In Flaccum

But the men of Alexandria being ready to burst with envy and ill-will (for the Egyptian disposition is by nature a most jealous and envious one and inclined to look on the good fortune of others as adversity to itself), and being at the same time filled with an ancient and what I may in a manner call an innate enmity towards the Jews, were indignant at any one’s becoming a king of the Jews, no less than if each individual among them had been deprived of an ancestral kingdom of his own inheritance.

And then again his friends and companions came and stirred up the miserable Flaccus, inviting, and exciting, and stimulating him to feel the same envy with themselves; saying, "The arrival of this man to take upon him his government is equivalent to a deposition of yourself. He is invested with a greater dignity of honour and glory than you. He attracts all eyes towards himself when they see the array of sentinels and body-guards around him adorned with silvered and gilded arms.

For ought he to have come into the presence of another governor, when it was in his power to have sailed over the sea, and so to have arrived in safety at his own government? For, indeed, if Caius did advise or rather command him to do so, he ought rather with earnest solicitations to have deprecated any visit to this country, in order that the real governor of it might not be brought into disrepute and appear to have his authority lessened by being apparently disregarded."

When he heard this he was more indignant than before, and in public indeed he pretended to be his companion and his friend, because of his fear of the man who directed his course, but secretly he bore him much ill-will, and told every one how he hated him, and abused him behind his back, and insulted him indirectly, since he did not dare to do so openly;