Tiberius, then, having reigned about twenty-two years, died; and after him Caius, having received the sovereignty, at once placed the diadem of the rule of the Jews upon Agrippa, appointing him king over the tetrarchy of Philip and of Lysanias; to which, after no long time, he added also the tetrarchy of Herod, condemning Herod (this was the Herod of the Saviour's Passion) to perpetual banishment, together with his wife Herodias, for very many causes. Of these things too Josephus is witness.
It was in his reign that Philo became well known — a man most distinguished among very many, not only of our own people but also of those who came from the education outside. By descent he was a Hebrew from of old, and inferior to none of those eminent in office at Alexandria.
Now as to the divine and ancestral learning, how great and how high was the labour he bestowed, is plain to all by his work; and as to philosophy and the liberal studies of the education outside, what manner of man he was there is no need to say, since he is recorded to have surpassed all his contemporaries, having been especially zealous for the discipline of Plato and Pythagoras.