On the Embassy to Gaius

Philo of Alexandriac. AD 41

Philo’s account of the attacks on the Jews of Alexandria in AD 38 and of the delegation he led to the emperor Gaius (Caligula). It reports Gaius’s order to set up his statue in the Jerusalem Temple and gives a contemporary’s description of Pontius Pilate.

Philo was a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria and a leading member of its Jewish community. After the violence against the Jews of the city in AD 38 he headed the delegation that went to Rome to plead their case before Gaius. The treatise tells what the delegates saw and heard, and how the news reached them that the emperor had ordered a statue of himself to be placed in the Temple at Jerusalem. It mentions in passing a later act of the emperor Claudius, so it was written after Gaius was murdered in January 41.

For the embassy Philo is an eyewitness. He is also an advocate, and the work is a sustained attack on Gaius and on the enemies of the Jews at Alexandria. The description of Pilate comes in a letter that Philo attributes to the Jewish king Agrippa I (sections 299–305, chapter XXXVIII in Yonge): it says that Pilate dedicated gilded shields in Herod’s palace at Jerusalem and removed them only when Tiberius ordered it, and it gives a harsh account of his character. The letter is quoted as Philo presents it, and its purpose is to persuade.

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