Introduction
In De Specialibus Legibus (2.41–223), Philo presents a “festival manual,” a list of ten Jewish holidays, their origins, and the practices associated with each one. The holidays are outlined in order of their frequency and calendrical placement: The list begins with a festival that Philo calls “every day,” and then proceeds to discuss the Sabbath, the day of the new moon, three festivals related to Passover, Pentecost, the Trumpet Feast, the Fast, and the Feast of Tabernacles. This manual for festivals serves as a meditation on the Jewish day, week, month, and year, and provides a view into the underlying significance of time as Philo imagines it.
Philo names the first festival ἡμέρα π
σα, “every day,” about which he muses: “If all the forces of the virtues remained unvanquished throughout, then the time from birth to death would be one continuous feast (μία ἂν 
ν ὁ ἀπὸ γενέσεως ἄχρι τελευτ
ς χρόνος ἀδιάστατος ἑορτὴ), and the houses and cities would pass their time in continual security and leisure, being full of every imaginable blessing, enjoying perfect tranquility.”Footnote 1 To Philo's chagrin, most people find themselves too occupied with mundane matters to turn each day into a festival: “As it is, the overreaching and the assaults which men and women alike contrive against themselves and each other have cleft a breach in the continuous line of this joyful merriment.”Footnote 2 Only “practitioners of wisdom” shun market places, council halls, and courts of justice to commune, instead, with the moon, sun, and stars to contemplate the cosmos from this philosophically-elevated vantage point. These people, Philo writes, have “their bodies firmly planted on the land” but “provide their souls with wings”; “Such men, we say, in the delight of their virtues, naturally make their whole life a feast (εἰκότως ἐνευφραινόμενοι τα
ς ἀρετας ἅπαντά γε τὸν βίον ἑορτὴν ἄγουσιν). . . . So that the whole cycle of the year would be one festival (πάντα δὲ τὸν το
ἐνιαυτο κύκλον ε
ναι ἑορτήν).”Footnote 3
Philo was exceptional among contemporary Jewish authors in philosophically engaging so centrally with the topics of time and temporality as well as in explicitly asserting that, ideally, each day is a festival. In what historical, intellectual, and literary context might we understand Philo's “every day festival” and the idea that each day ought to be celebrated? How does this festival relate to Philo's exposition of the Sabbath and the other festivals? And, finally, how does Philo's view of daily quotidian time fit with his conception of time and temporality more generally?
I offer two answers to these questions, first by turning backwards to the biblical texts that Philo was reading, and then outwards, to the contemporary philosophical ideas through which Philo was interpreting these biblical passages. I argue that Philo's presentation of the festival as well as his perspectives on quotidian time more generally both engages with biblical texts and corresponds with perspectives about time articulated by Philo's contemporary Seneca the Younger.Footnote 4 I analyze Philo's De Specialibus Legibus (Special Laws) in conversation with Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life), with occasional reference to passages from Philo and Seneca's other writings to identify the similarities in Philo and Seneca's perspectives on daily time, and I suggest several ways of understanding the connections between the two texts. I conclude by explaining how appreciating the similarities between Philo and Seneca's ideas about quotidian time also allows us better to understand Philo's exposition of the other festivals, especially his presentation of the Sabbath.
I do not challenge the Platonic underpinnings of many of Philo's ideas; previous scholars have demonstrated Philo's indebtedness to the Platonic philosophical tradition.Footnote 5 Likewise, I acknowledge previous work on Philo's engagement with Stoic philosophy, as well as with ideas found in Seneca's work in particular.Footnote 6 Maren Niehoff, for example, has observed that Philo assumed “positions strikingly similar to those of his contemporary Seneca”Footnote 7; Manfred Lang has found parallels about living virtuously in the writings of Philo, Plutarch and SenecaFootnote 8; Giuseppe Scarpat has suggested that Seneca could have been aware of Philo's philosophical thought, while Roberto Radice has argued that Seneca may have relied on Philo's writings without acknowledging him (both scholars imagine Philo to be a missing link in the reception of Plato's philosophy by some first-century Roman philosophers, including Seneca).Footnote 9 This study adds the unique perspective on time, and the shared philosophical problem of how best to spend each day, to the complex web of interrelated ideas found in the writings of Philo and Seneca.
Catharine Edwards writes that “for Seneca, the single day is the unit of time best adapted to a philosophical approach to life.”Footnote 10 In several works, Seneca expresses a constellation of ideas about time wisely spent, leisure, and the celebration of every day that is reminiscent of Philo's web of concerns in his description of the every day festival. Similarly to Philo, Seneca portrays the pursuit of philosophy as the best use of one's time, in contrast to wasting time with worldly matters and less worthy professions. Seneca, too, urges his reader to move away from law courts and the political sphere and to contemplate, instead, the heavens and their meaning. Such a pursuit, argue both Seneca and Philo, will lift up one's soul and anchor an otherwise stormy life on the rough seas of lived experience.
My contention that Philo's conception of quotidian time developed in conversation with philosophical ideas also found in Seneca's writings implies that conceptions of time cross cultural, religious, and philosophical boundaries as much as they define them. If we understand Philo's thoughts within Seneca's broader philosophical context, then we have an example of someone grappling with integrating Jewish and Stoic notions of time into his worldview.Footnote 11 As we will see, Philo draws on biblical ideas about daily time and presents them in ways that would be recognizable to and appreciated by contemporaneous Stoic thinkers such as Seneca. Thus, while time can be used as a way to establish difference—for example through competing calendars and festivals—it can also be employed to reconcile difference and forge commonality. Furthermore, we might also suggest that something as seemingly natural and all-encompassing as a “conception of time” is historically contingent and culturally dependent not only in a broad sense (i.e., that different communities and societies think of time and temporality differently), but also in a local and personal sense, as a result of individual intellectual encounters with people and ideas.
This article centers on Philo's every day festival, his understanding of the unit of the day and his perspective on the present—daily lived experience—rather than on Philo's views about the origin of time or time's end, about which he writes extensively in other treatises.Footnote 12 This inquiry, however, is ultimately also connected to Philo's interests in the transcendence of time and unification with an eternal (and a-temporal) God. According to Philo, the way one spends each day—in daily activities and philosophical pursuits—is central to transcending quotidian time and entering into the eternal realm with God. Thus there is, counter-intuitively, a correspondence between quotidian time and eternity in Philo's thought, to which I return in the conclusion.
Philo's Festival of Every Day
Philo introduces his exposition of Jewish festivals with a general reference to their scriptural origins: “There are in all ten festivals which are recorded in the law.”Footnote 13 The order of the festivals in Philo's text follows Num 28–29, which details the temple sacrifices, beginning with daily offerings, and proceeding to the Sabbath, new moon, and other festival sacrifices. Expanding on this biblical framework, Philo develops his own philosophical perspectives on each festival. Philo explains that the first festival in his list is each day—every day should be celebrated—but that only people who devote their lives to the pursuit of wisdom are able to observe this festival properly. Philo describes the daily habits of such people and their mode of contemplation, which involves removing themselves from public places that require them to compromise contemplative endeavors, and not succumbing to their passions. Philo then laments that the majority of people are unable to observe this daily festival each and every day because they yield to their passions. Philo evokes the reference in Lev 23:2 to the festivals as “the Lord's feasts” (ἑορταὶ κυρίου), to explain further that only God can observe a feast in its full perfection.Footnote 14 Philo concludes with a discussion of pure and blended joy, and then transitions to an exposition on the Sabbath.
Philo's identification of the first festival as “every day” is a surprising choice. After all, a festival is generally defined in opposition to the character of other days on the calendar. In his introductory remarks, Philo admits that mention of this festival “may perhaps cause some surprise.”Footnote 15 There is, however, scriptural basis for Philo's proposal. While the Hebrew Bible does not define every day on which sacrifices are brought as a festival (sacrifices are offered every day, not only on festivals), the list of sacrifices in Num 28:1–8 begins with a description of the morning and evening tamid offerings and the daily minḥah offering (though these daily offerings do not transform ordinary days into ḥaggim/miqra'ei qodesh in the biblical passage).Footnote 16 The chapter opens as follows: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Command the Israelites, and say to them: My offering, the food for my offerings by fire, my pleasing odor, you shall take care to offer to me at its appointed time (bemo‘ado).”Footnote 17 Philo relied on the Septuagint's Greek, so he would have read the Hebrew word mo‘ed in Num 28:2 (which, in the context of the Hebrew text, denotes “appointed time”) as ἑορτή, feast or festival. ἑορτή is the same word Philo uses throughout his festival manual to denote “festival” (e.g., Εἰσὶ τοίνυν ἀριθμ
δέκα ἑορταί, ἃς ἀναγράφει ὁ νόμος . . .).Footnote 18 Num 28:2 commands the Israelites to make offerings to God at their “appointed times”—or, read in the Septuagint Greek, during “festival” times. If there are daily offerings, the logic goes, then every day must be a festival.Footnote 19 Philo might also include this festival to round out his list of festivals to ten, a significant number for Philo, but this cannot be the sole reason, as he could just as easily have included the “Basket” festival instead.Footnote 20
There is more to Philo's every day festival, however, than a simple Greek reading of the biblical text or an attempt to keep his exposition numerically round. As I will argue, Philo incorporates particular philosophical ideas into his interpretation of scripture precisely because of his larger project of reconciling exegetical and philosophical facets within his own thought. Indeed, scholars have offered explanations about the philosophical origins of Philo's ideas, turning to Cynic, Platonic, and Stoic philosophy as possible traditions with which Philo might have engaged. Isaak Heinemann suggests that Philo incorporated a Cynic idea articulated by Diogenes of Sinope. In an encounter with someone festively dressed, Diogenes “asked him whether every day was not a festival to a good man.”Footnote 21 Philo's passages partially resonate with Diogenes’ sentiments; both regard each day as worthy of celebration, but they differ in that Diogenes articulates a preference for making each day a festival instead of participating in organized public festivals, while Philo endorses public festivals as well. Jutta Leonhardt proposes that Philo evokes Plato's Laws, which presents each day of the year as a day on which sacrifices are offered to the gods: “There should be no fewer than three-hundred and sixty-five, so that forever, every day some magistracy offers sacrifices to the gods or demons for the state and themselves and their property.”Footnote 22 We might also turn to Plato's Theaetetus 173–176, which juxtaposes the temporal dimensions of judicial (concerned with present time) and philosophical (a-temporal) work, and Phaedrus 246–254, about the soul's wings, to which I return below, as informing Philo's ideas about the role of philosophy in celebrating and elevating quotidian time through the every day festival.
In addition, Leonhardt, Niehoff and Pierre Hadot have suggested that Philo's meditation on this festival might also engage with Stoic ideas. Leonhardt mentions that Philo's idea of “standing above one's passions” and “leading [one's] whole life as a festival” is reminiscent of Stoic ideals.Footnote 23 Niehoff argues that “Philo's interpretation of feasts is profoundly inspired by Stoic ethics,” and she points specifically to the value of living in accordance with nature and virtue as an ideal that informs Philo's later writings on the festivals, in contrast to his Allegorical Commentary.Footnote 24 Hadot takes for granted the Stoic elements of the passage, but uses it as an example of the way in which Hellenistic and Roman philosophy was conceived, not as an isolated discipline but as a “mode of existing-in-the-world . . . practiced at each instant.”Footnote 25 Below, I expand upon these suggestions, highlighting aspects of Philo's text that closely resemble Seneca's notions of everyday time.
Placing Philo and Seneca in Conversation
Philo and Seneca inhabited overlapping cultural and intellectual spheres. The two men received classical educations in rhetoric and philosophy and both embraced aspects of Stoicism, though Philo was also versed in Jewish scriptures, astronomy, mathematics, and literary interpretation.Footnote 26 They each came from elite, well-connected families, but, in contrast to their respective brothers Alexander and Novatus, Philo and Seneca chose to follow their intellectual interests rather than political ambitions, at least in their early years, and only later ambivalently entered the political realm.Footnote 27 In the winter of 38–39 CE, Philo traveled to Rome as part of an official Jewish delegation to the Emperor Gaius Caligula to address the tension and violence between Jews and Greeks that had erupted in his hometown of Alexandria. He likely remained in Rome for over a year as negotiations with the emperor stalled.Footnote 28 Seneca, a few years Philo's junior, was born in Andalusian Cordova, and had come to Rome as a child. After a brief detour in Egypt, Seneca returned to Rome and was also living in the city in the late 30s.Footnote 29 Both Philo and Seneca had relationships or encounters with the imperial family, as Philo served in the delegation aimed at meeting the emperor and Seneca was charged with having an adulterous affair with Caligula's sister, Julia Livilla, which led to his exile to Corsica in 41 CE (later, he would serve as Nero's advisor).Footnote 30 Both were prolific writers. We do not know whether the two men ever met.
Before turning to Philo and Seneca's texts, a few clarifications about this comparative study must be made. The two authors wrote in different genres. Philo's text is an explanation of the Jewish festivals presented as an interpretation of Num 28 and other biblical passages, and it is included within Philo's De Specialibus Legibus, a longer work on Jewish law written with a general audience in mind. Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae, in contrast, is a short text written in a diatribic style, directed at an individual, Pompeius Paulinus (Seneca's father-in-law), to encourage him to step down from political office and devote the remainder of his time to philosophical pursuits.Footnote 31 Nevertheless, despite their different genres and intended audiences, the arguments of these two authors correspond in fascinating ways. It is also worth noting that both Philo and Seneca composed these texts later in life, as they retrospectively considered their earlier years and careers and as they faced more starkly their own mortality. Their perspectives on the passage of time and their calls to use each day meaningfully makes especial sense with these biographical contexts in mind.
I am not suggesting that Philo read Seneca's works, as Seneca composed most of his writings after Philo's death, nor that Seneca was familiar with Philo's writings.Footnote 32 Nor do I suggest that both Philo and Seneca shared a common written source, as the resonances between their ideas are thematic and share metaphorical systems rather than textual parallels in the technical sense. Instead, I point to their shared cultural and philosophical contexts: These two men were contemporaries who overlapped in Egypt and Rome and developed their philosophical ideas, which found expression in their writings, in shared intellectual milieus.Footnote 33 Philo and Seneca's particular conceptions of everyday time developed in this common context.
Philo and Seneca on Quotidian Time
A. The Time of One's Life: Commenting on Hippocrates
Seneca begins De Brevitate Vitae with the question of how much time one has during the course of a life. Seneca's overarching contention in this treatise is that life is longer than most people assume, and that life seems short only because it is unnecessarily wasted. Seneca explains as follows:
Most human beings, Paulinus, complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it. . . . Hence the dictum of the greatest of doctors: ‘Life is short, art is long . . .’ (vitam brevem esse, longam artem). It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.Footnote 34
Seneca insists that Hippocrates erred when he declared that life is short.Footnote 35 In Seneca's view, life is in fact sufficiently long if time is not wasted.
Philo, too, refers to Hippocrates’ aphorism when discussing the virtuous economizing of time. In De Vita Contemplativa, Philo writes, “For an undue care for money and wealth causes great waste of time, and it is proper to economize time, since, according to the saying of the celebrated physician Hippocrates, life is short but art long (ὁ μὲν βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή).”Footnote 36 In contrast to Seneca, Philo takes Hippocrates’ statement for granted in this passage. And yet he implies that the wrong set of priorities makes life shorter because time is not used properly. Read in this way, Philo's interpretation of Hippocrates’ aphorism is more in line with Seneca's rebuttal of it than it seems at first glance. In Somn. 2, Philo quotes Hippocrates again, lodging a critique similar to that of Seneca:
For “life is short,” said one, “and art is long”; and he best apprehends its greatness who honestly sounds its depths, and digs it like a well. So there is a story that a grey-haired man of great age shed tears when dying, not in any cowardly fear of death, but by reason of his yearning for education, and the thought that he is now first entering upon it, when he takes his final leave of it. For the soul is just blossoming into knowledge, when the body's bloom is withering away through the passing of years. So it is a hard fate to be tripped up by the heels before one has attained the prime of youthful strength to apprehend things more accurately.Footnote 37
Philo discusses the endless knowledge that a contemplative person aspires to learn in a finite life. In this sense, he evokes Hippocrates’ reminder that learning (medicine, or anything else) takes a long time relative to the span of one's life. At the beginning of the Legatio, Philo reflects on his own advanced age:
How long shall we the aged continue to be children grown grey in our bodies through length of years, but infants in our souls through want of sense, holding fortune, the most unstable of things, to be the most unchangeable, nature, the most constant, to be the most insecure? . . . The reason is that, having no forethought for the future, we are ruled by the present, following erratic sense-perception rather than unerring intelligence. For the eyes of the body discern what is manifest and close at hand, but reason reaches to the unseen and the future.Footnote 38
Philo then argues that people tend to base their perspectives on the present without paying enough attention to the future, thus not making the most of the time they have left to live.Footnote 39
Seneca insists, in contrast to Hippocrates, that life is sufficiently long for those who use their time wisely, while Philo agrees with Hippocrates’ sentiment that life is too short but that if one uses one's time properly then life feels longer. As with Seneca, Philo also mentions that those near death are more likely to regard life as too short. Both philosophers evoke the image of an old man facing death, and acknowledge that questions about time are often asked most urgently when people consider death's proximity. Though they approach Hippocrates’ statement from different angles, it is significant to note that both choose to engage with the idea, qualifying and revising it in important ways.
B. Public Life as a Potential Waste of Time
Philo and Seneca also write about various ways in which time is wasted.Footnote 40 Seneca provides examples of people who use their time improperly: “But one man is gripped by insatiable greed, another by laborious dedication to useless tasks. One man is worn out by political ambition. . . . Another through hope of profit is driven headlong over all lands and seas by the greed of trading. Some are tormented by a passion for army life. . . .”Footnote 41 Seneca identifies in particular those who strive for wealth or those overly driven by political ambitions or military endeavors, because people who engage in such endeavors cannot sit still long enough for contemplation. Seneca does not altogether discount those who seek positions in public office, commerce, or the military—indeed, public service is a central component of his philosophy (though he had misgivings towards the end of his life)Footnote 42—but rather critiques those who spend excessive time pursuing these goals to the detriment of contemplative pursuits.Footnote 43 Seneca explains: “Examine how all these people spend their time—how long they devote to their accounts, to laying traps for others or fearing those laid for themselves, to giving or receiving bail, to banquets . . . you will see how their activities, good or bad, do not give them even time to breathe.”Footnote 44 Seneca adds that “no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied . . . since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.”Footnote 45 Seneca thus urges his father-in-law to retire from public service and make time for philosophical contemplation.
Philo draws a similar contrast: “All who practice wisdom, either in Grecian or barbarian lands, and live a blameless and irreproachable life, choosing neither to inflict nor retaliate injustice, avoid the gathering of busy-bodies and abjure the scenes which they haunt, such as law courts, council chambers, markets, congregations and in general any gathering or assemblage of careless men.”Footnote 46 Here, as in Seneca's text, Philo criticizes specifically those who commit their lives to law, public service, commerce, and other similar activities in excess. According to both philosophers, such activities do not allow time for daily philosophical contemplation.
C. Other Poor Uses of Time: Food, Drink, Sex
Even more vigorously than they critique excessive public service, Philo and Seneca condemn lack of control—gluttony, drinking, speaking in excess, and sexual promiscuity. Philo writes:
For where does the wicked man find a season for true rejoicing? He whose every plan is for evil, whose life-mate is folly, with whom everything, tongue, belly and organs of generation, is against what is seasonable. For with the first he blurts out matters of secrecy which call for silence, while in his greed he fills the second with viands unlimited and strong drink in great quantities, and as for the third, he misuses them for abominable lusts and forms of intercourse forbidden by all laws.Footnote 47
Seneca, too, writes, “Among the worst offenders I count those who spend all their time in drinking and lust, for these are the worst preoccupations of all. . . . It is those who are on a headlong course of gluttony and lust who are stained with dishonor.”Footnote 48 Even the ways in which they describe these activities are similar—Philo writes of the “tongue, belly and organs of generation” (γλ
τταν, γαστέρα, τὰ γεννητικά), while Seneca evokes the pleasures of the belly alongside lust (“in ventrem ac libidinem proiectorum inhonesta labes est”).Footnote 49
D. Philosophy as a Valorized Temporal Practice
Having summarized inappropriate activities, Philo and Seneca both argue that people make the most of their time when they pursue wisdom. Philo writes:
Such men filled with high worthiness, inured to disregard ills of the body or of external things, schooled to hold things indifferent as indeed indifferent, armed against the pleasures and lusts, ever eager to take their stand superior to the passions in general, trained to use every effort to overthrow the formidable menace which those passions have built up against them, never swerving under the blows of fortune because they have calculated beforehand the force of its assaults, since the heaviest adversities are lightened by anticipation, when the mind ceases to find anything strange in the event and apprehends it but dully as it might some stale and familiar story—such men, we say, in the delight of their virtues, naturally make their whole life a feast.Footnote 50
Ignoring one's bodily desires—standing above one's passions and remaining indifferent in the face of good or bad fortune (and, mentioned in Spec. 2.44, devoting oneself to wisdom)—are precisely the definition, for Philo, of making one's entire life a festival, one day at a time. These dispositions that Philo promotes correspond well with Stoic ideas.
For Philo, few people can set aside their bodily needs and “make their whole life a feast”: “These are indeed but a small number left in their cities like an ember of wisdom to smolder, that virtue may not be altogether extinguished and lost to our race.”Footnote 51 Seneca, likewise, acknowledges that only a minority of people can devote their time to philosophy: “Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs.”Footnote 52
E. Anchoring the Ship of Public Life in a Safe Harbor of Philosophy
The relationship between contemplation and peace is central for Philo and Seneca. Philo writes that “their [practitioners of wisdom] own aspirations are for a life of peace, free from warring,” and Seneca persuades his reader to “retire to these pursuits which are quieter, safer and more important.”Footnote 53 To animate the idea that philosophy must be pursued through limiting other activities, Philo and Seneca rely on a shared metaphor of feeling lost at sea and desiring anchorage. Though travel and seafaring metaphors are widespread in ancient literature, the specific way Philo and Seneca employ the metaphor is unique. Philo writes:
When [Moses] considered the sorrowful and terror-stricken condition of our race, how charged it is with numberless evils generated by the greedy desires of the soul and also by the infirmities of the body . . . he could not but wonder that anyone, tossed about on so vast a sea of events, whether of his own intending or not, and unable to find tranquility or the secure anchorage of a life kept safe from danger, could really hold a feast, not in the sense in which the word is commonly used, but in the true sense.Footnote 54
Seneca likewise explains:
Extract yourself from the crowd, and as you have been storm-tossed more than your age deserves, you must at last retire into a peaceful harbor. Consider how many waves you have encountered, how many storms—some of which you have sustained in private life and some you have brought upon yourself in public life. Your virtue has for long enough been shown, when you were a model of active industry: try how it will manage in leisure.Footnote 55
Philo and Seneca agree that life is a stormy voyage—due to natural and human causes, in private and public life—and that finding secure anchorage and a peaceful harbor is a worthy goal.Footnote 56 As a result of greediness and the fragility of human bodies, Philo admits that life is full of distractions and suffering, which he describes with the metaphor of being “tossed about” on a “vast sea of events.” One desires, but can rarely attain, “secure anchorage”—a calm and leisurely life—the circumstances necessary for celebrating every day through philosophical inquiry. Water is a recurring metaphor for time in ancient sources, and the passage of time was often conceptualized as the flow of water. Regarding one's life as a sea voyage works well with this metaphor, then, because to anchor one's boat implies an attempt to hold onto time and make the most of it.
The metaphor of sea travel for the passage of lived time is particularly effective because seafaring was bound up with proper timing. Setting sail at an inopportune time put one's life at risk. In the Legatio, Philo writes that “news of Gaius’ illness travelled everywhere, since the time still made navigation possible. For it was the beginning of the autumn, the close of the sailing season when the mariners return from then-trading ports everywhere to their own harbors and roadsteads, particularly those who take care not to winter in a foreign country.”Footnote 57 Livy, Hesiod, and Varro all thematize the idea of proper and improper times for sea travel.Footnote 58 In a later rabbinic narrative, Rabbi Ḥiyya’ refuses to pray for his brother's safe travels because he departed too late in the season and such prayer would be pointless: “When you tie your lulav, tie your ship. If you go up to the synagogue and hear that they are praying for rain, you should no longer rely on my prayer.”Footnote 59 The time-span of an individual life, and the pressure to take advantage of proper times, could effectively be highlighted by mapping life itself onto the timeframes and rhythms of sea travel.
Travel and philosophy were often related to one another in ancient writings. Wandering to distant lands was associated with the quest for knowledge from Herodotus to Theophrastus, Cicero to Apollonius of Tyanna to Dio Chrysostom and others.Footnote 60 But the particular way that Philo and Seneca develop the temporal aspects of the metaphor is surprising. They do not endorse traveling per se; they use a metaphor of travel to describe life in general, and of anchoring (stopping one's travels) as necessary for the pursuit of wisdom in particular. Seneca writes:
And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long (non ille diu vixit, sed diu fuit). For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbor, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.Footnote 61
I suggest that Philo and Seneca's nautical time metaphors specifically target public servants. In both their texts, they argue that when the seas of public service are most dangerous, one ought to seek safe harbor and pursue philosophy. The travel metaphor was not merely theoretical for Philo and Seneca. Both philosophers traveled by sea to fulfill expectations of public service.Footnote 62 Elsewhere, Seneca and Philo both refer to public service with nautical metaphors as well. Seneca writes: “Seek a harbor from time to time just as in a dangerous navigation, and do not wait until the affairs dismiss you but release yourself from them first.”Footnote 63 Silvia Montiglio writes that Seneca “recommend[s] the secure and straight course of philosophy over the dangerous navigation that represents public life in unmanageable times. . . . The speculation implies that in better times one should not avoid the high seas of public life.”Footnote 64 Philo, too, employs the metaphor of steering a ship to explain why magistrates need proper training: an ill-trained person would shipwreck even in calm waters rather than safely navigate a ship, and thus Philo suggests that a person “carefully trained from his earliest years in the art of steersmanship” with much experience of the seas and study of the ports, harbors, and anchorages, be appointed.Footnote 65 Elsewhere, Philo evokes the seafaring metaphor to describe his own civic responsibilities and the public service in which he was submerged: “And if unexpectedly I obtain a spell of fine weather and a calm from civil turmoil, I get wings and ride the waves and almost tread the lower air, wafted by the breezes of knowledge which often urges me to come to spend my days with her. . . .”Footnote 66
If we read Philo and Seneca as addressing men in political office and related positions, then the nautical metaphor they employ is a very specific one that fits into a broader discourse about public service: the two philosophers suggest that people who participate in public life are navigating a ship on stormy seas that they ultimately ought to dock in safe harbors, trading in the political life for the philosophic. By the time Philo and Seneca were writing their treatises, each felt as though he had devoted enough time to the seas of public service and desired more time for peaceful philosophical pursuits than the public and diplomatic sphere he was forced to inhabit. After all, both men had begun their careers as philosophers and only entered public service at the behest of others, and so they identified with the tension between political and philosophic life.Footnote 67
F. Transcending Earth by Gazing at the Heavens
Once one's ship is docked, what ought one to do with one's time? Philo and Seneca both discuss contemplation of nature and the divine as the best use of one's time. Philo argues that calm existence allows those who seek wisdom to observe and understand the cosmos: “They are the closest observers of nature and all that it contains; earth, sea, air and heaven and the various forms of being which inhabit them are food for their research, as in mind and thought they share the ranging of the moon and sun and the ordered march of the other stars fixed and planetary.”Footnote 68 Seneca too turns to the cosmos and heavenly bodies: “Do you think it is the same thing whether you are overseeing the transfer of corn into granaries . . . or whether you take up these sacred and lofty studies, from which you will learn the substance of god, and his will, his mode of life, his shape; what fate awaits your soul; what is the force which supports all the heaviest elements of this world at the center, suspends the light elements above, carries fire to the highest part, and sets the stars in motion with their proper changes—and other things in succession which are full of tremendous marvels?”Footnote 69 The gaze towards the heavens continues the metaphor of life as a voyage. Especially at sea, but also on land, familiarity with the heavenly bodies is necessary for effective navigation. In both texts, contemplation consists of gaining a higher perspective within the universe, rather than transcending it.
Philo then develops a second travel metaphor, based on Plato's discussion of the soul's wings and flight to the realm of the gods in Phaedrus 246: once a person anchors his or her ship and escapes a treacherous sea voyage, such a person stays physically grounded on earth but, through philosophical exploration, that person's soul flies to the heavens, gains perspective on the world, its origins, and its inhabitants, and contemplates what dwells above and what remains below. From this vantage point, such wise people understand the cosmos and see it as a perfectly constructed city: “While their bodies are firmly planted on the land they provide their souls with wings, so that they may traverse the upper air and gain full contemplation of the powers which dwell there, as behooves true ‘cosmopolitans’ who have recognized the world to be a city having for its citizens the associates of wisdom.”Footnote 70 Philo's ultimate goal is for the soul to view the entirety of the cosmos from on high, thereby becoming a cosmopolitan—a citizen of the cosmos rather than of any particular polis, an idea developed as well in De vita Mosis and De opficio mundi.Footnote 71 While the term κοσμοπολίτης is attributed to the Cynic Diogenes, by the first century of the Common Era, cosmopolitanism was fully embedded in Stoic ethics and philosophy as well.Footnote 72
Philo's description of the soul's travels is not simply theoretical. Philo describes his own pursuits of wisdom in precisely these terms:
There was a time when I had leisure for philosophy and for the contemplation of the universe and its content. . . . I had no base or abject thoughts nor groveled in search of reputation or of wealth or bodily comforts, but seemed always to be borne aloft into the heights with a soul possessed by some God-sent inspiration, a fellow-traveler with the sun and moon and the whole heaven and universe.Footnote 73
Philo reminisces about when he could fully dedicate himself to philosophy and travel in the cosmos, contemplating the world.Footnote 74 He continues, “Then I gazed down from the upper air, and straining the mind's eye beheld, as from some commanding peak, the multitudinous world-wide spectacles of earthly things, and blessed my lot in that I had escaped by main force from the plagues of mortal life.”Footnote 75 Contemplation thus not only transforms Philo into a cosmopolitan, but also allows him to transcend temporal existence and mortal life for the eternal.
The soul's ascent to the heavens is also central in Seneca's writings. In one epistle, Seneca argues that the soul yearns to ascend to the heights from which it came and that it has the capacity to ascend under the proper conditions.Footnote 76 From on high, the soul is able to view the value of wealth and the body properly. This elevation then allows a person to moderate his or her own relationship to earthly matters, including the use of one's time.Footnote 77 Seneca's notions of the soul's ascent recall Philo's descriptions of the soul. Philo's presentation of the soul's ascent and the transformation of a person into a cosmopolitan is an instance in which Philo and Seneca draw on a constellation of ideas central to Platonic and Stoic thought. Philo goes further as well by depicting Judaism as the proper way of life for actualizing the soul's ascent and the cosmopolitan ideal.
G. The Unit of the Day
Philo and Seneca both regard the “day” as the unit of time most worth contemplating in the context of discussions about how best to live one's life.Footnote 78 Philo explicitly encourages the celebration of each day through meaningful philosophical pursuits, even as he acknowledges that few people do so, wasting their days instead.Footnote 79 He parallels an individual day with the entire span of a person's life. It is precisely when one celebrates each day that one makes one's entire life a festival. Seneca insists, too, that each day—not only time in the abstract but also in its totality—must be regarded as a unique unit of time that one must live in the fullest way. The unit of the day becomes representative of time itself.
Edwards argues that Seneca's focus is not usually on the technicalities of time as a problem of physics, but on human, lived time: “It is present time . . . conceptualized in terms of the individual day, which we must value and exploit to the fullest.”Footnote 80 In his Epistulae morales, Seneca writes that “no one is so old that it would be improper for him to hope for another day of existence. And one day, mind you, is a stage on life's journey.”Footnote 81 Seneca then explains that the span of life can be depicted as one large circle that encompasses series of different-sized circles, the bigger enclosing the smaller.Footnote 82 The variously sized circles represent different stages of life, and different measurements of calendrical time. Seneca finally narrows his focus to “the smallest circle of all,” the day. Quoting Heraclitus, he writes that “one day is equal to every day” and interprets it to mean that “one day is equal to all days through resemblance, because the very longest space of time possesses no element which cannot be found in a single day.”Footnote 83 Seneca thus concludes that “every day ought to be regulated as if it closes the series, as if it rounded out and completed our existence.”Footnote 84 As if the similarities to Philo were not enough, Seneca then discusses a man who brought daily sacrifices. In Epistle 87.2–3, Seneca suggests that through a diet of figs and bread, associated with the auspiciousness of the Kalends of January, he celebrates each day as its own new year.Footnote 85 This recalls the biblical basis of daily sacrifices in Num 28:1–8 upon which Philo develops his idea of the every day festival.
One of Seneca's most direct reflections about this topic appears in his first letter to Lucilius:
Reclaim possession of yourself for yourself, and whatever time was up until now taken away . . . gather it up and save it. . . . Some times are torn from us, some are spirited away, others flow away. But the most disgraceful loss is that which comes from neglect. And if you wish to pay attention, a great part of our life glides away while we are doing something wrong, the greatest part while we are doing nothing, the whole of life while we are doing something other [than living]. Who will you give me who puts a price on his time, who values the day, who understands that he dies each day? For we are deceived when we look ahead to death: a great part of it has already passed. Whatever of our life is behind us is held by death. So, my Lucilius, do what you write you are doing: embrace every hour. This way you will be made less dependent on tomorrow, if you throw your hand on today.Footnote 86
James Ker suggests that Seneca utilizes his “serial epistolography” (letters sent at regular installments) to enact the lessons he wishes to communicate about the value of fully living each day in succession.Footnote 87 Seneca is not concerned about impending death because death is a continuous temporal process (each day a person dies by a day), and this realization ought to convince a person to use each day well.Footnote 88 While Philo approaches each day optimistically, as a unit of time worth celebrating as a festival, Seneca articulates an alternative idea by suggesting that with each passing day a person dies anew, and that death is an incremental process. Both approaches, however distinct, regard the unit of the day as significant, as a microcosm of all of a human life, and as time that should not be—but too often is—wasted with the wrong activities.
Not all ancient philosophers shared these views on how best to use each day. Epicureans, for example, also theorized the unit of the day, but offered different conclusions about how best to use that time, encouraging enjoyment because time was limited, rather than emphasizing that one's limited time should be spent increasing its meaningfulness.Footnote 89 As Harald Weinrich summarizes: “The neo-Epicureans . . . taught and practiced the art of enjoyment. It is true that the latter does not make life longer, but it does make it more pleasant, in accord with Horace's maxim: ‘Live happily, live and consider how short your life span is!’ . . . They thought they would be making poor use of their time if the demands of their offices caused them to forget to live their lives.”Footnote 90 Not all Jewish texts shared Philo's perspective on privileging philosophy as the best use of time, either. Ecclesiastes, for example, also reflects explicitly on time, arguing passionately against devoting all of one's time to the pursuit of wisdom, but making time as well for indulging bodily pleasures.Footnote 91 As with the Epicureans, Philo and Ecclesiastes share a deep concern for the proper use of time, but they disagree about what activities are worthwhile. A full comparison of competing Stoic, Epicurean, and scriptural notions of daily time is not possible here. I raise the Epicurean and Ecclesiastes counter-examples mainly to highlight that Philo's perspectives on every day time resemble those of Seneca, and perhaps of other contemporaneous Stoic philosophers, more closely than they align with competing conceptions of time promoted during this period, whether or not he was familiar with these particular texts and perspectives.
H. Embodied Time
Time is always also about bodies.Footnote 92 Philo and Seneca conceive, on the one hand, of time as embodied (they refer to time as a commodity, to be spent and wasted, and to time as water that flows or through which one passes) and, on the other hand, of philosophical contemplation as the solution to a life lived within a body bound by the strictures of quotidian time and ultimately death. In their view, philosophy engages with eternal questions about the cosmos and allows for bodily, temporal transcendence. The relationship between time and philosophy is therefore key to understanding Philo and Seneca's conceptions of quotidian time because both thinkers attempt to elevate daily life, through philosophical pursuit, to the realm of the eternal and the a-temporal. For Philo, those who cannot transcend time on a daily basis can use the Sabbath as a weekly opportunity to experience eternity, a topic to which I return below.Footnote 93
Philo and Seneca also employ spatial metaphors of travel to describe the turn to contemplation and the soul's ascent. The ultimate goal, for both, is for a person to become a cosmopolitan, transcending not only time but also the spatial confines of the polis. One becomes a citizen of the cosmos by contemplating nature, which, for Philo and Seneca, entails avoiding activities that waste time—public service, law courts, places of assembly, and gluttony, which are all associated with urban life and urban spaces. The implication is that to spend time well, one must leave the city and contemplate nature. Ultimately, to use one's time wisely is to transcend both worldly time and worldly space.
I. Rereading Seneca's Critique of the Sabbath and Philo's Defense
Reading Philo in conversation with Seneca illuminates the rest of Philo's festival manual. Philo presents his perspective on daily time in ways intelligible to his audience, both Jewish and not. He describes Jewish values and perspectives on time in ways that resemble values and practices of time held in common with Romans such as Seneca; in some instances, they are in fact almost indistinguishable one from the other. Philo's initial section on time in De Specialibus Legibus thus serves as an important introduction for framing Philo's exposition on the remaining festivals, especially the Sabbath.
According to a fragment preserved in Augustine's City of God, Seneca outspokenly criticized Jewish Sabbath practices, arguing that Jews “practically lose a seventh part of their life in inactivity.”Footnote 94 Seneca's main critique of the Sabbath is its poor use of time—a waste of a full day-unit each week. While polemics against the Sabbath were widespread in Greek and Latin literature, Seneca is unique in framing his critique around the topic of time.Footnote 95 As though responding directly to Seneca, Philo counters that the observance of the Sabbath is not a waste of time. Philo explains that the Sabbath is its own type of laboring—the laboring of the soul—rather than an abstention from work, and adds that a day of rest, far from the epitome of idleness, renews the body for more efficient laboring during the remaining six days of the week, similar to the rhythms of an athlete, who profitably allows the body to rest after intense training.Footnote 96 Most notably, Philo insists that the Sabbath is a day for philosophical inquiry, a counterbalance to other forms of work that occupy the rest of one's weekly time.
Perhaps Philo uses this first festival of every day to signal to his readers that he takes seriously the notion that time should not be wasted in idleness, but rather should be used in its fullest sense each day. This exhortation to spend quotidian time wisely, which serves as the introductory frame for the discussion of the Sabbath and the subsequent festivals, establishes Philo as a philosopher with a conception of time similar to that which underpins Seneca's fierce advocacy for not wasting one's time.Footnote 97 Having established his temporal views, Philo is then in a far stronger position to defend the Sabbath, which Seneca decries as the worst waste of time of all. Indeed, Philo insists that the Sabbath is the ultimate day of philosophical inquiry and frames it as the epitome of a good use of time, even (or especially) as Seneca would define it. The Sabbath, as a day of philosophical inquiry, is the idealization of what every day of the week should be. Philo thus demonstrates that in the absence of an entire society devoted to philosophy on a daily basis (a utopian ideal he—and Seneca—admit is impossible), all Jews are obligated to refrain from work, including public service, in order to commit themselves to the study of philosophy weekly, if not daily. The Sabbath allows even ordinary people to incorporate a full day of contemplation into their otherwise busy lives, a practical alternative to the less attainable task of celebrating the every day festival on each day of the week. Given the goal of Philo's De specialibus legibus, which is to explain Jewish customs, this preemptive framing of his philosophy of time as an introduction to the specifically Jewish practices of the Sabbath, often at the center of ancient Greek and Latin anti-Jewish polemics, makes perfect sense. We can thus read Philo's discussions of both festivals in conversation with Seneca. The explanation of the every day festival demonstrates that Philo values time just as much, and in the same ways, as his counterpart, and his explanation of the Sabbath makes clear that the celebration of a weekly Sabbath is not at odds with popular Roman conceptions of time but an enactment of them. Philo even takes his argument further by implying that Judaism not only shares values of time with the sorts of ideas found in Seneca's philosophy, but that Judaism is superior because these values are inscribed in its laws.
Conclusions
I have suggested that among the ideas that may have informed Philo's description of the festival of “every day” and his conception of quotidian time were ideals about the proper celebration of time also preserved in Seneca's writings. Philo and Seneca's ideas about the use of time and philosophy's ability to transcend, or at least to value, each day properly, are quite similar. They both argue for the celebration of each day, bemoan similar activities as ill uses of time, valorize philosophical pursuits as the correct way of spending one's time, and describe the turn from too much public service to the pursuit of philosophy as the anchoring of a ship in a peaceful harbor and the ascent of the soul in the process of the contemplation of the cosmos. That is not to say that there are no differences between Philo and Seneca's discussions of every day time. One important difference, for example, is Philo's framing of the matter as a celebration of time, and Seneca's articulation of it as a matter of not wasting time; another is their difference of opinion about the Sabbath. These differences notwithstanding, by reading sections of Philo's text closely alongside Seneca's exhortations, we gain a better understanding of the ways in which Philo and Seneca's ideas about quotidian time overlapped with one another.Footnote 98
Experimental Epilogue
I am unsure about how to explain the similarities between Philo and Seneca's writings. We have no evidence that Seneca read Philo's texts, and Seneca authored his most relevant works after Philo's death, and so we must attribute the commonalities in their writings to a shared cultural and intellectual milieu. I would like to leave open the possibility, however tentative, that Philo and Seneca might have conversed and shared ideas before they wrote their texts.Footnote 99 This is a controversial idea, and I make this proposal provocatively to meditate on the possibilities and limits of the historical work we do as readers of ancient texts.Footnote 100 Is it not possible, for instance, to imagine that the two men met at the Roman Forum or at a dinner party or conference,Footnote 101 where they discussed the ideas that animated their philosophical endeavors, and that the similarities and differences between them were a result of a conversation and a friendship before—or simultaneously with—becoming a literary trope?
Scholars often think either abstractly about influences (that such ideas were “in the air”) or hyper-concretely (in search of exact textual parallels and quotations).Footnote 102 The transmission of ideas, however, also occurs in more intimate and personal ways, both in shared spaces and through casual non-literary contact, often in conversations among friends, colleagues, rivals, teachers and students. Philosophical and religious discourse, moreover, is often presented in our texts in the form of conversation or is relayed in dialogic genres; we need only think of the epitome of philosophic discourse, the “Socratic dialogue,” and of the dialogic form and style of rabbinic texts.Footnote 103 What might it mean to take such encounters into account in our reconstruction of ancient history and the history of ideas, even as merely a theoretical possibility?Footnote 104
Niehoff writes that Philo “may have counted among his friends Seneca the Younger who was related to a governor of Egypt and spent in his youth time in the province. The families of the two men belonged to the same social milieu and are likely to have known each other. Philo may have met Seneca already in Egypt and then again in Rome when he came there on his embassy to Gaius.”Footnote 105 That is, not only did these two men inhabit similar worlds—they might have actually crossed paths in Rome. Though my comparative analysis above does not rely on such an encounter (and would be just as valid without one), I also do not want to rule it out completely, on the historical grounds that it could have happened and on the theoretical grounds that, although we do not have the transcripts of ancient conversations, we still ought to consider that they might have happened and think about their consequences when we imagine the dynamics of the development of ideas, in antiquity as in the present.
