productive Hellenistic age has perhaps been carried too far. But if we may not regard Philo as a great originator, and it is evident that he borrowed many of his ideas, he was at any rate a great transmitter of thought, a mediator after his own heart between Jews and Greeks, and between them both and the Christian writers to come. Standing at the close of the Hellenistic age and at the opening of the Roman period, he occupies in the history of speculative and theological thought an analogous position to that of Pliny the Elder in the history of natural science, gathering up the lore of the past, perhaps improving it with some additions of his own, and exercising a profound influence upon the age to come. [Sidenote: His influence upon the middle ages was indirect.] Philo’s medieval influence, however, was probably more indirect than Pliny’s and passed itself on through yet other mediators to the more remote times. Comparatively speaking, the _Natural History_ of Pliny probably was more important in the middle ages than in the early Roman Empire when other authorities prevailed in the Greek-speaking world. Philo’s influence on the other hand must soon be transmitted through Christian, and then again through Latin, mediums. This is indicated by the fact that to-day many of his works are wholly lost or extant only in fragments[1559] or in Armenian versions,[1560] and that we have no sure information as to the order in which they were composed.[1561] But his initial force is none the less of the greatest moment, and seems amply sufficient to justify us in selecting his writings as one of our starting points. The extent to which one is apt to find in the writings of Philo passages which are forerunners of the statements of subsequent writers, may be illustrated by the familiar story of King Canute and the tide. Philo in his work _On Dreams_[1562] speaks of the custom of the Germans of charging the incoming tide with their drawn swords. But what especially concern us are Philo’s statements concerning magic, astrology, the stars, the perfection and power of numbers, demons, and the interpretation of dreams. [Sidenote: Good and bad magic.]