APPENDIX TO DE CONFUSIONE
§ 5. All of whom are agreed that the earth is the centre of the universe. Cf. Aristot. De Caelo, ii. 13, 293 a τῶν πλείστων ἐπὶ τοῦ μέσου κεῖσθαι (sc. τὴν γῆν) λεγόντων. The contrary opinion, that the centre is fire, was held by the Pythagoreans. Cf. also Diog. Laert. ix. 57.
§ 24. Creeping and flying … beasts. Evidently these represent the θῦμος and ἐπιθυμία in the whole ψυχή, though Philo does not show which is which, cf. § 21. Judging from that we may suppose that the “flying” are the ἐπιθυμίαι.
§ 27. Veiled under their name of Sodomite. The phrase κατὰ γλῶτταν does not imply a Hebrew word, for the other two examples in the index (αἵθειν 156 below, Ἄρης from ἀρήγειν, Leg. ad Gaium 112) are both Greek. A γλῶσσα is often an obscure word which requires explanation (hence our glossary). So ἡμεῖς δὲ οὐδὲ ποιητὰς ἐπαινοῦμεν τοὺς κατὰ γλῶσσαν γράφοντας ποιήματα, Lucian, Lexiph. 25. Cf. “lingua secretior, quas Graeci γλῶσσας vocant,” Quintilian, i. 35.
§ 44. Jer. 15:10. Other MSS. of the LXX have οὐκ ὠφέλησα οὐδὲ ὠφέλησάν με, and so some of the MSS. of Philo. Origen, however, remarks that while most of the copies of the LXX have ὠφέλ-, the best and those most conforming to the Hebrew have ὠφείλ-. Wendland adopted ὠφείλ- on the grounds (1) that the better MSS. of Philo have it, (2) that it is supported by the interpretation given in § 50. This last seems to me very doubtful, and altogether there is little or nothing to choose between the two.
§ 46. Fullest peace. The epithet ἀπόλεμος is applied to εἰρήνη in De Fug. 174, but in the sense of the true (inward) peace, and in somewhat the same way in De Op. 142. Here it seems pointless, unless we suppose that εἰρήνη conveys to Philo something short of an unbroken peace. The first half of this sentence almost repeats De Gig. 51.
§ 52. The touch, etc. The sentence as taken in the translation is extremely awkward. Further, the analogy of De Plant. 133, where ἀφή is called ἡ ἀνὰ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα σκιδναμένη δύναμις, suggests that τῶν ἐν τοίς σώμασι δυνάμεων is the faculty of touch. This might be obtained if we omit the second τῶν and transpose κατὰ τὰς προσπιπτούσας to after δυνάμεων, i.e. “about the faculties or sensations residing in our bodies corresponding to the particular substances which come in contact with them.”
§ 55. τροφόν. This reading, which personifies Midian, fits better with τὸν ἔκγονον αὐτῆς than τροφήν. On the other hand, the latter might be regarded as an allusion to Num. 25:2 “the people ate of their sacrifices,” and Ps. 105(106) 28 καὶ ἐτελέσθησαν τῷ Βεελφεγὼρ καὶ ἔφαγον τὰς θυσίας νεκρῶν. To suppose an allusion to the Psalm will give extra point to νεκρόν. Philo may have understood it to refer to the worshippers instead of to the idols.
Ibid. ὑμνοῦντα. This alteration of one letter will enable the sentence to be translated without any other change, though it is true that it would be more natural to take ἄφωνον καὶ νεκρόν as predicate after ἀποδεῖξαι rather than, as it is taken in the translation, as a further attribute to χορόν. If ὑπνοῦντα is retained with Wendland (and his suggestion that it is an antithesis to ὁρῶντος has some support from De Mig. 222 τυφλὸν γὰρ ὕπνος), some other alteration is required. Wendland himself suggested γελάσαντες or ἀγαπήσαντα for γελασθέντα. Mangey’s suggestion of τελεσθέντα is very tempting, cf. De Mut. 196. But I see no way of fitting it into the construction. It can hardly be supposed that the idiom of τελεῖσθαι τελετήν can be extended to τελεῖσθαι Μαδιάμ.
§ 70. Submerged. Or “have taken refuge in.” Cf. the use of ὑπόδρομος Quod Deus 156. Philo reads this sense into the LXX. ἔφυγον ὑπὸ τὸ ὕδωρ, which meant presumably “fled with the water over or threatening them.” E.V. “fled against it.”
§ 90. The other members of that fraternity and family. This passage follows the Stoic classification. The four passions and the four vices mentioned are those of the Stoics, who added, as secondary to the primary four, incontinence (ἀκρασία), stupidity (βραδύνοια), ill-advisedness (δυσβουλία), Diog. Laert. vii. 93. It is these last three which presumably are meant here.
§ 99. An appearance of brick. Wendland was inclined to correct εἶδος to ἔργον, in accordance with the quotation of the text above, and εἶδος might well be a slip of the scribe induced by the preceding εἴδει. But on the other hand εἶδος seems to be needed to represent the δοκεῖ of the interpretation. It seems to me safer to regard it as a slip of Philo himself, who for the moment thought that the εἶδος of the quotation went with πλίνθου instead of with στερεώματος.
§ 103. The asphalt was clay. In the original quotation in § 2 the MSS. shew, as the LXX itself, ἄσφαλτος ἐγένετο ὁ πῆλος. The question naturally arises whether we should emend the text there to bring it into conformity with this, as Wendland suggests (see footnote there). On the whole it seems to me better to leave it and to suppose that Philo here rests his argument on the order of the words. He seems sometimes to attribute an extraordinary value to order, cf. Quod Deus 72 and De Mig. 140.
§ 106. It is impossible to reproduce in translation the thoughts which the ἀστεῖος of Ex. 2:2 suggests here to Philo. Struck, like the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:23), with the word applied to the infant Moses in the sense of a fine child, on which he also comments in De Congressu 132, he naturally enough connects it with the Stoic use for “virtuous.” But he also remembers its connexion with ἄστυ, and this enables him to identify the ἀστεῖον παιδίον with another ideal of the Stoics, the “world-citizen”; see De Op. 3 and note. The same play on the double meaning of ἀστεῖος appears in § 109 ἀστεῖοι … πολιτεύματι.
§ 108. θεοῦ δε ὕμνος. In support of the emendation suggested in the footnote, it may be noted that Ps. 45(46) 4 is actually interpreted in a way very similar to what I suggest here in De Som. ii. 246 ff. There we are told that the “city of God” signifies in one sense the world, in another, the soul of the Sage.
It is no objection, I think, that ἡ τοιάδε naturally, though not necessarily, refers to πολιτεία rather than πόλις. If the city is God’s, its πολιτεία must be God’s also.
§ 111. ὁ νοῦς. While the use of “the mind” in the sense of an evil mind is quite Philonic, it does not occur elsewhere in this passage, and just above we have ὁ ἄφρων. The very easy correction to ἄνους seems to me therefore very probable.
§ 115. I have not been able to find elsewhere this argument or statement that the apparent examples of a providential administration of the world are sufficiently explained by τὸ αὐτόματον, and are not frequent enough to amount to even human, much less divine, providence. Philo does not repeat it in the arguments adduced by the inquirer in De Prov. 11. The sections of the De Nat. Deorum in which Cotta discusses “deorumne providentia mundus regatur” are lost.
§ 124. The causes which come higher, etc. I.e. apparently, mind and sense, which are nearer to the original Cause than the circumstances which we often call “causes.” The word seems to be introduced to interpret the “firstlings” in Abel’s offering. But a more natural sense would be obtained if we suppose that the scribe by a not unnatural slip wrote πρεσβυτέρας for νεωτέρας.
Philo seems to use αἰτία for secondary causes in preference to αἴτιον. He only uses it of God when contrasting Him with other αἰτίαι.
§ 137. περιττεύειν, κτλ. For my suggestion of πέρα τοῦ εἶναί που for περιττεύειν οὐ cf. Aristotle, Phys. iv. 1, p. 208 b 29 διὰ τὸ νομίζειν, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοί, πάντα εἶναί που καὶ ἐν τόπῳ. For πέρα cf. πέρα μνήμης καὶ νοήσεως ἱστάμενον, De Mut. 12.
Ibid. In accordance with the derivation of that name. I.e. θεός from τίθημι. Philo always uses ἔτυμον and ἐτύμως in this technical way, cf. e.g. De Vita Mos. i. 17 δίδωσιν ὄνομα θεμένη Μωυσῆν ἑτύμως διὰ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος αὐτὸν ἀνελέσθαι· τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ μῶν ὀνομάζουσι Αἰγύπποι. The one example of those given in the index which at first sight appears to be an exception shews the rule most clearly. In Quod Omn. Prob. 73 we have οἱ ἑτύμως ἑπτὰ σοφοὶ προσονομασθέντες, which we might naturally suppose to mean that they were truly called wise. But examination shews that the allusion is to the supposed derivation of σοφός from σεβασμός, from which also ἑπτά is, according to Philo, derived (De Op. 127).
§ 141. ἀκοὴν μὴ μαρτυρεῖν. This is the form in which the MSS. give the phrase in a similar passage in De Spec. Leg. iv. 61, and which is regularly used by Demosthenes and Isaeus. Wendland on that passage notes that here ἀκοῇ should be corrected to ἀκοὴν.
Philo is no doubt alluding to the Attic orators, particularly to Dem. Contra Eubuliden p. 1300 πᾶσι προσήκειν … μηδεμίαν προσάγειν ἀκοὴν πρὸς τὸν τοιοῦτον ἀγῶνα. οὕτω γὰρ τοῦτʼ ἄδικον καὶ σφόδρα πάλαι κέκριται, ὥστʼ οὐδὲ μαρτυρεῖν ἀκοὴν ἐῶσιν οἱ νόμοι, οὐδʼ ἐπὶ τοῖς πάνυ φαύλοις ἐγκλήμασι. So too in ps.-Dem. Contra Steph. ii. p. 1130, Contra Leoch. p. 1027, where exception is made if the person who was heard is dead. See Dict. of Ant. art. “Akoēn Marturein.” In De Spec. Leg. Philo definitely says, what he perhaps implies here, that the Attic legislators took the principle from Moses.
§ 149. Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture, p. xxvi, supposes the reference to be to Ezra 8:2. This is quite unnecessary. Ezra is nowhere else quoted by Philo, and Ryle’s idea, that the use of βασιλικαί instead of the usual βασίλειαι points to a different group from the books of Kings, is fanciful.
§ 151. ἐπὶ τῆς πολίτιδος τὸ κατασκευαστόν. While the general sense of this is clear, the text is very doubtful. κατασκευαστόν (“artificial”) for the regularity which seems artificial is strange but not impossible, and τὸ παραπλήσιον may be used as an adverb. But the word πολῖτις, only known as the feminine of πολίτης, is impossible here, where fever or malaria is clearly meant.
I suggest very hesitatingly that τῆς πολίτιδος may be a corruption of τῆς σπληνίτιδος. The word σπληνῖτις for a disease of the spleen is not found in the medical writers, but they constantly insist on the enlargement of the spleen as a regular symptom of malaria (see W. H. S. Jones, Malaria, index).
Wendland would correct to ἐπὶ τῆς πυρετοῦ καταβολῆς τὸ παραπλήσιον, which bears little resemblance to the text.
Mangey thought that the whole passage was an irrelevant interpolation. On the contrary, as an illustration of Philo’s point, that we find harmony and regularity in things evil, it seems very appropriate.
Ibid. εἰς αὐτά. The phrase is, as it stands, unintelligible. I suggest and have translated εἰς αὑτὰς or εἰς αὑτὰς αὐτήν (with regard to themselves, i.e. each other). I understand Philo to mean that while the attacks recur at the same hour, they vary somewhat in nature, but the varieties also have a regular order. Whether this is medically untrue, or whether if it is, Philo is likely to have thought it true, I do not know. Wendland suggested αὐτὴν αἰεί. Mangey read εἰς τὰ αὐτά. I think ἰσότητα might be worth considering.
§ 154. ἅς τι τῶν ὄντων. This seems to me less unsatisfactory than Wendland’s reading. But τι = ὁτιοῦν in this position is strange. Possibly οὔ τι (adverbial). Also ἔθος, for which Wendland would substitute θέμις, is odd. Altogether the text is unsatisfactory.
§ 164. The fortunes of tyrants. Philo doubtless has in mind the description of the miserable condition of tyrants in Republic, Bk. ix., particularly 576 B.
§ 165. Free licence to sin. This use of ἐκεχειρία (cf. τὴν ἐς τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν ἐκεχειρίαν, De Jos. 254) seems peculiar to Philo. It suggests that when it occurs without such explanatory phrases, as in De Cher. 92 and De Sac. 23, the meaning is rather licence in general, than, as it was translated there, “freedom from stress of business.”
§ 173. Each of them as a whole. Did anyone deify the νοητὸς κόσμος? Philo perhaps means that the deification of the visible world ipso facto involved that of the invisible.
§ 174. ἐκάστων. I retain this, supposing that the army of the subordinates are regarded as formed of three kinds, (1) the Potencies who as agents in the creation of the two worlds stand above the rest, (2) the divine natures in heaven, i.e. the heavenly bodies, (3) the “souls” or angels in the lower air.
§§ 184–187. The sense of these sections is given also by Stobaeus, as from Chrysippus (S.V.F. ii. 471), with the same illustrations from the wine and water and oiled sponge, and much the same language throughout. There is, however, a complete difference in his use of the term μῖξις, which he distinguishes from παράθεσις and applies to the ἀντιπαρέκτασις διʼ ὅλων in dry substances while κρᾶσις is reserved for the same in liquids. His example of μῖξις is the mixture of fire and iron in heated iron. It does not follow that Philo made a mistake; the use of terms seems to have varied. Cf. ibid. 473.
§ 186. Resolved. Or “expanded.” Some MSS. ἀναπληροῦσθαι. See on the word Liddell & Scott (1927). The suggestion there that the word suggests “resolving into simple elements” is unnecessary.
§ 187. Confusion is the annihilation. Cf. S. V.F. 473 (also from Chrysippus) τὰς δέ τινας (sc. μίξεις γίνεσθαι) συγχύσει, διʼ ὅλων τῶν τε οὐσιῶν αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἑν αὐταῖς ποιοτήτων συμφθειρομένων ἀλλήλαις, ὡς γίνεσθαί φησιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρικῶν φαρμάκων, κατὰ σύμφθαρσιν τῶν μιγνυμένων ἄλλου τινὸς ἐξ αὐτῶν γεννωμένου σώματος.
§ 198. Heinemann in a note added to Stein’s translation considers that πεφορημένος is unsuitable here and suggests πεφυρημένος. But this comes from φυράω, which will not give any suitable meaning, and the word of which he is thinking is no doubt πεφυρμένος, from φύρω, which is certainly often combined with συγχέω, cf. particularly Spec. Leg. iv. 77 διαιρείτω καὶ διακρινέτω τὰς φύσεις τῶν πραγμάτων ἵνα μὴ φύρηται συγχεόμενα τοῖς παρασήμοις τὰ δόκιμα. However, the explanation of πεφορημένος given in the footnote seems to me satisfactory, cf. the combination of πεφορημένος with ἄσωτος to indicate the profligate in De Fug. 28, and πάντῃ φορούμενος associated with σπείρεται in the sense of διασπείρεται in De Cong. 58.