This tradition that Philo met Peter in Rome and formed an acquaintance with him is repeated by Jerome (de vir ill. 11), and by Photius (Cod. 105), who even goes further, and says directly that Philo became a Christian. The tradition, however, must be regarded as quite worthless. It is absolutely certain from Philo’s own works, and from the otherwise numerous traditions of antiquity that he never was a Christian, and aside from the report of Eusebius (for Jerome and Photius do not represent an independent tradition) there exists no hint of such a meeting between Peter and Philo; and when we realize that Philo was already an old man in the time of Caius (see above, chap. 4, note 8), and that Peter certainly did not reach Rome before the later years of Nero’s reign, we may say that such a meeting as Eusebius records (only upon tradition, λόγος žχει) is certainly not historical. Where Eusebius got the tradition we do not know. It may have been manufactured in the interest of the Philonic authorship of the De vita contemplativa, or it may have been a natural outgrowth of the ascription of that work to him, some such explanation suggesting itself to the reader of that work as necessary to explain Philo’s supposed praise of Christian monks. Philo’s visit to Rome during the reign of Caligula being a well-known historic fact, and Peter’s visit to Rome during the reign of Claudius being assumed as likewise historic (see above, chap. 14, note 8), it was not difficult to suppose a meeting between them (the great Christian apostle and the great Jewish philosopher), and to invent for the purpose a second visit of Philo to Rome. It seems probable that the ascription of the work De vita contemplativa to Philo came before the tradition of his acquaintance with Peter in Rome (which is first mentioned by Eusebius); but in any case the two were mutually corroborative.