Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/322

Rh 310 PHILON. 14. Of Thebes, is quoted by Plutarch as an au- thority in his Life of Alexander (c. 46). He is probably the same Philon, who is mentioned as an authority for the Indian Antissa by Stephanus Byzantinus (s. v. "Avriffo-a). 1 5. Thyanensis, a geometrician of profound abi- lities, if we may judge from the subject of his writ- ings, which regarded the most transcendental parts of ancient geometry, the consideration of curve lines. In particular, he investigated the lines formed by the intersection of a plane with certain curved surfaces. These lines are called by Pappus 7rA.e/c- Toi'Ses (Coll. Math. iv. post prop. 40). The na- ture of the surfaces or the lines is unknown ; but Pappus informs us that their investigation excited the admiration of many geometricians ; among others, of Menelaus of Alexandria. As Menelaus was in Rome A. D. 98, Philon must have preceded him. (Montucla, vol. i. p. 316.) [W.M.G.] PHILON (*iA«j/), philosophers. 1. Judaeus, the Jew, sprang from a priestly family of distinction, and was bom at Alexandria (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 8. $ 1, XX. 5. $ 2, xix. 5 $ 1 ; Euseb. H. E. ii. 4 ; Phil, de Legat. ad Caium, ii. p. 567, Mangey). After his life, from early youth upwards, had been wholly devoted to learning, he was compelled, when he had probably already reached an advanced age, in consequence of the persecutions which the Jews had to suffer, especially under the emperor Caius, to devote himself to public business. With four others of his race he undertook an embassy to Rome, in order to procure the revocation of the decree which exacted even from the Jews divine homage for the statue of the emperor, and to ward off further persecutions. The embassy arrived at Rome in the winter of A. D. 39 — 40, after the termination of the war against the Germans, and was still there when the prefect of Syria, Petronius, received orders, which were given probably in the spring of A. D. 40, to set «p the colossal statue of Caligula in the temple at Jerusalem. Philon speaks of himself as the oldest of the ambassadors (Phil, de Congressu, p. 530, de Leg. Spec. lib. ii. p. 299, de Legat. pp. 572, 598 ; comp. Joseph. Ant. xviii. 8. § 1 ). How little the embassy accomplished its object, is proved not only by the command above referred to, but also by the anger of the emperor at the request of the mildly-disposed Petronius, that the execution of the command might be deferred till the harvest was over (see the letter of Petronius in Phil. p. 583). Nothing but the death of the emperor, which ensued in January a. d. 41, saved Petronius, for whose death orders had been given (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 8. $ 8). If Philon, at the time of the embassy, was, as is not improbable, about 60 years old, the date of his birth will be about b. c. 20. In the treatise on the subject, which without doubt was written not earlier than the reign of the emperor Claudius, he speaks of himself as an old man. As to other events in his personal history, we only know with certainty of a journey undertaken by him to Jerusalem (Phil, de Promd. ap. Euseb. Praep. Evang. viii. 1 4, in Mangey, ii. p. 646). On the state- ment of Eusebius {H. E. ii. 17 ; comp. Hieronym. Catalog. Script. Ecclesiast.), that Philon had already been in Rome in the time of the emperor Claudius, and had become acquainted with the Apostle Peter, as on that of Photius (Cod. 105), that he was a Christian, no dependence whatever can be placed. The writings of Philon may be arranged in several classes. Of these the first division, and PHILON. probably the earliest in point of time, includes the books de Mundi Tncorruptibilitate, Qtuxi omnis Probus Liber, and de Vita Contemplativa. The beginning of the third (ii. p. 471, Mangey) refers to the second, which treats of the Essenes. A second division, composed probably not before Philon was an old man, treats of the oppressions which the Jews had to endure at that time {adver- sus Flaccum, Legatio ad Caium, and probably also de Nobilitate, which appears to be a fragment from the lost Apology for the Jews. See Dahne, uber die Schrifien des Juden Philon, in Ullmann's and Umbreit's Theologische Studien und Kriiiken, 1833, p. 990). All the other writings of Philon have re- ference to the books of Moses. At the commence- ment stands an exposition of the account of the creation {de Mundi Opificio). Then follows, accord- ing to the ordinary arrangement, a series of allego- rical interpretations of the following sections of Genesis up to ch. xli., partly under the general title Legis Allegoriarum Libri I. — HI., partly under particular titles. Yet it is not improbable that these titles were not added till a later time, and that the corresponding sections originally formed consecutive books of the above-named work, of which some traces are still found in the excerpta of the monk Joannes, and elsewhere. This series of allegorical expositions appears even originally not to have been a continuous commentary, and at a later period to have lost parts here and there. (Dahne, ibid. p. 1014, &c.) Philon, at the beginning of the first-mentioned treatise {de Mundi Opifeio), in- dicates that the object of his expositions is to show how the law and the world accord one with the other, and how the man who lives according to the law is, as such, a citizen of the world. For Moses, as Philon remarks in his life of him (ii. p. 141), treats the older histories in such a manner, as to demonstrate how the same Being is the father and creator of the universe, and the true law-giver ; and that, accordingly, whoever follows these laws adapts himself to the course of nature, and lives in accordance with the arrangements of the uni- verse ; while the man who transgresses them is punished by means of natural occurrences, such as the flood, the raining of fire, and so forth, in virtue of the accordance and harmony of the words with the works, and of the latter with the former. Ac- cordingly, out of the accounts contained in Genesis of good and bad men, information respecting the destinies of man and the conditions of the soul should be drawn by means of allegorical interpre- tation, and the personages whose histories bore upon the subject be exhibited partly as powers, partly as states of the soul, in order, as by analysis, to attain a view of the soul (comp. de Congressu Quaer. Erud. Grat. p. 527). The treatises which have reference to the giving of the law are dis- tinct from those hitherto considered, and the laws again are divided into unwritten laws, that is, living patterns (Kavovcs) of a blameless life, as Enos, Enoch, and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses ; and particular or written laws, in the narrower sense of the word {de Abrah. p. 2, comp. de Proem, et Poenis, p. 408). Of those pattern- lives there are to be found in his extant works only those of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, treated of in separate writings. Even these are not without individual allegorical interpretations, which how- ever only occur by the way, and are not designed, like the proper allegories, to refer the destinies