Logos

art, pornography and pompous and banal monument- before this. Raging mobs of animal worshippers andbuilding, chanting cultists were the battering ram of the priest-In the realm of philosophy, Aristotle--the bitter- hood class that wielded effective power in the empire.est enemy of Philo--was king. Since the revival of On this occasion, the Emperor Caligula, who fanciedthe anti-scientific cult of Aristotle by Sulla and the himself a god, presumed to have himself representedRoman oligarchy one hundred years before, the as Apollo, in whose likeness statues were carved ofdissipation of the Platonic tradition by Plato's unwor- the emperor.thy successors was complete. In the period after the Thus, at the peak of his career, Philo traveled tomaster's death in the mid-fourth century before Rome at the head of the embassy. He led the delega-Christ, the heirs of Plato's Academy had failed to tion in a humiliating quest for an audience with thereproduce themselves, and instead the perverse Stoic demented king. For months, from his own descripandEpicurean outlooks came to dominate the Roman tion, Philo would trail the emperor from palace tomind. In addition, for generations the cults and palace, from appointment to appointment. Time aftermystery religions of Isis and Osiris, of Magna Mater, time, the emperor's party would simply ignore theof Mithra, of Apollo had gradually insinuated them- Jews from Alexandria. Powerless and at the emperor'sselves into the Roman polity, in open alliance with _mercy, fearing that Caligula might order the wholethePeripatetic movement of Aristotle and the Stoics. sale execution of the Jews of Egypt, the delegationIt was into this bleak and barren landscape that led by Philo spent a frustrating season in RomePhilo determined to introduce his logos. At first waiting for some sign that Caligula would permitrestricted to a narrow circle of collaborators in Alex- Philo to speak. Finally, with a wave of his hand, theandria, then spreading into the Jewish populations emperor acceded to Philo's arguments--the Jewsaround the urban Mediterranean world, the logos of "seem to be people unfortunate rather than wickedPhilo finally established itself as the watchword for a for not believing that I have been endowed with thestate-building movement of elite Neoplatonists: the nature of deity," grumbled Gaius and the Jews wonChristians. a shaky but viable toleration. In Alexandria, the mobIn this section we will examine the process by was reined in.which Philo generated a virtual renaissance among Because of such experiences, Philo developed athe Jews of the Roman world, forging a humanist powerful and deep-seated hatred for the perpetratorsfaction among the Jews opposed to the Jerusaleum of the backwardness and bestiality that plagued EgyptTemple establishment. Then we look at the episte- and the empire. Philo was well aware of the fact thatmological basis of Philo's movement, to which we it was Egypt in which the cult of Isis was based, andowe our very existence, from which it spread its deadly venom throughoutWith the accession of Gaius Caligula to the the empire. And he was brutal in his denunciation ofthrone of Rome in 37 A.D., the always precarious the cults and mystery religions. With barbed wit,position of the Hellenized Jews of Egypt was pushed Philo declared that the Emperor Caligula, despite histo the extreme. The insane and sadistic Caligula, pompous declaration of his own divine nature, hadbacked by an unholy alliance of the Roman military found no little trouble in winning any substantialand oligarchy and incited by the priests of Isis, threw following among his subjects for the idea that he wasdown the gauntlet to the Jews of Egypt and Palestine. a god except, Philo said, among the Egyptians, whoThe emperor demanded that the Jews prove their were susceptible to it "by reason of their belief inallegiance to the empire by erecting his hideous statue animal worship."in each of their synagogues. When this calculated In a scathing commentary on the cult practices ofchallenge was refused, the mobs were turned loose, the Romans and their Egyptian priesthood, PhiloThe Jewish quarters of Alexandria were burned and wrote:plundered and homes ransacked by the rampagingcrowd. Tens of thousands of Alexandrian Jews were And the belittling of divine things is obvious toherded from their homes, and their property was those who have keen perception. For they holdconfiscated. Hundreds or even thousands ofJews were sacred a myriad of painted and sculptured forms;murdered. At the height of crisis, the Jews of Alex- they erect temples for them and provide altarsandria chose a delegation to travel to Rome for the with images and statues ... Such people theunpleasant task of attempting to reason with the sacred Scripture aptly compares to children bemadmanCaligula_ Named to lead the delegation was gotten of a harlot. For just as such children arePhilo, who recorded the mission in his Embassy to registered as having for their fathers all the menGaius.who the mother has had as lovers, since no onePogroms against the Jews occurred periodically knows the man who is their actual father, so the26 August 1980 / CAMPAIGNER