Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

Philo, moreover, was by no mqans an obscure member of the community to which he belonged ; on the contrary, he was a most distinguished ornament of the enormous Jewish colony of Alexandria, which occupied no less than two out of the five wards of the city.1 His brother, Alexander, was the head of the largest banking firm of the capital of Egypt, which was also the intellectual and commercial centre of the Grseco-Roman world. Indeed, Alexander may be said to have been the Rothschild of the time. The operations of the firm embraced the contracting of loans for the Imperial House, while the banker himself was a personal friend of the Emperor, and his sons intermarried with the family of the Jewish King Agrippa.

Philo, himself, though he would have preferred the solitude of the contemplative life, took an active part in the social life of the great capital ; and, at the time of the greatest distress of his compatriots in the city, when they were overwhelmed by a violent outbreak of anti - semitism, their lives in danger, their houses plundered, and their ancient privileges confiscated, it was the aged Philo who was chosen as spokesman of the embassy to Caius Caligula (A.D. 40).

1 For a sketch of ancient Alexandria, see F, F. F.t pp. 96-120.

Here, then, we have a man in just the position to know what was going on in the world of philosophy, of letters, and religion, and not only at Alexandria, but also wherever Jewish enterprise — which had then, as it now has, the main commerce of the world in its hands — pushed itself. The news of the world came to Alexandria, and the mercantile marine was largely owned by Hebrews.

Philo is, therefore, the very witness we should choose of all others to question as to his views on the ideas we find in our Trismegistic tractates, and this we may now proceed to do without any further preliminaries.

CONCERNING THE MYSTERIES

Speaking of those who follow the contemplative life,1 Philo writes :

"Now this natural class of men [lit. race] is to be found in many parts of the inhabited world ; for both the Grecian and non-Grecian world must needs share in the perfect Good." 2

In Egypt, he tells us, there were crowds of them in every province, and they were very numerous indeed about Alexandria. Concerning such men Philo tells us elsewhere:

1 For a translation of the famous tractate on this subject, from the recent critical text of Conybeare, see F. F. F., pp. 66-82.

2 D. V. C., § 3 ; M. ii. 474, P. 891 (Ei. v. 308, C. 56).

"All those, whether among Greeks or non-Greeks, who are practisers of wisdom (acncr/rcii <ro0/a?), living a blameless and irreproachable life, determined on doing injury to none, and on not retaliating if injury be done them," avoid the strife of ordinary life, " in their enthusiasm for a life of peace free from contention."

Thus are they " most excellent contemplators of nature (Oecopoi T*JS 0iVeo>?) and all things therein ; they scrutinise earth and sea, and air and heaven, and the natures therein, their minds responding to the orderly motion of moon and sun, and the choir of all the other stars, both variable and fixed. They have their bodies, indeed, planted on earth below ; but for their souls, they have made them wings, so that they speed through aether (aiOepo^arowre^, and gaze on every side upon the powers above, as though they were the true world-citizens, most excellent, who dwell in cosmos as their city ; such citizens as Wisdom hath as her associates, inscribed upon the roll of Virtue, who hath in charge the supervising of the common weal. . . .

"Such men, though [in comparison] but few in number, keep alive the covered spark of Wisdom secretly, throughout the cities [of the world], in order that Virtue may not be absolutely quenched and vanish from our human kind."1

Again, elsewhere, speaking of those who are good and wise, he says :