to the polemical activity which he was called upon to exert in
defending his people against misrepresentation and persecution. During
the reign of Augustus and the early years of Tiberius (30 B.C.E.-20
C.E.) the Roman provinces were firmly ruled, and the governors were as
firmly controlled by the emperor. To Rectus, who was the prefect of
Egypt till 14 C.E., and who was removed for attempted extortion,
Tiberius addressed the rebuke, "I want my sheep to be shorn, not
strangled." But when Tiberius fell under the influence of Sejanus, and
left to his hated minister the active control of the empire, harder
times began for the provincials, and especially for the Jews. Sejanus
was an upstart, and like most upstarts a tyrant; and for some
reason--it may be jealousy of the power of the Jews at Rome--he hated
the Jewish race and persecuted it. The great opponent of Sejanus was
Antonia, the ward of Philo's brother, and a loyal friend to his
people; and this, too, may have incited Sejanus' ill-feeling. Whatever
the reason, the Alexandrian Jews felt the heavy hand, and when Philo
came to write the story of his people in his own times, he devoted one
book to the persecution by Sejanus. Unfortunately it has not survived,
but veiled hints of the period of stress through which the people
passed are not wanting in the commentary on the law.

There were always anti-Semites spoiling for a fight at Alexandria, and
there was always inflammable material which they could stir up. The
Egyptian populace were by nature, says Philo, "jealous and envious,
and were filled moreover with an ancient and inveterate enmity towards
the Jews,"[72] and of the degenerate Greek population, many were
anxious from motives of private gain as well as from religious enmity
to incite an outbreak; since the Jews were wealthy and the booty would
be great. Among the cultured, too, there was one philosophical school
powerful at Alexandria, which maintained a persistent attitude of