--- title: "On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Addressed to Caius" author: "Philo of Alexandria" translator: "C. D. Yonge" languages: [en] shelf: "Second Temple" section: 9 of 29 url: https://scriptura.si/works/philo-tlg031-yonge-ogl/9/ cite: "Philo of Alexandria, tr. C. D. Yonge, On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Addressed to Caius, section 9. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/philo-tlg031-yonge-ogl/9/" --- # On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Addressed to Caius *Philo of Alexandria, tr. C. D. Yonge* ## 9. Section 104 Source: https://scriptura.si/works/philo-tlg031-yonge-ogl/9/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/philo-tlg031-yonge-ogl/9/#p-N [¶0] Let him also transpose the things which he bears in each of his hands, and not pollute the proper arrangement, for let him bear his arrows and his bow in his right hand, for he knows how with good aim to shoot at and to pierce men and women, and whole families, and populous cities, to their complete destruction. ### Section 105 [¶2] And let him either at once throw away his graces altogether, or else let him keep them in the shade in his left hand, for he has defaced their beauty, directing all his eyes and exciting all his desires against vast properties, so as to plunder them in an iniquitous manner, in consequence of which their owners were murdered, finding themselves unfortunate through their good fortune. ### Section 106 [¶4] But no doubt he with great felicity gave a new representation of the medical skill of Apollo, for this god was the inventor of healing medicines, This is one of the attributes of Apollo of which he boasts to Daphne. Inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem Dicor et herbarum subjecta potentia nobis: Hic mihi quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis Nec prosunt domino quae prosunt omnibus artes.Met.1.461. Or as it is translated by Dryden— Medicine is mine; what herbs and simples grow In fields and forests, all their powers I know, And am the great physician called below. Alas, that fields and forests can afford No remedies to heal their love-sick lord. To cure the pains of love no plant avails, And his own physic the physician fails. so as to cause health to men, thinking fit himself to heal the diseases which were inflicted by others, by reason of the excessive mildness and gentleness of his own nature and habits, ### Section 107 [¶6] but this man, on the contrary, loads those who are in good health with disease, and inflicts mutilations on those who are sound, and in short visits the living with most cruel death, caused by the hand of man before the time of their natural death, preparing every imaginable engine of destruction in abundant plenteousness, by means of which, if he had not himself been previously put to death in accordance This is one of the attributes of Apollo of which he boasts to Daphne. Inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem Dicor et herbarum subjecta potentia nobis: Hic mihi quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis Nec prosunt domino quae prosunt omnibus artes.Met.1.461. Or as it is translated by Dryden— Medicine is mine; what herbs and simples grow In fields and forests, all their powers I know, And am the great physician called below. Alas, that fields and forests can afford No remedies to heal their love-sick lord. To cure the pains of love no plant avails, And his own physic the physician fails. with justice, everything glorious or respectable in every city would long ago have been destroyed. ### Section 108 [¶8] For his designs were prepared against all those in authority and all those possessed of riches, and especially against those in Rome and those in the rest of Italy, by whom such quantities of gold and silver had been treasured up that even if all the riches of all the rest of the habitable world had been collected together from its most distant borders, it would have been found to be very inferior in amount. [¶9] On this account he began, he, this hater of the citizens, this devourer of the people, this pestilence, this destructive evil, began to banish all the seeds of peace from his country, as if he were expelling evil from holy ground; ### Section 109 [¶11] for Apollo is said to have been not only a physician but also an excellent prophet, by his oracular predictions announcing what was likely to conduce to the advantage of mankind, in order that no one, being overshadowed by uncertainty, going on without seeing his way before him like a blind man, might hastily fall into unexpected evils as if they were the greatest benefits; but that men having previously acquired a knowledge of the future as if it were really present, and looking at it with the eye of their mind, might guard against future evils just as they can see evils actually before them with the bodily eye, and in this way secure themselves against any irremediable disaster. ### Section 110 [¶13] Is it fitting now to compare with these oracles of Apollo the ill-omened warnings of Caius, by means of which poverty, and dishonour, and banishment, and death were given premature notice of to all those who were in power and authority in any part of the world? What connexion or resemblance was there between him and Apollo, when he never paid any attention to any ties of kindred or friendship? Let him cease, then, this pretended Apollo, from imitating that real healer of mankind, for the form of God is not a thing which is capable of being imitated by an inferior one, as good money is imitated by bad. ### Section 111 [¶15] A man, indeed, may expect anything rather than that a man endowed with such a body and such a soul, when both of them are effeminate and broken down, could ever possibly be made like to the vigour of Mars in either particular; but this man, like a mummer transforming himself on the stage, putting on all sorts of masks one after another, sought to deceive the spectators by a series of fictitious appearances. ### Section 112 [¶17] Come, then, let him be subjected to an examination in respect of all the particulars of his soul and body, by reason of his utter unlikeness to the aforesaid deity in every position and in every motion. Was he not utterly unlike Mars, not in respect only of his appearance as celebrated in fable, but as to his natural qualities? Mars, who is endued with preeminent valour, which we know to be a power calculated to avert evil, to be the assistant and ally of all who are unjustly oppressed, as indeed his very name shows, ### Section 113 [¶19] for he appears to me to be called Mars from his helping, The Greek word is ἀρήγειν, from which Philo supposes Ἄρης, the Greek name of Mars, to be derived. which is the same as assisting, being as such the god who is able to put down wars and to cause peace, of which this representation of his was the enemy, being the comrade of wars, and the man who changed peace and stability into disorder and confusion. ### Section 114 [¶21] Have we not, then, learned from all these instances, that Caius ought not to be likened to any god, and not even to any demi-god, inasmuch as he has neither the same nature, nor the same essence, nor even the same wishes and intentions as any one of them; but appetite as it seems is a blind thing, and especially so when it takes to itself vain-gloriousness and ambition in conjunction with the greatest power, by which we who were previously unfortunate are utterly destroyed, ### Section 115 [¶23] for he regarded the Jews with most especial suspicion, as if they were the only persons who cherished wishes opposed to his, and who had been taught in a manner from their very swaddling-clothes by their parents, and teachers, and instructors, and even before that by their holy laws, and also by their unwritten maxims and customs, to believe that there was but one God, their Father and the Creator of the world;