Legatio Ad Gaium

Philo Judaeus

The works of Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Josephus, volume 4. Yonge, C. D., translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855.

For these inconsiderate men, without giving themselves the trouble of inquiring into the truth, called the recommendations of Macro commands, and called him who gave advice a governor, out of ignorance and insensibility, or else out of flattery, suppressing the truth and giving a false colouring to the nature of both names and things.

And in reference to Silanus they said, "Silanus was a most

v.4.p.115

ridiculous person when he took it into his head that a father-in-law would have as much influence with his son-in-law as a real father has with a son. And yet even real fathers who are in a private station submit to their sons when they are in great offices and in places of high authority, being quite content with the second place; but this foolish man, even when he was no longer his father-in-law, kept on claiming privileges which did not belong to him, without perceiving that with the death of his daughter the connexion which had originated in the marriage of Caius with her had also died,

for intermarriages are the bonds which unite families between which there is no kindred, changing alienation into near connexion; but when that bond is dissolved, then the union is dissolved likewise, especially when it is dissolved by a circumstance which cannot be altered or remedied, namely, by the death of the woman who was given in marriage into another family."

Such conversations as these were held in every company, the speakers being wholly influenced by their wish that the emperor should not appear to be cruel; for as they had hoped that such humanity and gentleness was seated in the soul of Caius as had not existed in either of the previous emperors, they thought it would be a most strange thing if he now made so great and so sudden a change to an entirely contrary disposition.