 Almost all the details that we know of Philo’s life are in relation to his political activity. Though he himself has a clear preference for theoretical and mystical life, he played an important role in the Jewish community of Alexandria. This is one of the great paradoxes of his life. He thought that it was necessary to engage in political affairs before attempting the contemplative life, but the tragic situation of the Alexandrine community obliged him to commit to public life in order to defend his coreligionists. Nevertheless, he never considered politics a field without interest. His treatises are full of remarks about the origin of society, or about the functioning of human society. Stasis, violent sedition in the city, was one of his main concerns, certainly based on his own experience. He was perfectly aware of the Stoic doctrine of the social oikeiôsis, which affirmed that the whole of mankind was a natural community, arranged in concentric circles (family, nation, humankind as a whole). He did not deny the existence of kinship among human beings, even if “malignant covetousness” is always a source of hatred. He tried to give a concrete shape to the natural link by encouraging philanthropy and demanding humane treatment of slaves. He did not hesitate in advocating their emancipation. He even asserts that their emancipation “granted freedom to him who is naturally free” (Spec. 2.84). At the same time, he describes mankind as being deeply divided by passions, wars, and all kinds of violence. He has the same optimistic vision of human nature, at least in principle, as the Stoics, while he also adopted the pessimistic view of the Neo-Academic Carneades in his critique of Stoicism. One of his most original ideas to transcend this duality was that individual political regimes were “additions to the one natural regime” (Ios. 28–31). The dispersion of humanity and the strength of the passions have as consequence that harmonious coexistence of nations, though theoretically possible, is in reality impossible. Because there is, in politics, a permanent antagonism between individual passions and natural reason, the figure of the politician is himself varied and contradictory. Moses is not a politician, but at once the figure of the philosopher-king, the sage, the priest, and the prophet. Even before receiving the Law, he is the incarnation of the law (nomos empsychos), as were the patriarchs (Abr. 3–5). Joseph, the best politician, is not a constant object of Philo’s admiration. Even though a recent paper (Frazier 2002) tried to give evidence of a greater coherence between the two treatises, in the De Iosepho Joseph is described as a responsible and courageous man, while in the De somniis he is said to be mainly desperate for glory. For Philo, monotheism would imply the superiority of monarchy, but with the exception of Moses, most human beings are too weak and inconsistent to ensure stable monarchy. In fact, his political thought is profoundly influenced by the Hellenistic idea of anacyclôsis, the natural instability of the three elementary constitutions (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy). The Greek historian Polybius had thought that a mixed constitution would be the guarantee against this instability, and he saw in the Roman constitution the paradigm of this stability. In a certain sense, for Philo, the city of Moses is the model of a new kind of constitution: it associates transcendence with law of nature, particularism and universalism, monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Was it for him, as it said by Carlier (2008: 433) “un modèle concurrentiel à la civitas romana” (i.e., a competitive model to Rome)? Certainly it was for him a model of a different kind, a radically different kind of exemplarity. In this perspective, the famous and controversial passage about the Essenians (Probus 75–92) can be read as the demonstration that this model was not a utopian one.