r Alexander, who had been
imprisoned, was restored to honor.[80] "It is fitting," ran the
rescript of Claudius, "to permit the Jews everywhere under our sway to
observe their ancient customs without hindrance. And I charge them to
use my indulgence with moderation, and not to show contempt for the
religious rites of other peoples."

The note of triumph rings through the political references to be found
in the last parts of Philo's allegorical commentary, and no doubt it
was accentuated in the lost book which he added as an epilogue, or
palinode, to his history of the embassy. God had again preserved his
people, and discomfited their foes; recently-discovered papyri have
revealed that the arch anti-Semites, Isidorus and Lampon, were tried
at Rome and executed. Claudius was well-disposed to the Jewish race,
and before the final storm there was a calm. Howbeit, after the death
of Agrippa, in 44 C.E., Judaea became a Roman province, and under the
rapacious governorship of Felix Florus and Cestius Gallus, the
hostility of the people to the Romans grew more and more bitter. But
in Alexandria there was tranquillity, or at least we know of no
disquieting events during the next decade.

"Old age," said Philo, "is an unruffled harbor,"[81] and the saying
refers possibly to his own experience. For he must have died full of
years and full of honors. Through his life he was the spiritual and
philosophical guide, and finally he had become the champion of his
people against their persecutors, giving dignity to their cause and
inspiring respect even in their enemies. He was happy in the time of
his death, for he did not live to see the destruction of the national
home of his people and of that temple which he had loved to
contemplate as the future centre of a universal religion. The
disintegration of his own community at Alexandria followed full soon
on the greater disaster; the temple of Onias was dismantled and
interdicted against Jewish worship by Vespasian in the year 73 C.E.,
and though, as has been noted, this was not in itself of great
importance, it is symbolic of the uprooting of national life in the
Diaspora as well as in Palestine itself. On the downfall of Jerusalem
in 70 C.E. many of the extreme anti-Roman party, known as the Zealots,
fled to Alexandria and stirred up rebellion and dissension. Nothing
but disaster could have attended the outbreak, but it is a sad
reflection that the governor who put it down and ruthlessl