APPENDIX TO DE IOSEPHO
§ 3. στρατηγίας. It should perhaps be noted that the papyri (see L. & S. 1935) shew that στρατηγός was in common use as the title of a civil as well as military governor of a nome in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. But this hardly justifies its use as an antithesis to στρατηγός in the military sense.
§ 20. Less grievous to suffer wrong than to do it. This thought, which is, of course, one of the leading ideas of the Republic, is expressed in almost the same words as here Gorgias 469 c ἐλοίμην ἂν μᾶλλον ἀδικεῖσθαι ἢ ἀδικεῖν, ibid. 508 B ἀληθῆ ἄρα ἦν τὸ εἶναι τὸ ἀδικεῖν τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι, ὅσῳπερ αἴσχιον, τοσούτῳ κάκιον, and so again 509 c.
§ 28. Addition to nature. This idea of the superfluousness of the laws of the different states, which follows naturally on the Stoic doctrine of the law of nature, is expressed in the view attributed to Zeno by Plutarch, ἵνα μὴ κατὰ πόλεις μηδὲ κατὰ δήμους οἰκῶμεν, ἰδίοις ἕκαστοι διωρισμένοι δικαίοις, ἀλλὰ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἡγώμεθα δημότας καὶ πολίτας (S. V. F. i. 262). Compare also Chrysippus’s exposure of the ridiculous varieties in laws and customs, ibid. iii. 322.
§ 38. Statesmanship the household management of the general public. Compare the opening of Plato’s Politicus, particularly 259 c ἐπιστήμη μία περὶ πάντʼ ἐστὶ ταῦτα· ταύτην δὲ εἴτε βασιλικὴν εἴτε πολιτικὴν εἴτε οἰκονομικήν τις ὀνομάζοι μηδὲν αὐτῷ διαφερώμεθα. The idea is combated by Aristotle at the beginning of the Politics, but admitted by him of monarchy iii. 10.2 ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡ οἰκονομικὴ βασιλεία τις οἰκίας ἐστίν, οὕτως ἡ βασιλεία πόλεως … οἰκονομία.
§ 48. Seneca in his Phaedra has some fairly close parallels to these sections, put into the mouth of Hippolytus. Thus in 145 ff., supposing the crime remains undetected, “Quid ille qui mundum gerit?” Then 159 ff.:
sed ut secundus numinum abscondat favor
coitus nefandos utque contingat stupor
negata magnis sceleribus semper fides,
quid poena praesens, conscius mentis pavor
animusque culpa plenus et semet timens?
Considering the likeness of the themes, Philo may very possibly have had in mind some similar passage in the earlier and lost Hippolytus of Euripides, or the lost play of Sophocles on the same subject, on which Seneca’s play is based. It may be observed that the phrase ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν in 47 occurs in Sophocles, Oed. Tyr. 1385 in the same sort of context:
τοιάνδʼ ἐγὼ κηλῖδα μηνύσας ἐμὴν
ὀρθοῖς ἔμελλον ὄμμασιν τούτους ὁρᾶν;
See on this subject Dr. Martin Braun, Griechischer Roman und hellenische Geschichtsschreibung.
§ 62. Cooks and physicians. Another reminiscence of the Gorgias, where medicine is shewn as standing in the same relation to cookery as justice and legislation bear to the “flattery” of rhetoric, 464 D ff., also 500 B and 501 A.
§§ 125–147. Arnim in his Quellenstudien zu Philo von Alexandria discusses these sections in a chapter headed “Philo und Aenesidem.” In the first part of this chapter he deals with the reproduction of the “Tropes of Aenesidemus” in De Ebr. 171–205, and also with the close connexion of the philosophy of that sceptic with that of Heracleitus. His best, though not his only point, is the resemblance of the treatise of Plutarch De E apud Delphos, chap. xviii., a chapter in which Heracleitus is twice cited, and which is supposed to be Heracleitean throughout, to §§ 127–129 of De Iosepho. In both the same point is made that each successive stage of life from childhood to old age brings the death of the previous stage, and the same inference is drawn that we need not fear the final death.
However this may be, it should be noted that in the De Iosepho we do not find the same type of scepticism as in De Ebr., if indeed it can be called scepticism at all. Human life is a “dream,” it is “full of confusion, disorder, and uncertainty,” and men, as a whole, are incapable of knowledge, but the dream is interpreted by the true statesman. The same interpreter can give adequate guidance on moral questions, and though this is not perhaps opposed to the principles of the sceptics, who admitted probability as supplying a rule of conduct, it is very different from the view expressed in De Ebr. 197, that only the foolish will assert positively that any particular thing is just or prudent or honourable.
§ 168. βαθεῖ ἤθει. The exact meaning of this phrase is obscure. Cohn translates in tiefer Bewegung, Mangey profunda solertia. But neither of these fits in well with any sense of ἦθος known to me. The combination occurs again in Quod Omn. Prob. 144, where to illustrate the advisability of answering threats mildly the story is told of the slave-musician Antigenidas that when one of his rivals in a rage threatened to buy him, he replied, βαθεῖ ἤθει, “then I shall be able to teach you to play the flute.” There perhaps the phrase = “very wittily,” a sense which ἤθει or ἐν ἤθει certainly sometimes bears; or it may mean “very mildly,” cf. τοῖς ἐν ἤθει καὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς λεγομένοις, Plutarch, De Poet. Aud. 20 E, and ἐν ἤθει καὶ μετʼ εὐνοίας προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι, ibid. De Adul. 73 E. But this last does not suit our passage, for though Joseph’s words are milder than in his first speech, they are described as angry threats in § 170. For the rendering suggested in the footnote, it may be argued that ἦθος in dramatic criticism often denotes the mood or air which the speaker or writer assumes. The fullest treatment known to me of the numerous shades of meaning which the word has is to be found in Rutherford’s Chapter in the History of Annotation, see index, s.v. ἦθος.
§ 219. προβλήτους. The absence of any legal reference is not fatal to the suggestion made in the footnote, as if the owner’s title was not disputed, there would be no need in law for differentiation according to the method in which it had been acquired.
I would suggest also for consideration προκλήτους, i.e. “who had been offered for examination by torture.” No example of the word is cited, but it would be naturally formed from πρόκλησις, the regular term for an offer or challenge of the kind. It would not, however, so well account for the variants προσβλήτους and προσηλύτους.