André Thévet · Public domain

Philo of Alexandria spent his life in the large Jewish community of Roman Egypt, writing in Greek to make the case that Jewish scripture and Greek philosophy were saying the same thing in different languages — that Moses had arrived at truths Plato later rediscovered. His allegorical method for reading the Torah shaped how both later Jewish and early Christian thinkers approached scripture, well after his own name had faded from either tradition. The one episode of his life that can be dated with confidence is a delegation he led to the Roman emperor Caligula in 40 CE, appealing on behalf of Alexandria's Jews after violent unrest with the city's Greek population.