of Aristophanes is cited. Hesychius explains it as πένης. L.$&amp; S.$regards it as a contemptuous term for ἀλειπτής or the menial serving an ἀλειπτής, and so Bekker’s <i>Anecdota</i> 382. 17 τὸν περὶ παλαίστραν ἀναστρεφόμενον καὶ ὑπηρετοῦντα.§ 139. (Anapaests.) It certainly seems that this term may be applied to verse which is not anapaestic in the regular sense, though it does not follow that it connotes ribald verse in general. The Greek ear could find in certain metres and rhythms, as in music, something undignified and suited to burlesque, and these are called anapaestic, presumably because anapaests often predominated in them. So Demetrius, <i>De Eloc.</i> 189, speaks of σύνθεσις ἀναπαιστικὴ καὶ μάλιστα ἐοικυῖα τοῖς κεκλασμένοις καὶ ἀσέμνοις μέτροις. So it is applied to the parabasis in the Old Comedy even to the parts which are not anapaestic (see several examples in Stephanus). L.$&amp; S.$revised notes its special application to “ribald and satirical” verse and cites two examples. The first, Plut. <i>Per.</i> 33, consists of regular anapaests. In the second, from Dion Cassius 65. 8, the Alexandrians taunt Vespasian: and, though Titus appeases his anger somewhat, still continue. Their first refrain is ἓξ ὀβόλους προσαιτεῖς and the second αυγγιγνώσκομεν αὐτῷ· οὐ γὰμ οἶδε καισαρεύειν. Here only the first words of the second piece are anapaestic, but Vespasian is said to have been enraged not only by the substance of what they said, but ἐκ τοῦ κατακεκλασμένου καὶ ἀναπαίστου. Here κατακεκλασμένου, like κεκλασμένοις in the quotation from Demetrius, indicates something lacking the proper seriousness and dignity. Cornutus 30 seems to equate the “anapaestic” with the iambic, which also often indicates a lampoon. He derives θρίαμβος from θροεῖν and ἰαμβίζειν and then adds ὅθεν καὶ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τῶν πολεμίων θριάμβοις πολλοῖς ἀναπαίστοις σκώπτοντες χρῶνται.§ 141. (Subject of προσαναμάττεσθαι.) The use of these compounds of -μάττομαι is somewhat uncertain. The only one listed by Leisegang is ἐναπομάττομαι. Of his ten examples of this seven are middle in the sense of “receiving the impression,” but three, namely, <i>Quod Deus</i> 43, <i>Mos.</i> ii. 76 and <i>Spec. Leg.</i> i. 47, have an active sense of “giving the impression.” In other compounds I have noted ἀναμάττομαι <i>De Virt.</i> 24 and <i>De Aet.</i> 2, both in the sense of receiving, also ἀπομάττομαι <i>De Virt.</i> 207. L.$&amp; S.$gives our word as = “besmirch in addition,” clearly taking ἀγνωμοσύνην as subject. No doubt this is possible, but the mass of evidence as far as I can judge is in favour of τοὔνομʼ.§ 162. (σφδφᾴζειν.) A favourite word with Philo. It is badly dealt with in Leisegang’s index, which though frequently missing an example or two is generally near enough to completeness to enable one to decide how Philo uses the word. Here he has listed five examples, namely, <i>De Cher.</i> 36, <i>De Mig.</i> 156, <i>De Abr.</i> 257, <i>De Virt.</i> 128 and <i>Quod Omn. Prob.</i> 39. In addition to these I have noted eight, some from Siegfried, and probably there are others, possibly many. For the use of other students I give the references: <i>De Ebr.</i> 121, <i>Mos.</i> i. 170, <i>Spec. Leg.</i> iv. 81, <i>De Virt.</i> 30, <i>De Praem.</i> 140, and in this volume besides this passage <i>Flacc.</i> 18 and 180, also <i>Legatio</i> 184. Only in <i>De Praem.</i> 140 is bodily struggling necessarily implied and in most of them it would be grotesque.