Ancient Historians · Part 17 · Philo and Josephus · B2–C1
Philo the Historian
Part 17 of Ancient Historians: Sophia tells Philo something about his own future. Nearly forty years from now, Alexandria will be torn by violence against its Jews; the Roman prefect will look the other way; and Philo, by then an old man, will lead an embassy to Rome to plead with the emperor Gaius, whom we call Caligula. And he will write it all down, in two books that are among the earliest eyewitness accounts of persecution ever written. Formal petitions and reported speech (we respectfully request, they complained that, he demanded to know), and the language of rights and justice, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria. The violence is described briefly.
Philo, we have spent many evenings with historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius. Tonight I am going to tell you about another historian, one who has not written anything yet. He is sitting in this room.
Me? I write about Moses and the meaning of the Law, not about history.
Not yet, Philo. But nearly forty years from now, something terrible will happen to your people in this city, and you will be the one who goes to the emperor to ask for justice, and the one who writes it down. It is a hard story, and I will tell it carefully. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of petitions and reports: how to ask the powerful for justice, and how to record what was said.
The real Philo of Alexandria (about 20 BCE–50 CE) is best known as a philosopher who explained the Jewish scriptures in the language of Greek philosophy, often reading them as allegories. But he also wrote two works of contemporary history, about events he lived through: Against Flaccus and The Embassy to Gaius. They are among the earliest surviving eyewitness accounts of an attack on a Jewish community.
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