herself as the most disgraceful prize for those who gain the victory. Let her, therefore, be stoned as an injury and mischief to, and a common pollution of, the whole state, having corrupted the graces of nature, which she ought to have adorned further by her own excellence.
X. The law has pronounced all acts of adultery, if de- tected in the fact, or if proved by undeniable evidence, liable to the punishment of death; but cases in which guilt- is only suspected, it does not choose should be investigated by men, but it brings them before the tribunal of nature; since men are able to judge of what is visible, but God can judge also of what is unseen, since he alone is able to behold the soul distinctly, therefore he says to the man who sus- pects such a thing, " "Write an accusation, and go up to the holy city with thy wife, and standing before the judges, lay bare the passion of suspicion which affects you, not like a false accuser or treacherous enemy, seeking to gain the vic- tory by any means whatever, but as a man may do who wishes accurately to ascertain the truth without any sophis- try. And the woman, having incurred two dangers, one of her life, and the other of her reputation, the loss of which last is more grievous than any kind of death, shall judge the matter with herself; and if she be pure, let her make her defence with confidence; but if she be convicted by her own conscience, let her cover her face, making her modesty the veil for her iniquities, for to persist in her impudence is the very extravagance of wickedness. But if the charge which is made against her be contested, and if the evidence be doubtful, so as not to incline to either side, then let the two parties go up to the temple, and let the man stand in front of the altar, in the presence of the priest for the day, and then let him state his suspicions and his grounds for them, and let him produce and offer some barley flour, as a species of oblation on behalf of his wife, to prove that he accuses her, not out of insult, but with an honest intention, because he has a reasonable doubt. And. the priest shall take the barley and offer it to the woman, and shall take away from her the head-dress on her head, that she may be judged with her head bare, and deprived of the symbol of modesty, which all those women are accustomed to wear who are completely blameless; and there shall not be any 318 PHILO JUD.EUS.
oil used, nor any frankincense, as in the case of other sacrifices, because the sacrifice now offered is to be accom- plished on no joyful occasion, but on one which is very grievous.
And the reason why the flour is to be made of barley is, perhaps, because the food which is made of barley is of a somewhat ambiguous character, and is suited for the use both of irrational animals and of needy men; and is there- fore a sign that a woman who has committed adultery differs in no respect from the beasts, whose connections with one another are promiscuous and incessant; but she who is pure from all such accusations is devoted to that manner of life which befits human beings.
Then the law proceeds to say, the priest, having taken an earthen vessel, shall pour forth pure water, having drawn it from a fountain, and shall also bring a lump of clay from the ground of the temple, which also I think has in it a symbolical reference to the search after truth; for the earthenware vessel is appropriate to the commission of adul- tery because it is easily broken, and death is the punish- ment appointed for adulterers; but the earth and the water are appropriate to the purging of the accusation, since the origin, and increase, and perfection of all things, take place by them: on which account it was very proper for the law- giver to set them both off by epithets, saying, that the water which the priest was to take must be pure and living water, since a blameless woman is pure as to her life, and deserves to live; and the earth too is to be taken, not from any chance spot, but from the soil of the ground of the. temple, which must, of necessity, be most excellent, just as a modest woman is.
And when all these things are previously prepared, the woman with her head uncovered, bearing the barley flour in her hand, as has been already specified, shall come forward; and the priest standing opposite to her and holding the earthenware vessel in which are the water and the earth, shall speak thus: " If you have not transgressed the laws of your marriage, and if no other man has been associated with you, so that you have not violated the rights of him who is joined to you by the law, you are blameless and innocent; but if you have neglected your husband and have followed ON SPECIAL LAWS. 319 empty appetites, either loving some one yourself or yielding to some lover, betraying your nearest and dearest con- nections, and adulterating them by a spurious mixture, then learn that you are deservedly liable to every kind of curse, the proofs of which you will exhibit on your body. Come then and drink the draught of conviction, which shall un- cover and lay bare all thy hidden and secret actions."
Then the priest shall write these words on a paper and dip it in the water which is in the earthenware- vessel, and give it to the woman. And she shall drink it and depart, awaiting the reward of her modesty or the extreme penalty of her incontinence; for if she has been falsely accused she may hope for seed and children, disregarding all apprehen- sions and anxieties on the subject of barrenness and child- lessness. But if she is guilty then a great weight and bulk, form her belly swelling and becoming full, will come upon her, and a terribly evil condition of her womb will afflict her, since she did not choose to keep it pure for her husband, who had married her according to the laws of her nation. And the law takes such exceeding pains to prevent any irregularity taking place with respect to marriages, that even in the case of husbands and wives who have come to- gether for legitimate embraces, in strict accordance with the laws of marriage, after they have arisen from their beds it does not allow them to touch anything before they have had recourse to washings and ablutions; keeping them very far from adultery and from all accusations referring to adultery.
XI. But if any one should offer violence to a widow after her husband is dead, or after she has been otherwise divorced from him, and defile her, committing a lighter offence than adultery, and one that may perhaps be about half as serious, he shall not indeed be liable to the punishment of death, but he shall be impeached for violence, and insolence, and intemperance, having thus adopted the most infamous con- duct as if it had been the most creditable; and the tribunal of the judge shall decide and condemn him to the penalty that he deserves to suffer.
Again, seduction is an offence which is similar and nearly related to adultery, as they are both sprung from one common mother, incontinence. But some of those persons who are accustomed to dignify shameful actions by specious 320 PHILO JUDJ3US.
names, call this love, blushing to confess the real truth con- cerning its character. But, nevertheless, though it may be akin to it, it is not in every respect similar to it, because it is an offence that does not spread so as to affect many families, as is the case with adultery, but it is limited to one house alone, that of the virgin who has been seduced.
Therefore we must say to a man who desires to enjoy a virgin who is a free-born citizen, " My good man, rejecting your shameless rashness and audacity, the sources of treachery and faithlessness, and all such feelings, do not allow yourself to be discovered to be wicked, either openly or secretly, but if, indeed, you have any legitimate feeling of love for the maiden in your soul, go to her parents, if they are alive, and if they are not, then go to her brother or to her guardians, or to any other persons who chance to be her protectors, and having discovered to them your feelings towards her, as a free-born man should do, ask her in marriage, and implore them not to account you unworthy.
" Por no one of those who have the guardianship of the maiden entrusted them could be so base as to oppose an earnest and persevering entreaty, and especially as to refuse you since you, would be found, by strict examination, not to have falsely pretended a passion which you do not feel, or to have conceived only a superficial love for her, but one which is genuine and thoroughly established." * But if any one, being insane and frantic, repudiating and discarding all the suggestions of reason, were to submit himself wholly to passion and desire as his masters, and looking, as people say, on might as stronger than right, were to ravish and seduce women, treating free-born women as slaves, and doing acts of war in time of peace, let such a man be led before the judges. And if the damsel who has been forced has a father, let him take counsel and deal with the ravisher about espousing her; then if he refuse to do so, he shall give the damsel a dowry for another husband, being fined in a sum of money sufficient for this purpose. But if he consents and registers her as his wife, let him marry her at once without any delay, confessing a second time that he owes her the same dowry, and let him have no permission to delay or evade the fulfilment of this marriage; both because * Deuteronomy xxiL 13.
ON SPECIAL LAWS. 321 of his own conduct, in order that the mishap which took place respecting her first connection with a man may be comforted by a firm marriage, which nothing shall ever separate but death. But if the damsel be an orphan and have no father, then let her be asked by the judges whether she is willing to take this man for her husband or not; and whether she agrees to do so or whether she refuses, still let her have the same dowry that the man would have agreed to give her while her father was yet alive.
XII. Some people think that a licensed concubinage is an offence something between seduction and adultery, when the two parties come together, and agree to live as man and wife by a certain agreement, but before the marriage cere- mony is completed, some other man meeting with the woman, or forcing her has connection with her; but in my opinion this also is a kind of of adultery; for such an agree- ment as is here mentioned is equivalent to a marriage, for in it the names of the woman and of the man are both regis- tered, and all other things which were to lead to their union; on which account, the law orders both the parties to be stoned if with one and the same mind they agree together to commit adultery; for it is impossible that, unless they both set out with the same intention, they should be looked upon as equal in iniquity, if they had not both sinned in an equal degree; at all events it often happens that the offence is enhanced or diminished, with reference to the difference of place in which it is committed.
For, as it seems, such an offence is greater if it be com- mitted in a city, and less if it be committed outside the walls of any city, in a wilderness; for in such a place there is no one to assist the maiden, even though she may have said and done everything, which could conduce to the pre- servation of her virginity, unattacked and undefiled; but in a city there are halls of council, and courts of justice, and great assemblies of generals, and aediles, and rulers of the markets, and other magistrates; and besides all these there is the people; for there is in the soul' of every man, even though he may be a private individual, a feeling which is hostile to iniquity, which, when it is excited, makes the man who cherishes it a champion for the time being, and a sponta- 322 PHILO JUD^EUS.
neous and voluntary defender of the person who appears to be unjustly treated.
XIII. Therefore justice in every case pursues the man who has committed violence, nor is his iniquity excused by the difference of the place, so that cannot be any plea to defend him from the consequence of his violence and* lawlessness; but as I have said before, there will be compassion and pardon for the damsel in the one case, and in the other inexecrable punishment will visit her.
And concerning her the judge must examine the matter very carefully, not referring everything to or making every- thing depend upon the place; for it is possible that a woman may be ravished against her will even in the middle of the city; and on the other hand even if outside the city, she may have voluntarily given herself up to an illicit connection. Wherefore the law, making a very careful and very admir- ably conceived defence, on behalf of a damsel ravished in the wilderness, says, " for the damsel cried out, and there was no one to help her;"* so that if she neither cried out nor resisted, but willingly consented to her ravisher, she must -be looked upon as guilty, having only put forward the fact of the place, as a sophistical excuse to make it appear that she had been ravished.
And yet in the city what advantage can her efforts be to a damsel, who is willing to do everything for the sake of preserving her own reputation, but who is unable to succeed by reason of the strength of the man who is assaulting her? for what advantage could she derive from those who live in the same house if he were to bind her with ropes, or to gag her mouth, so that she could not utter even a word; for in some sense she then, although dwelling in a city, is in reality in a wilderness, inasmuch as she is destitute of all protection; but if she be in a wilderness, and yet willingly gives herself up to her ravisher, she is in no different condi- tion from a woman in a city.
XIV. There are also some persons easily sated with their connection with the same woman, being at once both mad for women and women haters, full of promiscuous and irregular dispositions, who at once give themselves up to * Deuteronomy xxii. 27.
ON SPECIAL LAWS.
323 their first impulses whatever they may be; letting those passions* proceed without restraint which they ought to curb, and like blind men, without any consideration, with- out any prudence, stumbling upon any bodies or any things, upsetting, and overturning, and confusing everything m their violent impetuosity and haste, and suffering evils as great as those which they inflict; and concerning these men we have this law enacted.
■ When those men who marry virgins in accordance with the law,* and who have sacrificed on the occasion and cele- brated their marriage feast, and who yet afterwards preserve no natural affection for their wives but treat them with insolence, and behave to freeborn citizens as if they were courtesans, if they seek to procure a divorce, and not being able to find any pretext for such a separation, then betake themselves to bringing forward false accusations, and from an absence of any clear grounds of impeachment direct all their charges at things which cannot be made certain, and come forward and accuse them, saying that though they fancied that they had been marrying virgins, they found on the first occasion of their having intercourse together, that they were not so. "When, I say, these men make such charges let all the elders be assembled to decide on the case, and let the parents of the woman who is accused also appear, to make their defence in this their common danger.
For in such a case, not only are their daughters them- selves in danger, as to their reputation as having preserved the chastity of their bodies, but their guardians are likewise imperilled, not only because they have not kept them safe till the important period of their marriageable age, but because they have given in marriage as virgins those who have been defiled by others, deceiving and imposing upon those who have taken them to wife.
Then if they appear to have justice on their side, let the judges impose a pecuniary fine on those who have invented these false accusations, and let them also sentence those who have assaulted them to corporal punishment, and let them also pronounce, what to those men will be the most unpleasant of all things, a confirmation of their marriage, if their wives will still endure to cohabit with thern; for the law permits them * Deuteronomy xxii. 13.
324 PHILO JUDiEUS.
at their own choice to remain with them or to abandon them, and will not allow the husbands any option either way, on account of the false accusations which they have brought.
THE LAW CONCEBNING MTTBDEBEBS.
I. The name of homicide is that affixed to him who has slain a man; but in real truth it is a sacrilege, and the very greatest of all sacrileges, because, of all the possessions and sacred treasures in the whole world, there is nothing more holy in appearance, nor more godlike than man, the all- beautiful copy of an all-beautiful model, a representation admirably made after an archetypal rational idea.
We must therefore, without hesitation, pronounce the homicide or murderer an impious and atrociously wicked person, committing as he does the greatest of all atrocities and impieties, andj he ought to be put to death as having done things which can never be pardoned, since, beiDg worthy of ten thousand deaths, he escapes by one only, because the way to death being easy, does not permit his existence to be protracted, so as to endure a multitude of punishments; but there can be nothing wrong in his suffer- ing the same treatment as that which he has inflicted on others, and yet how can it be the same, if it be different as to its time, as to its mode of infliction, as to the inten- tion, and as to the persons? Does not the beginning of acts of violence come first, and the repelling or retaliating them come subsequently? And is not murder the most lawless of all things, but the punishment of murderers the most lawful action possible?
Again, he who has slain a man has satisfied his desire which he entertained when he slew him; but he who has been slain, inasmuch as he is now put out of the way, can neither attack him in retaliation, nor can he gratify himself by taking revenge. Moreover, the one was able by his own hands to carry out the designs which he conceived by himself; but the other can never succeed in procuring his punishment, unless his relations and friends become his champions, taking compassion on him for the calamity which has befallen him. If now any one aims a blow with a sword at any one, with the intention of killing him, and does not kill him, he will still be guilty of murder, since he was a UN SPECIAL LAWS. 581 murderer in his intention, even though the end did not keep pace with his wish.
Again, let that man be liable to the same punishment who, by previous contrivance and machinations (not dar- ing to behave bravely, and to stand face to face with his enemy and attack him openly), treacherously plots and compasses his slaughter; for such a man is equally liable to the curse denounced against murderers, and even though he may not be one with his hands he is so in his soul; for as, in my opinion, one must not only look upon those people as enemies who fight against us by sea or by land, but also those who are prepared for either kind of warfare, and who are erecting battering rams and engines against our har- bours and our walls; and as we do in fact judge thus of them, even though they come to no actual conflict, so also we must consider murderers, not only those who perform the mere act of killing, but those who do anything which tends to slaying, whether openly or secretly, even if they do not eventually perpetrate the action.
And if out of fear or out of audacity, two very contrary feelings, but both blameable, they venture to flee to the temple as if they would there find an asylum, we must prevent their doing so, if we can: but if they are before- hand with us, and do effect their entrance, then we must take them out and give them up for execution, affirming the principle that the temple does not give an asylum to impious men; for every one who commits actions of incur- able guilt is an enemy to God; and murderers do commit such actions, since those who are murdered have suffered disasters which are incurable. Or shall we say that to those who have done no wrong the temple is still inaccessible until they have washed themselves, and sprinkled them- selves, and purified themselves with the accustomed purifi- cations; but that those who are guilty of indelible crimes, the pollution of which no length of time will ever efface, may approach and dwell among those holy seats; though no decent person, who has any regard for holy things would even receive them in his house?
II. Therefore, since they have heaped iniquity upon iniquity, adding lawlessness and impiety to murder, thev must be dragged out of the temple to undergo their punish- 326 PHILO JUD^EUS.
ment, since, as I have said before, they have committed actions worthy of ten thousand deaths instead of one; as otherwise, the temple would be shut against the relations and friends of the man who has been so treacherously mur- dered, if the murderer were to be dwelling in it, since they could never endure to come into the same place with him. But it would be absurd that, for the sake of one man, and him the most lawless of men, a great number of persons, and those too the very persons who have been injured by him, should be excluded from the temple — men who, besides that they have done no wrong themselves, have even sus- tained an unseasonable affliction through his actions.
And perhaps, indeed, the lawgiver seeing far into futurity by the acuteness of his reasoning powers, was, by such com- mandments, providing against any bloodshed ever taking place in the temple by the entrance of any of the friends of the murdered man into it, whom natural affection, a very ungovernable feeling, would urge, full of enthusiasm and violent rage as they would be, almost to slay the murderer with their own hands, while if such an event were to take place it would be most impious sacrilege; for then the blood of the sacrifices would be mingled with the blood of murderers; that which has been, consecrated to God with that which is wholly impure.
It is on this account that Moses commands that the murderer shall be given up, even from the altar itself.
III. But some persons who have slain others with swords, «>r spears, or darts, or clubs, or stones, or something of that kind, may possibly have done so without any previous design, and without having for some time before planned this deed in their hearts, but may have been excited at the moment, yielding to passion more powerful than their reason, to commit the homicide; so that it is but half a crime, inasmuch as the mind was not for some long time before occupied by the pollution.
But there are others also of the greatest wickedness, men polluted both in hands and mind, who, being sorcerers and poisoners, devoting all their leisure and all their solitude to planning seasonable attacks upon others, who invent all kinds of contrivances and devices to bring about calamities on their neighbours. On which account, Moses commands ON SPECIAL LAWS. 327 that poisoners and sorceresses shall not be allowed to lire one day or even one hour, but that they shall be put to death the moment that they are taken, no pretext being for a moment allowed them for putting oft* or delaying their punishment. For those who attack one openly and to one's face, any body may guard against; but of those who plot against one secretly, and who disguise their attacks by the concealed approaches of poison, it is not easy to see the cunning beforehand. It is necessary, therefore, to antici- pate them, inflicting upon them that death which other persons would else have suffered by their means.
And again, besides this, he who openly slays a man with a sword, or with any similar weapon, can only kill a few persons at one time; but one who mixes and compounds poisonous drugs with food, may destroy innumerable com- panies at once who have no suspicion of his treachery. Accordingly, it has happened before now that very nume- rous parties of men who have come together in good fellow- ship to eat of the same salt and to sit at the same table, have suffered at such a time of harmony things wholly incompatible with it, being suddenly killed, and have thus met with death instead of feasting. On which account it is fitting that even the most merciful, and gentle, and mode- rate of men should approve of such persons being put to death, who are all but the same as murderers who slay with their own hand; and that they should think it consistent with holiness, not to commit their punishment to others, but to execute it themselves. For how can it be anything but a most terrible evil for any one to contrive the death of another by that food which is given as the cause of life, and to work such a change in that which is nutritious by nature as to render it destructive; so that those who, in obedience to the necessities of nature, have recourse to eating and drinking, having no previous idea of any treachery, take de- structive food as though it were salutary?
Again, let those persons meet with the same punishment who, though they do not compound drugs which are actu- ally deadly, nevertheless administer such as long diseases are caused by; for death is often a lesser evil than diseases; and especially than such as extend over a long time and have no fortunate or favourable end. For the illnesses 328 PHILO JUD.EUS.
which arise from poisons are difficult to be cured, and are often completely incurable. Moreover, in the case of men who have been exposed to machinations of this kind, it often happens that diseases of the mind ensue which are worse even than the afflictions of the body; for they are often attacked by delirium and insanity, and intolerable frenzy, by means of which the mind, the greatest blessing which God has bestowed upon mankind, is impaired in every possible manner, despairing of any safety or cure, and so is utterly removed from its seat, and expelled, as it were, leaving in the body only the inferior portion of the soul, namely, its irrational part, of which even beasts partake, since every person who is deprived of reason, which is the better part of the soul, is changed into the nature of a beast, even though the characteristics of the human form remain.