Philo: On Drunkenness

XXIX. (111) And Moses indeed, in the same manner, when he saw the king of Egypt,

that arrogant man with his six hundred chariots, that is to say, with the six carefully arranged motions of the organic body, and with the governors who were appointed to manage them, who, while none of all created things are by nature calculated to stand still, think nevertheless that they may look upon everything as solidly settled and admitting of no alteration; when he, I say, saw that this king had met with the punishment due to his impiety, and that the people, who were practisers of virtue, had escaped from the attacks of their enemies, and had been saved by mighty power beyond their expectation, he then sang a hymn to God as a just and true judge, beginning a hymn in a manner most becoming and most exactly suited to the events that had happened, because the horse and his rider he had thrown into the Sea;"

having utterly destroyed that mind which rode upon the irrational impulses of that four-footed and restive animal, passion, and had become an ally, and defender, and protector of the seeing soul, so as to bestow upon it complete safety. (112) And the same prophet begins a song to the well, not only for the destruction of the passions, but also because he has had strength given to him to acquire the most valuable of all possessions, namely incomparable wisdom, which he compares to a well; for it is deep, and not superficial, giving forth a sweet stream to souls who thirst for goodness and virtue, a drink at once most necessary and most sweet. (113) But it is not entrusted to any person who is not initiated in wisdom to dig this well, but only to kings, on which account it is said, "Kings hewed it out of Stone."

For it is the office of mighty rulers to investigate and to establish wisdom, not meaning those who with their arms have subdued sea and land, but those who with the powers of the soul have fought against and subdued its diversified, and mingled, and confused multitude.