Philo's eyewitness account of the anti-Jewish pogrom in Alexandria (38 CE) under the Roman prefect Aulus Avillius Flaccus, and Flaccus's own downfall and death.
Flaccus (In Flaccum) is Philo of Alexandria's historical-polemical account of Aulus Avillius Flaccus, the Roman prefect of Egypt whose failure to check anti-Jewish violence in Alexandria led to the pogrom of 38 CE. Philo opens by praising Flaccus's early competence as governor under Tiberius, then explains that the praise is a rhetorical setup: a capable man who later does evil is more culpable, not less, because he sinned knowingly rather than from ignorance. The narrative traces Flaccus's political unraveling after Tiberius's death and Gaius (Caligula)'s accession, as Flaccus, fearful and adrift, falls under the influence of anti-Jewish advisers and courts the Alexandrian mob to shore up his position.
The center of the work is Philo's description of the violence itself: the mock coronation of a mentally disabled man named Carabas as a burlesque "king" to mock the Jewish king Agrippa I, the seizure and desecration of the synagogues, Flaccus's edict branding Jews as foreigners and aliens without a hearing, the confinement of Jews into a fraction of the city, and mob violence including plunder, beatings, and the public torture of Jewish councilors in the theater. Philo frames these events as unprecedented cruelty exceeding even the customary restraints observed even by conquerors and executioners.
The work's second half turns to Flaccus's own reversal of fortune: his abrupt arrest and removal by Gaius, his exile, his agonized self-recrimination reviewing his own crimes point by point, and finally his execution-by-assassination on Gaius's orders, killed in a manner Philo describes in graphic, almost ritual detail. Philo closes by presenting Flaccus's violent end as proof of divine providence protecting the Jewish nation. The text is a key primary source for the 38 CE Alexandrian riots, for early Roman-era antisemitism, and for the legal status of Jews as an ethnic community within a Greek and Roman city.
“I praise Flaccus not because it is fitting to extol an enemy, but so that I may set his depravity in a clearer light.”
— Flaccus · read this chapter →
“Driving the poor wretch to the gymnasium and setting him up on high, so that he might be seen by everyone, they spread out a sheet of papyrus for a diadem and set it on his head, and clothed the rest of his body with a floor-mat instead of a cloak”
— Flaccus · read this chapter →
“For a few days later he posted an edict in which he declared us foreigners and aliens, without granting us a hearing, but condemning us without trial.”
— Flaccus · read this chapter →
“he let loose, as though the city had been captured, anyone who wished to plunder the Jews”
— Flaccus · read this chapter →
“Such were the sufferings that Flaccus too endured”
— Flaccus · read this chapter →
It is Philo of Alexandria's account of the 38 CE anti-Jewish pogrom in Alexandria, blamed on the negligence and eventual open hostility of the Roman prefect Aulus Avillius Flaccus. It describes the mob violence, the legal disenfranchisement of the Jewish community, and Flaccus's own subsequent fall and violent death.
Aulus Avillius Flaccus was the Roman prefect of Egypt under Tiberius and into Gaius (Caligula)'s reign. Philo credits him with early competent governance but describes him later courting the Alexandrian mob and permitting, then actively enabling, violence against the city's Jewish population before he was arrested, exiled, and executed by Gaius's agents.
According to Philo, mobs desecrated and seized the synagogues, a mentally disabled man named Carabas was crowned in mock kingship to humiliate the Jewish king Agrippa I, Flaccus issued an edict branding Jews as foreigners without trial, and Jews were driven from their homes, plundered, and some publicly tortured in the theater.
After his exile, Flaccus is stalked by assassins sent under Gaius's orders, at the head of a death list. He flees but is caught, and Philo describes his death in graphic detail as he struggles against his killers before being buried in a hastily dug pit.
Philo explains this is deliberate: he wants to show that Flaccus was not ignorant or incapable, so that his later crimes appear as knowing wrongdoing rather than the more forgivable error of an incompetent ruler.
It is a historical-polemical narrative, one of the primary ancient sources for the Alexandrian pogrom of 38 CE and for the legal and social status of Jews under Roman rule in Egypt, though written from an explicitly partisan, providential point of view.
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