Here he argues that Philo was at the same time both a privileged citizen and an alien. He belonged to the elite segments of the Jewish communities in Alexandria, but at the same time he was an alien, not having access to the same privileges as the Roman citizens.
And Philo was not a loving admirer of the Roman authorities: « he loved the Romans no more than the skipper of a tiny boat loves the hurricane » Hence, in such a situation, Goodenough argues, any opponent of the Romans had to be careful in what he said about the Roman authorities, and if he was to mention them at all, he might preferably have to do it cryptically or rhetorically cf.
Hence Goodenough suggests that Philo deals with politics in three ways: politics direct, as in In Flaccum and Legatio ; politics in code, as in De Somniis especially Somn. Legatio , on the other hand, he surmises was written after the accession of Claudius, and for a presentation to just that emperor Be that as it may, it seems obvious to most readers that these important political works of Philo are written for both Jews and Gentiles, possibly even including the Roman authorities.
David M. Furthermore, the Danish scholar Per Bilde, in investigating In Flaccum and Legatio , concludes that he finds a « threatening tone » in these works, and that Goodenough is right in interpreting them as hidden warnings to the Roman elite: if the traditional positive politics of the Romans were changed into a negative one, such a change would call forth an armed Jewish resistance that would represent severe difficulties for Rome I regret not having been able to get my hands on the study of Carlier 51 , but will focus on Kasher, Scott, Niehoff, and Pearce.
Kasher 52 argues that Philo did not consider the Jews of Alexandria to be citizens of the Alexandrian polis , but to have a political entity of their own, a so-called politeuma. The existence of such a politeuma is a view that is denied by some scholars today 53 , but it both had and still has several followers and strong support Philo seems to have considered Alexandria as his city, because his co-nationals had lived there for generations.
Kasher sees this substantiated also by Mos. Jerusalem is their mother city, not Alexandria » Rather, the Jewish nation is the one that is colonizing the world including Egypt! Similarly concerning Jerusalem: as mother-city, Jerusalem is thus the center not only of world Judaism, but of the whole world. However, at the same time, according to Scott, one must not forget that there is evidence that Philo also considered the Diaspora as a negative situation to be overcome in the future.
Niehoff 61 does not consider the In Flaccum and the Legatio to have been written for the Romans at all; on the contrary, they were written for the Jews of Alexandria. Criticism had arisen over the failure in Rome of the delegation headed by Philo, and another delegation with other ideas of how to solve the problems had been established. Philo wrote for the educated upper classes who did not yet favor the more radical course of these other Jewish parties The references in the In Flaccum and Legatio were a relatively late development.
It was not used as an argument against the Romans, but as an argument to the Jews to see their local problems in a wider framework, namely the plans of the emperor to erect a statue in the Temple. Hence it was a construction on the side of Philo to strengthen Alexandrian Jews in their attitudes to Jerusalem.
In fact, she can say that Philo « modeled the role of Jerusalem on the position of Rome in the Empire », and that loyalty to Jerusalem would provide them with « the same kind of identity as Roman citizenship », an identity that would « transcend the boundaries of a specific state and create a sense of world-wide community » Strangely enough, she does not see any anti-Roman sentiments in such a program.
Pearce discusses with both Kasher and Niehoff. In general, Pearce does not support the interpretation of mother-city in Philo as claiming the centrality of Jerusalem over and against other homelands for the Jews.
Against Kasher, she argues that his arguments that the Jews of Alexandria did not want citizenship in that city, but only the rights of their Alexandrian politeuma do not fit the evidence.
The little evidence there is supports more a struggle for citizenship. Furthermore, the evidence for a Jewish politeuma in Alexandria is meager. Neither does she find that Niehoff is correct in suggesting that the image of Jerusalem as mother-city was constructed in order to enhance the loyalty of the Jews in Alexandria to Palestine and Jerusalem.
The Greek colonies did not have that strong feeling of attachments to their mother-city as seems to underlay such arguments. Pearce finds no tension between the notion of Jerusalem as mother-city and Alexandria as home. But some questions remain though; for instance why do these terms show up primarily in In Flaccum and in Legatio , and what is the purpose of Philo of using them just in these works? The lack of answers to such questions is a major drawback in her study.
Hence by studying terms used by Philo, one should also draw upon his version of Scripture, the Septuagint. A quick overview will also reveal that he can present expositions of several topics by help of these terms. In the Book of Ezra , all 8 occurrences deal with those having returned from the exile in Babilonia, cf.
Their way is to visit earthly nature as men who travel abroad to see and learn. So when they have stayed awhile in their bodies, and beheld through them all that sense and mortality has to shew, they make their way back to the place from where they set out at the first.
These are distinctions we also meet in In Flaccum and Legatio. Hence, in the works of Philo the idea is not that of exile, but the much more positive one of migration and of settlements or colonies. In Josh. This is, however, nowhere explicitly stated by Philo, but a probable inference Leg.
On other cities as mother-cities in the meaning of capital city, see Somn. The Logos can be described as the most excellent mother-city Fug. The most relevant passage for us is again Conf. As for the holy city, I must say what befits me to say. Then follows the important passage of in which Philo ponders the danger such riots would represent if they spread to other parts of the Empire where the Jews also were to be found: « For so populous are the Jews that no one country can hold them » 46 ; the Jews are holding Jerusalem as their mother-city, even though they have stayed in other parts of the empire for a long time.
Agrippa fell immediately ill, and when recovering a bit, he wrote a letter Leg. While this is here put in the mouth of Agrippa in what must be considered a fictive letter 77 , it certainly represents the opinion of Philo These are not expositions of some texts or aspects of the Pentateuchal Law, but his way of writing what we might call historical representations of central events in the life of Philo and his Alexandria, evaluated in light of Pentateuchal values.
Furthermore, as there seems to be a wide agreement that his expository works were written with both Jews and non-Jews in mind, and his allegorical works more for his initiated Jewish readers 79 , the two historical works were most probably written not only for the Jews, but possibly even more for the non-Jewish authorities, as the successor of the prefect Flaccus in Alexandria and the Roman imperial authorities Hence, as we have suggested above, we read these works as Philo writing back from the Empire.
We are here meeting Philo as a Jewish politician, and should read him as such. But both of these issues should not be overplayed. Pearce, on her side, argues that Philo evidently uses the terminology of the Septuagint, but not that of the Greek colonies In this way they probably also to some extent changed the view of the Diaspora situation, from deportation to emigration.
This fact points to some influence from colonization language. Hence Philo is probably influenced by the Septuagint language; it was, after all, his Holy Scriptures. But by his combination of these terms in In Flaccum and Legatio , it also seems that he strengthens and emphasizes the colonial aspects of these terms. Furthermore, her view that Philo is constructing a novel view by posing Jerusalem as the mother-city is probably not tenable either, as Jerusalem had at that time been the central city for Jews in ages.
Hence, when he wanted to describe the Jewish Diaspora as a kind of colonization process, he had to use the Greek terminology. And the Greek terminology had per definition to represent the language of Greek colonization.
This is such a simple fact that it seems never to have been paid any attention too. The consequences of this are that the pinpointing of Amir 86 , stating that the descriptions of Philo do not match the social realities of the colonization of his time, is rendered rather meaningless.
Philo is here mimicking the colonization processes, both Roman and Greek. His Greek language should not lead us to consider Greek colonization as his social and conceptual background alone. Niehoff points unknowingly her finger to this aspect of mimicry when she states that « Philo […] implied an unmistakably Roman dimension in his notion of mother-city. This is most visible in his emphasis on the universal distribution of the Jewish colonists » See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ».
The development of the polis at home in Greece coincided chronologically with the colonizing movement that was in progress between c. See founders of cities; colonization, greek. From: apoikia in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World ».
Subjects: Classical studies. View all related items in Oxford Reference ». And every one of these city-states known as poleis was said to be protected by a particular god or goddess, to whom the citizens of the polis owed a great deal of reverence, respect and sacrifice. The largest, Sparta , controlled about square miles of territory; the smallest had just a few hundred people. However, by the dawn of the Archaic period in the seventh century B. Also, most had overthrown their hereditary kings, or basileus, and were ruled by a small number of wealthy aristocrats.
These people monopolized political power. For example, they refused to let ordinary people serve on councils or assemblies. They also monopolized the best farmland, and some even claimed to be descended from the Greek gods. Emigration was one way to relieve some of this tension. Land was the most important source of wealth in the city-states; it was also, obviously, in finite supply.
The pressure of population growth pushed many men away from their home poleis and into sparsely populated areas around Greece and the Aegean. Between B. By the end of the seventh century B. Each of these poleis was an independent city-state. In this way, the colonies of the Archaic period were different from other colonies we are familiar with: The people who lived there were not ruled by or bound to the city-states from which they came. The new poleis were self-governing and self-sufficient.
As time passed and their populations grew, many of these agricultural city-states began to produce consumer goods such as pottery, cloth, wine and metalwork. Trade in these goods made some people—usually not members of the old aristocracy—very wealthy. Although the newly formed poleis city-states; colonies were institutionally and politically independent of their mother cities metropoleis these colonies oriented themselves toward and modeled themselves after their founders.
Although the relationship was sometimes cooperative and other times competitive, both colony and mother-city cultivated the relationship in numerous ways, politically as well as culturally. As a consequence of this activity, the Greek world expanded significantly; moreover, the network of political, religious, and personal loyalties and identities between the various Greek cities was strengthened.
There were various reasons for the colonization movement in the archaic period BC. The lack of natural resources in Greece, especially the lack of metals tin, copper , timber and food cereals and fish led many maritime states to search for such items throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.
The search for such materials also provided the Greek states with information about favorable places for agriculture and settlement. More importantly in the long run were demographic pressures in the cities of the homeland. Competition for the control of the best sites led to destructive conflicts between the Greek cities themselves and between the Greeks and Phoenicians and Etruscans. Finally, domestic strife stasis in the mother city and foreign pressure e.
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