First Complete Latin Philo

...on victims and rewards, or curses; On Providence; On the Jews; On the conduct of life; On Alexander, asserting that mute animals possess their own reason; and that every fool is a slave. Also, a book on the life of our own people, of whom we spoke above, that is, on apostolic men, which he also inscribed Περὶ βίου θεωρητικοῦ ἢ ἱκετῶν [On the Contemplative Life, or Suppliants], because they evidently contemplate heavenly things and always pray to God. And under other titles: two books on Agriculture; two on Drunkenness. There are also other monuments of his genius which have not come into our hands. Concerning him, it is commonly said among the Greeks, ἢ πλάτων φιλωνίζει, ἢ φίλων πλατωνίζει, that is, either Plato follows Philo, or Philo follows Plato: so great is the similarity of thought and eloquence.

Philo the Jew, born at Alexandria and learned in all disciplines, easily excelled all others in our philosophy and that of the Greeks; he was such an emulator of Plato’s eloquence that there was a proverb: ἢ πλάτων φιλωνίζει, ἢ φίλων πλατωνίζει, that is, either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes. Moreover, how great he was in the divine laws and ancestral institutions is evident from those monuments of his books which he has handed down to us. Therefore, he completed volumes on how many evils befell the Jews in the times of the Emperor Gaius: in which he also recounts his own embassy on behalf of the Jews before the Emperor himself, from which, having been insulted, he returned home not without danger.

Josephus also mentions this embassy in his 18th book in these words: "And indeed, when there had been a sedition at Alexandria between the Jews and the Greeks, three envoys from each party were sent to Gaius, among whom on the part of the Greeks was a certain Apion the grammarian, who, while accusing them in other matters, also charged that they did not pay divine honors to Caesar (as is the custom among others); wherefore he made Gaius angry. Philo, who headed the embassy of the Jews, a man magnificent in all things and not ignorant of philosophy, most vehemently refuted all things. At length, terrified and repulsed, he said: 'We must be of good courage, we whom Gaius hates. For it is necessary that divine aid be present where human aid ceases.'" Thus spoke he.

But Philo, in the very book he wrote concerning his embassy, carries out all things. Returning again, therefore, as an envoy to Claudius in the City, he then for the first time met with the apostle Peter, and entered into friendship with him and with his disciple Mark; for which reason he later extolled with praises the Alexandrian church, over which Mark presided, and the Christians of that time, as Jerome testifies. A huge volume of his, containing many books, has reached us, translated in the time of Pope Sixtus IV by my teacher Lilius Tiphernas, and dedicated to the Vatican Library.