On the Embassy to Gaius: The First Part of the Treatise on Virtues
Philo of Alexandria
Section 119
About this work
Philo’s account of an embassy to the emperor Gaius on behalf of Alexandrian Jews. It describes threats to Jewish communities and the crisis surrounding the emperor’s demands for divine honors.
- Author
- Philo of Alexandria
- Date
- First century AD; dates vary by treatise
- Genre
- Theological Treatise
- Textual language
- Greek
- Translator
- C. D. Yonge
- Translation / Edition
- C. D. Yonge translation, first published 1854.
XVII. (119) Therefore a most terrible and irreconcileable war was prepared against our nation, for what could be a more terrible evil to a slave than a master who was an enemy? And his subjects are the slaves of the emperor, even if they were not so to any one of the former emperors, because they governed with gentleness and in accordance with the laws, but now that Gaius had eradicated all feelings of humanity from his soul, and had admired lawlessness (for looking upon himself as the law, he abrogated all the enactments of other lawgivers in every state and country as so many vain sentences), we were properly to be looked upon not only as slaves, but as the very lowest and most dishonoured of slaves, now that our ruler was changed into our master.