APPENDIX TO DE VITA MOSIS I
§ 11. Conscious of the increased misery, etc. This idea, which does not seem very applicable to a three-months-old infant, is mentioned as a common, though mistaken, feeling about the death of older children in Tusc. Disp. i. 93 “idem, si puer parvus occidit, aequo animo ferendum putant; si vero in cunis ne querendum quidem … ‘Nondum gustaverat,’ inquiunt, ‘vitae suavitatem; hic autem iam sperabat magna, quibus frui coeperat.’ ”
§ 22. Like the horse to the meadow. The proverb appears with ἱππεύς instead of ἵππος in Plato, Theaetetus 183 D ἱππέας εἰς πεδίον προκαλεῖ Σωκράτη εἰς λόγους προκαλούμενος, and so in Lucian, Pseudosophistes 8. On the other hand ἵππος as here in Lucian, Piscator 9.
§ 23. Assyrian letters. Whatever Philo understood by this, he may have got the idea from Herodotus iv. 87, where Herodotus records the erection by Darius on the Bosporus of two stelae, one inscribed with Ἀσσύρια γράμματα, the other with Ἑλληνικά.
§ 263. Balaam’s ass (see footnote). Philo’s omission of any mention of the ass speaking may no doubt be due to the feeling that the story might seem ridiculous to the Gentile readers, whom he certainly has in view. But he quite possibly may have felt that it was one of the many passages which could only be accepted in a spiritual sense, like the mythical (μυθῶδες) account of the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam. In the one place where he mentions this part of the story, De Cher. 32–35, he gives the interpretation that the ass stands for the “unreasoning rule of life,” i.e. ordinary life pursuits, which the fool unjustly blames when things go wrong.
§ 304. πληγή (in Num. 25:8, 9). Not only is Philo’s mistake in taking this as = “slaughter” very natural, but are we sure that the LXX did not intend it? The word does not seem to be used in the LXX, in the historical books at least, of a pestilence as excluding other forms of divine visitation, except perhaps in 1 Chron. 21:22, and on the other hand is constantly used of a slaughter, e.g. 1 Sam. 4:10. Psalm 106(105):30 speaking of the incident takes it as a plague, but uses the θραῦσις of Num. 16:48, 49. Whether Paul understood it as a plague or a slaughter is not clear (1 Cor. 10:8).