Legatio Ad Gaium

And he sent commands to all the governors of provinces in every country to comfort those of our nation in their respective cities, as the punishment intended to be inflicted was not meant to be inflicted upon all, but only on the guilty; and they were but few. And he ordered them to change none of the existing customs, but to look upon them as pledges, since the men were peaceful in their dispositions and natural characters, and their laws trained them and disposed them to quiet and stability.

But Caius puffed himself up with pride, not only

And the name of God is held in so little veneration among them, that they have given it to ibises, and to the poisonous asps which are found in their country, and to many other savage beasts which exist in it. So that they, very naturally, giving in to all kinds of addresses and invocations to him, addressed him as God, deceiving men of shallow comprehension, who were wholly inexperienced in the impiety prevailing in Egypt, though they are detected by those who are acquainted with their excessive folly, or, I should rather say, with their preposterous impiety.

Of which, Caius, having no experience, imagined that he was really believed by the Alexandrians to be God, since they, without any disguise, openly and plainly used all the appellations without any limitation, with which they were accustomed to invoke the other gods.

In the next place, he believed that the innovations which they made with respect to their synagogues, were all made with a pure conscience, and from a sincere honour and respect for him, partly being influenced by the ephemerides in the way of memorial, which some persons sent him from Alexandria; for these things were what he very much delighted to read, to such a degree that the writings of all other authors, whether in prose or in poetry, were looked upon by him as absolutely odious in comparison with the delight which these documents afforded him, and partly by the language of some of his domestics, who were continually jesting with him and ridiculing all serious things.

The greater portion of these men were Egyptians, wicked, worthless men, who had imprinted the venom and evil disposition of their native asps and crocodiles on their own souls, and gave a faithful representation of them there. And the leader of the whole Egyptian troops, like the coryphaeus of a chorus, was a man of the name of Helicon, an

And at that time he had no especial privilege, since Tiberius had a perfect hatred of all youthful sallies of wit for the mere purposes of amusement, as he, from almost his earliest youth, was of a solemn and austere disposition.

But when Tiberius was dead, and Caius succeeded to the empire, he then, following a new master, who invited him to every description of relaxation and luxury, such as could delight every one of his outward senses, said to himself: "Rise up, O Helicon! now is your opportunity. You have now an auditor, and a spectator, who is of all men in the world the best calculated to receive the exhibition of your talents favourably. You are a man of very attractive natural talents. You are able to joke graceful, and to say witty, things beyond any one else. You are skilful in all kinds of amusements, and trifling, and fashionable sports. And you are equally accomplished in those branches of encyclical education which are not so ordinarily met with. Moreover, you have a readiness of speech and repartee which is far from unpleasing.

If therefore you mingle with your jestings any little stimulus which is in the least unwelcome or painful, so as to excite not only laughter but any feelings of bitterness, on the part of one who is always ready to suspect evil, you will be deliberately alienating from yourself a master who is very well inclined by nature to listen to any accusations which are brought before him in a joking manner; for his ears, as you well know, are always open, and are constantly on the watch to listen to all those who are in the habit of interweaving accusations of others with their sycophancy.

And do not seek for any more abundant causes; for you have a sufficient foundation with respect to the customs of the Jews and the national laws of that people, in which you yourself were bred up, and in which you have been instructed from your very earliest childhood, not by one man only, but by that most chattering and vexatious portion of the city of Alexandria. So now, make an exhibition of your learning."

By these preposterous and accursed arguments

They say also that some of the ambassadors of the Alexandrians, being completely aware of this, had secretly hired him by considerable bribes, and not only by money but by hopes of future honours, which they led him to expect he might attain to at no distant period, when Caius should come to Alexandria.

And he, being continually declaiming of that time in which, while his master was present, and in conjunction with him, he should be almost supreme in his power over a large portion of the world (for it was notorious enough that by his assiduous courting of Caius, he would be able to acquire power over the most illustrious portion of the citizens, and over all those who are held in especial honour by the most magnificent and glorious city, [*](There seems some corruption in the text here. ) promised every thing).

We, therefore, being for a long time unsuspicious of this natural enemy, who was plotting against us from his concealment, took precautions only against our external foes; but when we perceived that he too was to be guarded against, we searched into the matter carefully, considering every expedient to see if we could, by any means, propitiate and conciliate the man who was thus aiming and shooting at us, by every means and from every place, with great accuracy of aim and power of injuring us;

for he was in the habit of playing at ball with him, and of exercising himself [*](There seems some corruption in the text here. )

And he mingled numbers of satirical and quizzing observations with his more formal and serious accusations, in order to excite pleasure in his hearers by that means, and to do us the greatest possible amount of injury; for the quizzing and ridiculing appeared, as he used it, to be the principal object at which he aimed, though it was in reality only his indirect one; and the accusations which he launched against us appeared to be mere casual observations, dropped accidentally, though in reality they were his primary and sole object, while he was trying every expedient possible,

and so, like sailors who have a fair wind blowing on their stern, he was borne onwards with a full sail before a favourable gale, heaping upon us and stringing together one accusation after another, while the mind of his hearer was fashioned in a more solid and retentive mould, so that the recollection of the accusations was not easily eradicated.

Accordingly, we being in a great strait and in most difficult circumstances, we, though we had availed ourselves of every expedient which we could possibly think of in order to propitiate and conciliate Helicon, could find no means of doing so and no access to him, since no one dared either to accost or to approach him, by reason of his exceeding insolence and cruelty with which he behaved to every one; and also because we were not aware, whether there was any especial reason for his alienation from the Jewish nation; since he was also exciting and exasperating his master against our people, and, accordingly, we left off labouring at this point, and turned our attention to what was of greater importance. For it appeared good to present to Caius a memorial, containing a summary of what we had suffered, and of the way in which we considered that we deserved to be treated;

and this memorial was nearly an abridgment of a longer petition which we had sent to him a short time before, by the hand of king Agrippa; for he, by chance, was staying for a short time in the city, while on his way into Syria to take possession of the kingdom which had been given to him;

but we, without being aware of it, were deceiving ourselves, for before also we had done the same, when we originally began to set sail, thinking that as we were going before a judge we should meet with justice; but he was in reality an irreconcilable enemy to us, attracting us, as far as appearance went, with favourable looks and cheerful address;