Philo

“ How long shall I, hardhearted that I am, bear up against such terrible calamities? I well know that I am afraid of death, since out of cruelty the Deity will not punish me violently, to cut short my miserable life, in order to load me to excess with irremediable miseries, which he treasures up against me, to do a pleasure to those whom I treacherously put to death. ”

“ I omit to mention, that even if they had committed the most countless iniquities, nevertheless the governor ought, out of respect for the season, to have delayed their punishment; for with all rulers, who govern any state on constitutional principles, and who do not seek to acquire a character for audacity, but who do really honour their benefactors, it is the custom to punish no one, even of those who have been lawfully condemned, until the famous festival and assembly, in honour of the birth-day of the illustrious emperor, has passed. ”

“ We have been describing the evidence of hostile and unfriendly men, who seek to injure us with such artifice, that even when injuring us they may not appear to have been acting iniquitously, and yet that we who are injured by them cannot resist with safety to ourselves; for, my good men, it does not contribute to the honour of the emperor to abrogate the laws, to disturb the national customs of a people, to insult those who live in the same country, and to teach those who dwell in other cities to disregard unanimity and tranquillity. ”

“ These things were but a shadow and no real things, imitations of reality and not a real truth, which makes falsehood evident; for as after we have awakened we find none of those things which appeared to us in our dreams, but all such things have fled in a body and disappeared, so too, all that brilliant prosperity which I formerly enjoyed has now been extinguished in the briefest moment of time. ”

“ We are poor men, and are scarcely able to provide our daily expenses for absolute necessaries: and what evil did we ever suffer from the governor, so as to be forced to bear him ill will? Nay, but it is he who was the cause of all these things, the author of them all, he who is always envious of those who are in prosperity, and an adversary of all stability and wholesome law. ”

“ But the men of Alexandria being ready to burst with envy and ill-will (for the Egyptian disposition is by nature a most jealous and envious one and inclined to look on the good fortune of others as adversity to itself) , and being at the same time filled with an ancient and what I may in a manner call an innate enmity towards the Jews, were indignant at any one's becoming a king of the Jews, no less than if each individual among them had been deprived of an ancestral kingdom of his own inheritance. ”

“ And he was continually giving way to dread and to apprehension, and shaking with fear in every limb and every portion of his body, and his whole soul was trembling with terror and quivering with palpitation and agitation, as if nothing in the world could possibly be a comfort to the man now that he was deprived of all favourable hopes ”

“ And Isidorus was in no respect inferior to him in wickedness, being a man of the populace, a low demagogue, one who had continually studied to throw everything into disorder and confusion, an enemy to all peace and stability, very clever at exciting seditions and tumults which had no existence before, and at inflaming and exaggerating such as were already excited, taking care always to keep about him a disorderly and promiscuous mob of all the refuse of the people, ready for every kind of atrocity, which he had divided into regular sections as so many companies of soldiers. ”

“ I praise Flaccus, not because it is right to praise an enemy, but in order to make his wickedness more conspicuous; for pardon is given to a man who does wrong from ignorance of what is right; but he who does wrong knowingly has no excuse, being already condemned by the tribunal of his own conscience. ”

“ Let us not smile; let us look sad: here comes the censor and monitor; the all-wise man, he who is beginning now to be the schoolmaster of a full-grown man, and of an emperor, after time itself has separated him from and discarded the tutors of his earliest infancy. ”

“ And when they had a scarcity of fuel, they collected faggots of green wood, and slew them by the smoke rather than by fire, contriving a still more miserable and protracted death for those unhappy people, so that their bodies lay about promiscuously in every direction half burnt, a grievous and most miserable sight. ”

“ But now the evils which were heaped upon our people were so excessive and inordinate, that if a person were desirous to use appropriate language, he would never call them insults of assaults, but, as it appears to me, he would actually be wholly at a loss for suitable expressions, on account of the enormity of the cruelties now newly invented against them, so that if the treatment which men experience from enemies who have subdued them in war, however implacable they may be by nature, were to be compared with that to which the Jews were subjected, it would appear most merciful. ”

“ Our houses of prayer are manifestly incitements to all the Jews in every part of the habitable world to display their piety and loyalty towards the house of Augustus; and if they are destroyed from among us, what other place, or what other manner of showing that honour, will be left to us? (50) For if we were to neglect the opportunity of adhering to our national customs when it is afforded to us, we should deserve to meet with the severest punishment, as not giving any proper or adequate return for the benefits which we have received ”

“ And those who did these things, mimicked the sufferers, like people employed in the representation of theatrical farces; but the relations and friends of those who were the real victims, merely because they sympathized with the misery of their relations, were led away to prison, were scourged, were tortured, and after all the ill treatment which their living bodies could endure, found the cross the end of all, and the punishment from which they could not escape. ”

“ There are a vast number of parties in the city whose association is founded in no one good principle, but who are united by wine, and drunkenness, and revelry, and the offspring of those indulgencies, insolence ”

“ Now, though I desire to mention a circumstance which took place at that time, I am in doubt whether to do so or not, lest if it should be looked upon as unimportant, it may appear to take off from the enormity of these great iniquities; but even if it is unimportant in itself, it is nevertheless an indication of no trifling wickedness of disposition. There are different kinds of scourges used in the city, distinguished with reference to the deserts or crimes of those who are about to be scourged. ”

“ The fact is that all these circumstances are an undeniable evidence that Flaccus was a participator in all this abuse; for he who might have punished it with the most extreme severity, and entirely checked it, and who yet took no steps to restrain it, was clearly convicted of having permitted and encouraged it; but whenever an ungoverned multitude begins a course of evil doing it never desists, but proceeds from one wickedness to another, continually doing some monstrous thing. ”

“ I have known instances before now of men who had been crucified when this festival and holiday was at hand, being taken down and given up to their relations, in order to receive the honours of sepulture, and to enjoy such observances as are due to the dead; for it used to be considered, that even the dead ought to derive some enjoyment from the natal festival of a good emperor, and also that the sacred character of the festival ought to be regarded. ”

“ Some persons even, going still great and greater lengths in the iniquity and license of their barbarity, disdained all blunter weapons, and took up the most efficacious arms of all, fire and iron, and slew many with the sword, and destroyed not a few with flames. (68) And the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants. ”

“ He is invested with a greater dignity of honour and glory than you. He attracts all eyes towards himself when they see the array of sentinels and bodyguards around him adorned with silvered and gilded arms. (31) For ought he to have come into the presence of another governor, when it was in his power to have sailed over the sea, and so to have arrived in safety at his own government? ”

“ They say that on one occasion Gaius, being awake at night, began to turn his mind to the magistrates and officers who were in banishment, and who in name indeed were looked upon as unfortunate, but who in reality had now thus acquired a life free from trouble, and truly tranquil and free. (184) And he gave a new name to this banishment, calling it an emigration, "For," said he, "it is only a kind of emigration the banishment of these men, inasmuch as they have all the necessaries of life in abundance, and are able to live in tranquillity, and stability, and peace. ”

“ But sometimes indeed, in the deepest twilight of the dawn, when every one else was still in bed, so that he could be seen by no one whatever, he would go forth out of the city and spend the entire day in the desolate part of the island, turning away if any one seemed likely to meet him ”

“ And when the men arrived at Andros, who had been commanded to put him to death, Flaccus happened, just at that moment, to be coming from his farm into the city, and they, on their way up from the port, met him, (186) and while yet at a distance they perceived and recognised one another; at which he, perceiving in a moment the object for which they were come (for every man's soul is very prophetic, especially of such as are in misfortune) , burning out of the road, fled and ran away over the rough ground, forgetting, perhaps, that Andros was an island and not the continent. ”

“ Flaccus Avillius succeeded Sejanus in his hatred of and hostile designs against the Jewish nation. He was not, indeed, able to injure the whole people by open and direct means as he had been, inasmuch as he had less power for such a purpose, but he inflicted the most intolerable evils on all who came within his reach. Moreover, though in appearance he only attacked a portion of the nation, in point of fact he directed his aims against all whom he could find anywhere, proceeding more by art than by force ”

“ Enemies, indeed, plunder their conquered foes of their money, and lead away multitudes in captivity, having incurred the same risk of losing all that they had if they themselves had been defeated. Not but that in all such cases there are very many persons for whom their relations and friends put down a ransom, and who are thus emancipated from captivity, inasmuch as though their enemies could not be worked upon by compassion, they could by love of money. ”

“ Therefore, in a comparison of evils, destruction by land must be preferable to destruction by sea, since nature has made the land more closely akin to man, and to all terrestrial animals, not only while they are alive, but even after they are dead, in order that the same element may receive both their primary generation and their last dissolution. ”

“ But he committed this violation of the laws at the very season of this festival, and punished men who had done no wrong; though certainly, if he ever determined to punish them, he ought to have done so at a subsequent time; but he hastened, and would admit of no delay, by reason of his eagerness to please the multitude who was opposed to them, thinking that in this way he should be able, more easily, to gain them over to the objects which he had in view. ”

“ And I myself will bear witness in your favour to all that I know of the orderly disposition and obedient character of your nation, without exaggerating anything; for truth is the most sufficient of all panegyrics. ”

“ Knowing that the city had two classes of inhabitants, our own nation and the people of the country, and that the whole of Egypt was inhabited in the same manner, and that Jews who inhabited Alexandria and the rest of the country from the Catabathmos on the side of Libya to the boundaries of Ethiopia were not less than a million of men ”

“ Moreover, it has often happened that enemies have granted to those who have fallen in battle the honour of funeral rites, those who were gentle and humane burying them at their own expense, and those who have carried on their enmity even against the dead giving up their bodies to their friends under a truce, in order that they might not be deprived of the last honour of all, the customary ceremonies of sepulture. ”

“ For no one country can contain the whole Jewish nation, by reason of its populousness; (46) on which account they frequent all the most prosperous and fertile countries of Europe and Asia, whether islands or continents, looking indeed upon the holy city as their metropolis in which is erected the sacred temple of the most high God, but accounting those regions which have been occupied by their fathers, and grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and still more remote ancestors, in which they have been born and brought up, as their country ”

“ But when a magistrate begins to despair of his power of exerting authority, it follows inevitably, that his subjects must quickly become disobedient, especially those who are naturally, at every trivial or common occurrence, inclined to show insubordination, and, among people of such a disposition, the Egyptian nation is pre-eminent, being constantly in the habit of exciting great seditions from very small sparks. ”

“ The truth is, as I have said already, the whole business was a deliberate contrivance designed by the cruelty of Flaccus and of the multitude, in which even women were included; for they were dragged away as captives, not only in the market-place, but even in the middle of the theatre, and dragged upon the stage on any false accusation that might be brought against them with the most painful and intolerable insults ”

“ And though these were evils sufficiently intolerable, yet nevertheless they appear actually trifling when compared with those which were subsequently inflicted on them, for poverty indeed is a bitter evil, especially when it is caused by the machinations of one's enemies, still it is less than insult and personal ill treatment even of the slightest character. ”

“ From which circumstance, the simplicity of their daily manner of life was plainly seen: as they made no pretence to magnificence or delicate luxury; the nature of which things is to engender satiety, and satiety is apt to engender insolence, which is the beginning of all evils. (92) And indeed it was not a long time before that, that the arms had been taken away from the Egyptians throughout the whole country by a man of the name of Bassus, to whom Flaccus had committed this employment. ”

“ But it was not out of his own head alone, but also because of the commands and in consequence of the situation of the emperor that he sought and devised means to injure and oppress us; for after we had decreed by our votes and carried out by our actions all the honours to the emperor Gaius, which were either within our power or allowable by our laws, we brought the decree to him, entreating him that, as it was not permitted to us to send an embassy ourselves to bear it to the emperor, he would vouchsafe to forward it himself. ”