APPENDIX TO THE WORSE ATTACKS THE BETTER
§ 1. And Cain said … plain. These words are not in the Hebrew text.
§ 7. The three kinds of good things. This classification is frequently used both by Aristotle (e.g. Eth. Nic. i. 1098 b) and by the Stoics (S.V.F. iii. 136). The doctrine of the necessity of all three is found in Aristotle, though not with the implication here made that they are equally important; e.g. “It will not be denied that, as there are three classes, external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, the happy man must possess all these” (Politics 1323 f., Welldon’s translation).
§ 9. Nothing is a good thing, etc. For the Stoic doctrine that τὸ καλόν (“the morally beautiful,” honestum in Cicero) is the only good see Index to S.V.F. No Greek passage, however, seems to reproduce the dogma exactly in this form. Cf. De Post. 133, where it is definitely called Stoic.
§ 16. διʼ ἀγωγῆς νομίμου ἢ καὶ παιδεύσεως ὀρθῆς. In the former clause both noun and adjective suggest practical obedience. For ἀγωγή is a leading along a path, and νόμιμος is one ἀκολουθητικὸς τῷ νόμῳ καὶ πρακτικὸς τῶν ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ προσταττομένων (S.V.F. iii. 613). In the second clause the word παίδευσις takes us into the school-room, the domain of the νομικός, who is ἐξηγητικὸς τοῦ νόμου (ibid.). Philo implies that practical training is the more effective way of instilling “healthy principles.” He can hardly have used the words without thinking of God’s leading of His people by the hand of Moses.
§ 34. Training for dying. This use of the Platonic phrase should be compared with that in De Gig. 14. Here in the mouth of the worldly it connotes the wretchedness of the philosopher’s life. There he is training to die to the life of the body in order to gain the higher life. Philo is probably thinking here of Phaedo 64 A, where, when Socrates uses the equivalent phrase ἐπιτηδεύει ἀποθνήσκειν, Simmias laughs and says “that is exactly what my unphilosophical countrymen would say of the philosophers.” It is a good example of Philo’s intimate knowledge of Plato.
§ 39. All the qualities. ἰδέαι is a technical word in rhetoric for the various qualities of ἑρμηνεία ( = “style” or “expression”). Hermogenes Περὶ ἰδεῶν enumerates and treats of seven of these, the three chief of which are clearness, greatness, beauty.
§ 46. The days of my father’s mourning. Philo to suit his allegorical interpretation takes this to mean “the days when my father will mourn.”
§ 49. Separate … not separate. The Stoics classified material things (σώματα) as (a) διεστῶτα, e.g. an army, (b) συνημμένα, e.g. a house or ship, (c) ἡνωμένα, e.g. animals (S.V.F. ii. 366 f.).
§ 50. Judgements, or “opinions.” In De Post. 79 and 112 the two wives are more or less identified respectively with Epicureanism and the Aristotelian (?) belief in the value of bodily and external things.
§ 57. Inquiry … question. πύσμα or πεῦσις is a question requiring an explanatory answer as “Where is Abel?” ἐρώτημα requires only “yes” or “no.”
§ 64. The number 50 is perfect. Why so? In De Vita Cont. 65 it is said to be the holiest and most “natural” (φυσικώτατος) of numbers because it is formed from the hypotenuse (δύναμις) of the right-angled triangle, which is the beginning of the generation of all things. This reason seems to us absurd. We can dimly see that it applies to 5 (see De Op. 97), but we do not see on what principle it is extended to 50.
§§ 84 f. Whose roots He caused, etc. The thought and much of the diction of the sections is from Timaeus 90 A ff.: “As to the supreme form of soul that is within us, God has given it to each of us as a guiding genius, even that … which dwells in the summit of our body, and raises us from earth towards our celestial affinity, seeing that we are of no earthly, but of heavenly growth (οὐράνιον φυτόν), since to heaven, whence in the beginning was the birth of our soul, the diviner part attaches the head or root (τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ ῥίζαν ἡμῶν ἀνακρεμαννύν) and makes our whole body upright” (Archer-Hind’s translation). He adds as a note to κεφαλὴν καὶ ῥίζαν “i.e. as a plant draws its sustenance through its roots from its native earth, so does the soul draw her spiritual sustenance from her native heavens.”
§ 91. The point seems to be that physical suffering makes a direct appeal to God. Blood is the principle of our physical life. The physical sufferings of Israel in Egypt cried out to God. In neither case was the complaint conveyed by articulate speech, but in the one case by the blood spilt, in the other by groans. By each of these a meaning (νοῦς) was conveyed, and speech is, after all, only conveyance of a meaning. Why does Philo say that the appeal is sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? Is the stress here on the latter? Does he mean that what we feel reaches God when we are not consciously praying?
§ 118. Two cakes. The idea is obtained by a combination of the descriptions of the Manna in Exod. 16:31 and Numb. 11:8. In the first “its taste was as an ἔγκρις in honey”: in the second “its pleasure was as an ἔγκρις from oil.” The ἔγκρις is defined elsewhere as a sweetmeat made from honey and oil. Philo passes with bewildering rapidity through the different suggestions of oil, (a) as rushing in a stream, (b) as giving light, (c) as an element in food.
§ 120. Corresponding states of blessedness. εὐπάθειαι is used here not exactly in the Stoic sense. With them the three εὐπάθειαι are not the opposites of the πάθη, but reasonable forms of them. Thus χαρά “corresponds” not to λύπη as here, but to ἡδονή (as in L.A. iii. 107), while the εὐπάθεια corresponding to φόβος is not as here ἐλπίς (which is not one of the εὐπάθειαι) but εὐλάβεια (“caution”). So too the εὐπάθεια corresponding to ἐπιθυμία is βούλησις (“wishing”), while λύπη has no corresponding εὐπάθεια.
§ 124. The poetry which God makes. The transition to poetry, which sounds strange in English, is easy enough in Greek, where ποιητής is both “maker” and “poet.”
§ 134. Well governed city. Philo means Sparta. See Plutarch’s Moralia 41 B and 801 B.
§ 135. While the translators have not ventured to correct the text according to their suggestion of πολιτικοῦ (or πολιτικωτέρου) ἕτερον for πολιτικώτερον, they believe it to be very probable, taking it in the sense of another lesson beside the above-mentioned which belongs rather to the civil sphere. The functions of the πολιτικός, though perfectly legitimate and often imperative for the Wise Man, both to Philo and the Stoics, stand to him on a somewhat lower plane than pure philosophy. Compare the contrast of πρὸς πολιτείαν and πρὸς ἀλήθειαν φιλοσοφῶν in § 7. The lesson that only the good man’s advice can benefit the State is essentially “political,” and this which follows is as clearly of the other type.
§ 141. And of course rulers, etc. Or “laws count as rulers.” This would be an odd use of γράφονται (? έγγράφονται), but such a translation is naturally suggested by De Vita Mosis ii. 4, where we are told that “the King is a living law, and the Law a just King.” The thought may have been suggested by Plato, Symposium 196 C πόλεως βασιλῆς νόμοι; cf. Gorgias 484 B, Aristot. Rhet. iii. 3.
§ 145. Apprentices … masters … craft. Or “pupils … schoolmasters … arts,” i.e. the Encyclia, particularly “grammar” and “rhetoric,” regularly called “arts.” The discipline of the “pedagogue,” the school-teacher, and the parent or guardian, form three natural stages in the experience of the growing boy.
Appoints. Perhaps an allusion to the Attic law by which it was the duty of the Archon to appoint guardians, where the father’s will left no instructions. (See Dictionary of Antiquities, s.v. Epitropus.) Philo’s clear allusion to Attic law in 143 makes this the more probable.
§ 154. The Creator had left nothing, etc. Almost a quotation from Timaeus 32 C, where God is said to have used up the whole of the four elements in making the Universe, ἵνα τέλεον ἐκ τελέων τῶν μερῶν εἴη.
§ 157. For the good things that are. The words here put into Cain’s mouth are intended to represent the teaching of the Epicureans, whose view that bodily pleasure was a necessary element in happiness easily lent itself to misrepresentation. See the words of Epicurus given by Diogenes Laertius (x. 6): “I know not how to conceive the good apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form” (Hicks’s translation). So too in the concluding words of the section we have a hit at the doctrine that we choose the virtues on account of pleasure and not for their own sake, as we use the physician’s art for the sake of health (Diog. Laert. x. 138).
§ 160. ἀναγκαίως. In Timaeus 69 D ἀναγκαίως is used of the way in which the inferior agents in the Creation performed their somewhat baffling tasks. It has been rendered there “as best they might” (L. & S. 1927). Moses is faced with a task more baffling even than theirs. It is to express in human speech the Name of God. He does it “as best he may.”
§ 178. Scylla. The allusion is to Odyssey xii. 118 ἡ δέ τοι οὐ θνητή, ἀλλʼ ἀθάνατον κακόν ἐστι.