Note 210 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

“There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (in Flacc. 10), “as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps bacillarius). He afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις μάστιξιν).