Philo of Alexandria, The Legatio ad Gaium, trans. with commentaries by E. Mary Smallwood (Leiden, 1961)

Have we learnt, then, from this study so far that Gaius ought not to be compared to any of the gods or demi-gods, since he does not possess the same nature or substance or even purpose?  But lust is apparently a blind thing, especially when it is accompanied by conceit and ambition coupled with supreme power.  This ruined us Jews, who had formerly enjoyed good fortune.  It was only of the Jews that Gaius was suspicious, on the grounds that they were the only people who deliberately opposed him and had been taught from their very cradles, as it were, by their parents, tutors, and teachers, and more than that by their holy Laws and even by their unwritten customs, to believe that the Father and Creator of the universe is one God.  All other men, women, cities, nations, countries, and regions of the world. I can almost say the whole inhabited earth, although they deplored what was happening, flattered Gaius none the less, glorifying him more than was reasonable, and so increasing his vanity.  Some people even introduced into Italy the barbaric custom of proskynesis, and thus debased the nobility of Roman freedom.  But one single race, the chosen people of the Jews, was suspected of being likely to resist, since it was used to accepting death as willingly as if it were immortality in order not to allow any of their ancestral traditions, even the smallest, to be abrogated; for, as in the case of buildings, the removal of a single part causes even those parts which still seem to be standing firmly to crack and subside and crash down with it into the gap.  But the change being effected was not a small one but an absolutely fundamental one, namely the apparent transformation of the created, destructible nature of man into the uncreated, indestructible nature of God, which the Jewish nation judged to be the most horrible of blasphemies; for God would change into man sooner than man into God.  This was quite apart from the acceptance of the other supreme evils of unbelief in, and ingratitude towards, the Benefactor of the whole world, Who by His own might gives good things in lavish abundance to all parts of the universe.

Accordingly, total and truceless war was waged against the Jewish nation. What heavier burden could a slave have than a hostile owner? Subjects are the slaves of an Emperor, and even if this was not the case under any of Gaius' predecessors, because they ruled reasonably and legally, yet it was the case under Gaius, who had cut all humanity out of his heart and made a cult of illegality; for he regarded himself as the law, and broke the laws of the lawgivers of every country as if they were empty words. So we were enrolled not simply as slaves but as the lowest of slaves, when the Emperor turned into a tyrant.

When the promiscuous and unruly Alexandrian mob discovered this, it supposed that a most opportune moment had come its way and attacked us.  It unmasked the hatred which had long been smouldering and threw everything into chaos and confusion.  As if we had been surrendered by the Emperor to sufferings admitted to be of the severest kind or had been defeated in war, they attacked us with insane and bestial fury. They invaded our homes and drove the householders out, wives and children and all, so as to leave the houses unoccupied.  They no longer waited for the darkness of night in fear of arrest, like burglars, to steal our furniture and treasures, but they carried them off openly in broad daylight, and displayed them to those they met, as people do who have inherited things or bought them from their owners.  If several people agreed to join forces to plunder, they divided out their loot in the middle of the market-place, often before the eyes of its real owners, jeering and laughing at them as they did so.  This was terrible in itself, of course.  Wealthy men became paupers and well-to-do people penniless, suddenly deprived of hearth and home although they were innocent of any crime, and driven out of their own houses as exiles, to live in the open air day and night and die either of sun stroke or of exposure by night. Yet this is easier reading than what follows.  For the Greeks joined in driving many thousands of men, women, and children out of the whole city into a very small part of it, like sheep or cattle into a pen.  They supposed that within a few days they would find piles of bodies of Jews, who had died either of starvation through lack of necessities of life, since they had had no forewarning of this sudden calamity to enable them to make suitable provision against it, or of overcrowding and suffocation.  Their quarters were extremely cramped, and moreover the surrounding air became foul and surrendered its life-giving qualities to the respirations or, to be quite exact, the gasps, of the dying.  Inflamed by these, and in a sense suffering from an attack of fever itself, it sent a hot, noxious breath into people's nostrils and mouths, adding fire to fire, as the proverb has it. For the natural property of the internal organs is great heat, and when reasonably cool external breezes blow upon them, the respiratory organs are kept healthy by the mild temperature. But when the breezes become hotter, they are bound to become unhealthy, because fire is heaped on fire.

So, no longer able to stand the lack of space, the Jews overflowed on to the desert, the shores, and the cemeteries, longing to breathe pure, healthy air.  Any who had already been caught in other parts of the city, or who visited it from the country in ignorance of the calamities which had descended on us, experienced sufferings of every kind.  They were stoned, or wounded with tiles, or battered to death with branches of ilex or oak on the most vulnerable parts of their bodies, especially their heads.  Some of Alexandria's habitual idlers and loafers lay in a circle round the Jews who had been driven out and huddled together, as I have said, into a confined space on the edge of the city, and watched them as though they were under siege, to prevent any of them from slipping away unobserved.  In fact, because of the scarcity of necessities quite a number were sure to slip out regardless of their own safety, in fear lest they and their whole families should die of starvation.  It was for these people's excursions that the loafers waited and watched, and any whom they caught they immediately killed, submitting them to every kind of indignity in the process.  Another group was blockading the harbours of the river, in order to seize the Jews who put in there and the goods which they were conveying for trading purposes.  They boarded their ships and carried off the cargo under the eyes of its owners, and then tied their arms behind their backs and burnt them alive, using the rudders, helms, punt-poles, and the planks of the decks as fuel.  But the Jews burnt in the middle of the city suffered the most pitiful deaths.  Sometimes for lack of timber the Greeks collected brushwood, set it on fire, and threw it on top of the unfortunate Jews, who for the most part were killed by the smoke rather than by the fire while still only half burnt, since brushwood produces a weak and smoky fire and goes out very quickly, while it is too light to be burnt to cinders.  They bound many Jews, still alive, with straps and ropes, tied their ankles together, and dragged them through the middle of the market-place, jumping on them and not sparing even their dead bodies.  More cruel and savage than wild animals, they tore them limb from limb, trampled on them, and destroyed their every form, so that nothing was left which could be given burial.

The prefect of the country, who could have put an end to this mob-rule single-handedly in an hour had he chosen to, pretended not to see and hear what he did see and hear, but allowed the Greeks to make war without restraint and so shattered the peace of the city.  They consequently became still more excited and rushed headlong into outrageous plots of even greater audacity.  Assembling enormous hordes together, they attacked the synagogues, of which there are many in each section of the city.  Some they smashed, some they rased to the ground, and others they set on fire and burned, giving no thought even to the adjacent houses in their madness and frenzied insanity.  For nothing is swifter than fire when it gets plenty of fuel.  I say nothing about the simultaneous destruction and burning of the objects set up in honour of the Emperors -- gilded shields and crowns, monuments, and inscriptions -- which should have made the Greeks keep their hands off everything else also. But they derived confidence from the fact that they had no punishment to fear from Gaius, who, as they well knew, felt an indescribable hatred for the Jews; they therefore supposed that no one could give him greater pleasure than by inflicting every type of suffering on their race.  Then they decided to subject us to insults for which there was absolutely no risk of being brought to book, because they were at the same time currying favour with him by novel flattery.  So what did they do? . . .