ABSTRACT
Philo of Alexandria’s treatise In Flaccum is read as using ancient topoi with correspondences to the combination of symptoms currently known as post-traumatic stress disorder. The treatise deals with social turmoil in Alexandria in 47 CE and focuses on the part the Roman prefect Aulus Avillius Flaccus played in these events. It consists of two distinct parts, the first dealing with the events in the city, and the second with the subsequent trial, exile, and death of Flaccus. The chapter examines Flaccus’ reversal of fortune, his mental anguish, and eventual death on the island of Andros, which Philo from the start views as a direct consequence of his treatment of the Alexandrian Jews. His detailed description of Flaccus’ symptoms includes distressing recollections of the trauma event, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition, depersonalization and derealisation, and hyperarousal. Philo probably had an outline of Flaccus’ demise but elaborates it with a variety of literary topoi at his disposal. These include medical case histories, literary lament, and retributive justice. Philo describes the stages of Flaccus’ mental disintegration as the workings of God’s instrument Dike, ending not in healing but in gruesome death.
