Philo was a Greek poet and writer. He was a

Hellenistic Jewish Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic culture and religion. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellen ...

author of an epic poem in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

hexameters Hexameter is a Metre (poetry), metrical Line (poetry), line of verses consisting of six metrical foot, feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English language, English line of poetry; in Greek language, Greek as well as i ...

on the history of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. He lived at an earlier date than Philo the philosopher.

Alexander Polyhistor Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor (; flourished in the first half of the 1st century BC; also called Alexander of Miletus) was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor. After his r ...

(c. 105-35 B.C.) quotes several passages of the poem, and is the source of the extracts in

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

(''Praeparatio evangelica'', ix. 20, 24, 37). This is probably the Philo who is mentioned by Clemens Alexandrinus (''Strom'', i. 21, 141) and by

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

(''Contra Apionem'', i. 23), who calls him "the elder".

Notes

References

* This work in turn cites: **M. Philippson, ''Ezechiel des jüdischen Trauerspieldichters Auszug aus Egypten und Philo des Aelteren Jerusalem'' (Berlin, 1830).

Notes

References

Further reading