 It is impossible to give precise dates for Philo’s birth. The consensus is that he lived between the end of the first century BCE and the middle of the first century CE, during a period of acute agitation and interethnic tensions in Alexandria. The Romans, with their universal ambitions, had replaced the Macedonians, leaving to the Greeks only the pride of their identity and some fiscal advantages. The Greeks in turn pretended to be the only citizens of the city of Alexandria, refusing citizenship to the Jews with very few exceptions, among which was Alexander the Alabarch (tax collector), Philo’s brother (Bloch 2021, Siegert 2021). Alexander’s son, in turn, became one of the famous apostates in the history of Judaism, becoming prefect of Egypt in 66–69 CE and serving as Emperor Titus’ second-in-command at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The history of the apostate within his family was certainly a problem for Philo, who tried to raise the issue with his nephew in the (De providentia 2 and in the De animalibus. Though he never specified his own political status, Philo was likely a citizen of this prestigious city. Finally, the native Egyptians were despised by both Greeks and Jews. The Egyptians didn’t all remain passive, however; Manetho (Stern 1974, texts n.19–21), an Egyptian priest, wrote a parody of the Exodus, transforming the liberation of Israel into the ignominious expulsion of a disabled and dishonest people. This topos won great favor among Greek intellectuals like Philo’s contemporary, Apion, against whom Flavius Josephus wrote his famous apology of the Jewish people. This tension erupted into the Alexandria riots of 38 CE, the first major pogrom in the history of Jewish people, leading in turn to the installation of a ghetto, murders, tortures, humiliations, and mockeries of Agrippa I, the king of Judaea (van der Horst 2003). We must keep all this in mind in order not to imagine Philo merely as a scholar burrowed away in the Great Library, nor as a rabbi lecturing peacefully in the synagogues. In Spec. 3.1, he wistfully remembers a time when he could devote himself to study and contemplation, probably before the disasters of 38 CE: 