The life and work of St. Paul

QAItJS AND THE JEWS PEACH OF THE CHURCH. 141
Flaccus was among the earliest victims, and Philo narrates with too gloating
a vindictiveness the horrible manner in which he was hewn to pieces in a ditch
by the despot's emissaries.1
Gains had begun his reign with moderation, bnt the sudden change from
the enforced simplicity of his tutelage to the boundless luxuries and lusts of
his autocracy the sudden plunge into all things which, as Philo a says,
"
destroy both soul and body and all the bonds which unite and strengthen
the two "
brought on the illness which altered the entire organism of his
brain. Up to that time he had been a vile and cruel man ; thenceforth he
was a mad and sanguinary monster. It was after this illness, and the immediately
subsequent murders of Tiberius Gemellus, Macro, and Marcus
Silanus, which delivered him from all apprehension of rivalry or restraint,
that he began most violently to assert his godhead. His predecessors would
have regarded it as far less impious to allow themselves or their fortunes to
be regarded as divine, than to arrogate to themselves the actual style and
attributes of existing deities. 3 But disdaining all mere demi-gods like Tro-
phonius and Amphiaraus, Gains began to appear in public, first in the guise
of Hercules, or Bacchus, or one of the Dioscuri, and then as Apollo, or Mars,
or Mercury, or even Venus (!), and demanded that choruses should be sung in
his honour under these attributes ; and, lastly, he did not hesitate to assert his
perfect equality with Jupiter himself. The majority of the Romans, partly
out of abject terror, partly out of contemptuous indifference, would feel little
difficulty in humouring these vagaries ; but the Jews, to their eternal honour,
refused at all costs to sanction this frightful concession of divine honours to
the basest of mankind. As there were plenty of parasites in the Court of
Gains who would lose no opportunity of indulging their spite against the
Jews, an ingrained hatred of the whole nation soon took possession of his
mind. The Alexandrians were not slow to avail themselves of this antipathy.
They were well aware that the most acceptable flattery to the Emperor, and
the most overwhelming insult to the Jews, was to erect images of Gaius in
Jewish synagogues, and they not only did this, but even in the superb and
*
celebrated Chief Synagogue of Alexandria they erected a bronze statue in
an old gilt quadriga which had once been dedicated to Cleopatra.
Of all these proceedings Gaius was kept informed, partly by his delighted
study of Alexandrian newspapers, which Philo says that he preferred to all
other literature, and partly by the incessant insults against the Jews distilled
into his ears by Egyptian buffoons like the infamous Helicon. 6
The sufferings of the Jews in Alexandria at last became so frightful that
they despatched the venerable Philo with four others on an embassy to the
1 It Is not impossible that Herod Antipas may have perished in consequence of thia
mime order of Gaius. It is true that Suetonius (Calig. 28) only says, "Misit circum
insulcu qui omnes (exsules) trucidarent
"
; but the cause would apply as much to all
political exiles, and Dion (lix. 18) distinctly says that he put Antipas to death (aTraf ).
The trial of Antipas took place at Puteoli shortly before the Philonian embassy, A.D. 39.
3 De Leg. 2. * See Excursus XII., "Apotheosis of Roman Emperors."
The *
Dvapleuaton,
Philo, Leg. John ad Gai, TXT.