Read the record. Inspect the craft.
Sources & method

Source basis: Each hosted writing names its date, translator, source link, and manuscript survival notes where available. Sources

Browse this section
Explore this sectionReading section
Sources & method

Source basis: Each hosted writing names its date, translator, source link, and manuscript survival notes where available. Sources

All worlds

The library · Edition and sources

Philo: The Special Laws, II

C. D. Yonge (1854–1855) · Translated text

Section XLVII

XLVII. (257) We have now then mentioned the punishments which are ordained against those who neglect the five commandments. But the rewards which are offered to those who keep them, even though the law has not set them forth in express words of injunction, are nevertheless figuratively intimated. (258) Therefore the fact of not thinking that there are any other gods but the true God, nor imagining that things made by the hand of man are gods, and the fact of not committing perjury, are things which have no need of any other reward, for the mere fact, in my opinion, of practising these virtues is itself a most excellent and most perfect reward.

For at what circumstance can a lover of truth feel more really delighted than at the devotion of himself to one God, and attending in a guileless and pure manner to his service? (259) And when I speak of witnesses, I mean not such persons as are slaves to pride, but such as are devoted to an admiration of goodness free from all error, by whom the truth is honoured. For wisdom itself is the reward of wisdom; and justice, and each of the other virtues, is its own reward. And truth, as being the most beautiful in the whole company, and as being the chief of all the holy virtues, is in much greater degree its own recompense and reward, affording as it does happiness to all who practise it, and blessings of which they cannot be deprived to their children and descendants.

Read in this edition: source locators and uncertainty marks are retained. Square brackets can mark gaps or editorial interventions; headings and supplied subtitles belong to the edition. Coverage and cautions

About this reading layout

Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.

These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.