ors, and, by falsely pretending to be born at Alexandria, cannot deny the pravity of his family; for you see how justly he calls those Egyptians whom he hates and endeavours to reproach; for had he not deemed Egyptians to be a name of great reproach, he would not have avoided the name of an Egyptian himself, as we know that those who brag of their own countries value themselves upon the denomination they acquire thereby, and reprove such as unjustly lay claim thereto. As for the Egyptians' claim to be of our kindred, they do it on one of the following accounts: I mean either as they value themselves upon it, and pretend to bear that relation to us; or else as they would draw us in to be par. takers of their own infamy. But this fine fellow Apion seems to broach this reproachful appellation against us, [that we were originally Egyptians,] in order to bestow it on the Alexandrians as a reward for the privilege they had given hun of being a fellow citizen with them: he also is apprized of the ill will the Alexandrians bear to those Jews who are their fellow citizens, and so proposes to himself to reproach them, although he must thereby include all the other Egyp tians also; while in both cases he is no better than an impudent liar.

4. But let us now see what those heavy and wicked crimes are which Apion charges upon the Alexandrian Jews. "They came," says he, "out of Syria, and inhabited near the tempestuous sea, and were in the neighbourhood of the dashing of the waves." Now, if the place of habitation includes any thing that is reproachful, this man reproaches not his own real country [Egypt,] but what he pretends to be his own country, Alexandria; for all are agreed in this, that the part of that city which is near the sea is the best part of all for habitation. Now, if the Jews gained that part of the city by force, and have kept it hitherto without impeachment, this is a mark of their valour: but in reality it was Aiex. ander himself that gave them that place for their habitation, when they obtamed equal privileges there with the Macedonians. Nor can I devise what Apion would have said, had their habitation been at Necropolis,* and not been fixed hard by the royal palace, [as it is;] nor had their nation had the denomination of Macedonians given them till this very day, [as they have.] Had this man now read the epistles of King Alexander, or those of Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, or met with the writings of the succeeding kings, or that pillar which is still stand ing at Alexandria, and contains the privileges which the great [Julius] Cæsar bestowed upon the Jews; had this man, I say, known these records, and yet hath the impudence to write in contradiction to them, he hath shown himself to be a wicked man: but if he knew nothing of these records, he hath shown himself to be a man very ignorant: nay, when he appears to wonder how Jews could be called Alexandrians, this is another like instance of his ignorance: for all such as are called out to be colonies, although they be ever so far remote from one another in their original, receive their names from those that bring thei to their new habitations. And what occasion is there to speak of others, when those of us Jews that dwelt at Antioch are named Antiochians, because Seleucus the founder of that city gave them the privileges belonging thereto ? After the like manner, do those Jews that inhabit Ephesus and the other cities of Ionia enjoy the same name with those that were originally born there, by the grant of the succeeding princes: nay, the kindness and humanity of the Romans hath been so great, that it hath granted leave to almost all others to take the same name of Romans upon them; I mean not particular men only, but entire and large nations themselves also; for those anciently named Iberi, and Tyrrheni, and Sabini, are now called Romani. And if Apion reject this way of obtaining the privilege of a citizen of Alexandria, let him abstain from calling himself an Alexandrian hereafter; for otherwise how can he who was born in the very heart of Egypt be an Alexandrian, if this way of accepting such a privilege, of wh.ch he would have us deprived, be once abrogated? although, indeed, these Romans, who

* The burial-place for dead bodies, as I suppose.

are now the lords of the habitable earth, have forbidden the Egyptians to have the privileges of any city whatsoever; while this fine fellow, who is willing to partake of such a privilege himself as he is forbidden to make use of, endeavours by calumnies to deprive those of it that have justly received it: for Alex ander did not, therefore, get some of our nation to Alexandria, because he wanted inhabitants for this his city, on whose building he had bestowed so much pains: but this was given to our people as a reward, because he had, upon a careful trial, found them all to have been men of virtue and fidelity to him; for, as He cateus says concerning us, "Alexander honoured our nation to such a degree that, for the equity and the fidelity which the Jews had exhibited to him, he per mitted them to hold the country of Samaria free from tribute. Of the same mind also was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, as to those Jews who dwelt at Alexandria:" for he intrusted the fortresses of Egypt into their hands, as believing they would keep them faithfully and valiantly for him; and when he was desirous to secure the government of Cyrene and the other cities of Libya to himself, he sent a party of Jews to inhabit them. And for his successor Ptolemy, who was called Philadelphus, he did not only set all those of our nation free who were captives under him, but did frequently* give money [for their ransom ;] and, what was his greatest work of all, he had a great desire of knowing our laws and of obtaining the books of our sacred scriptures: accordingly, he desired that such men might be sent him as might interpret our law to him; and in order to have them well compiled, he committed that care to no ordinary persons, but ordained that De metrius Phalereus, and Andreas, and Aristeas; the first, Demetrius, the most learned person of his age, and the others such as were intrusted with the guard of his body, should take the care of this matter: nor would he certainly have been so desirous of learning our law and the philosophy of our nation, had he despised the men that made use of it, or had he not, indeed, had them in great admiration.

5. Now, this Apion was unacquainted with almost all the kings of those Mace donians whom he pretends to have been his progenitors; who were yet very well affected towards us: for the third of those Ptolemies, who was called Euergetes, when he had gotten possession of all Syria by force, did not offer his thank-of ferings to the Egyptian gods for his victory, but came to Jerusalem, and, accord. ing to our own laws, offered many sacrifices to God, and dedicated to him such gifts as were suitable to such a victory: and as for Ptolemy Philometor and his wife Cleopatra, they committed their whole kingdom to Jews, when Onias and Dositheus, both Jews, whose names are laughed at by Apion, were the generals of their whole army. But certainly, instead of reproaching them, he ought to ad mire their actions, and return them thanks for saving Alexandria, whose citizen he pretends to be: for when these Alexandrians were making war with Cleopatra the queen, and were in danger of being utterly ruined, these Jews brought them to terms of agreement, and freed them from the iniseries of a civil war. "But then," says Apion, "Onias brought a small army afterward upon the city, at the time when Thermus the Roman ambassador was there present." Yes, do I venture to say, and that he did rightly and very justly in so doing; for that Ptolemy who was called Physco, upon the death of his brother Philometor, came from Cy. rene, and would have ejected Cleopatra as well as her sons out of their kingdom, that he might obtain it for himself unjustly.† For this cause, then, it was, that Onias undertook a war against him on Cleopatra's account; nor would he desert that trust the royal family had reposed in him in their distress. Accordingly, God gave a remarkable attestation to his righteous procedure; for when Ptolemy

*For is, or frequently, I would here read a, a great deal of money; for we, indeed, read both in Aristeas and Josephus, that this Ptolemy Philadelphus once gave a very great sum of money to redeem above 100,000 Jewish captives, but not of any sums of money, which he disbursed on their account at other times, that I know of.

+ Here begins a great defect in the Greek copy; but the old Latin version fully supplies that defect

Physco had the presumption to fight against Onias's army, and had caught all the Jews that were in the city [Alexandria,] with their children and wives, and exposed them naked and in bonds to his elephants, that they might be trodden upon and destroyed; and when he had made those elephants drunk for that pur. pose, the event proved contrary to his preparations; for these elephants left the Jews who were exposed to them, and fell violently upon Physco's friends, and slew a great number of them: nay, after this, Ptolemy saw a terrible ghost, which prohibited his hurting those men: his very concubine whom he loved so well, some call her Ithaca and others Irene, making supplication to him, that he would no perpetrate so great a wickedness. So he complied with her request, and repented of what he either had already done or was about to do; whence it is well known that the Alexandrian Jews do with good reason celebrate this day, on the account that they had thereon been vouchsafed such an evident deliverance from God. However, Apion, the common calumniator of men, hath the presumption to accuse the Jews for making this war against Physco, when he ought to have commended them for the same. This man also makes mention of Cleopatra the last queen of Alexandria, and abuses "s, because she was ungrateful to us; whereas he ought to have reproved her, who indulged herself in all kinds of injustice and wicked practices, both with regard to her nearest relations and husbands who had Loved her, and, indeed, in general, with regard to all the Romans, and those emperors that were her benefactors; who also had her sister Arsinoe slain in a tem. ple, when she had done her no harm: moreover, she had her brother slain by private treachery, and she destroyed the gods of her country and the sepulchres of her progenitors; and while she had received her kingdom from the first Cæsar she had the impudence to rebel against his sont and successor: nay, she cor 1upted Antony with her love-tricks, and rendered him an enemy to his country and made him treacherous to his friends, and [by his means] despoiled some of their royal authority, and forced others in her madness to act wickedly. But what need I enlarge upon this head any farther, when she left Antony in his fight at sea, though he were her husband, and the father of their common children, and compelled him to resign up his government, with the army, and to follow her [into Egypt:] nay, when last of all Cæsar had taken Alexandria, she came to that pitch of cruelty, that she declared she had some hopes of preserving her affairs still, in case she could kill the Jews, though it were with her own hand; to such

a degree of barbarity and perfidiousness had she arrived. And doth any one think that we cannot boast ourselves of any thing, if, as Apion says, this queen did not at a time of famine distribute wheat among us? However, she at length met with the punishment she deserved. As for us Jews, we appeal to the great Cæsar what assistance we brought him, and what fidelity we showed to him against the Egyptians; as also, to the senate and its decrees, and the epistles of Augustus Cæsar, whereby our merits [to the Romans] are justified. Apion ought to have looked upon those epistles, and, in particular, to have examined the testi monies given on our behalf under Alexander and all the Ptolemies, and the de crees of the senate and of the greatest Roman emperors. And if Germanicus was not able to make a distribution of corn to all the inhabitants of Alexandria, that only shows what a barren time it was, and how great a want there was then of corn, but tends nothing to the accusation of the Jews; for what all the emperors have thought of the Alexandrian Jews is well known; for this distribution of wheat was no otherwise omitted with regard to the Jews than it was with regard to the other inhabitants of Alexandria. But they still were desirous to preserve what the kings had formerly intrusted to their care, I mean the custody of the river; nor

What error is here generally believed to have been committed by our Josephus in ascribing a delives ance of the Jews to the reign of Ptolemy Physco, the seventh of those Ptolemies, which has been universally supposed to have happened under Ptoleiny Philopator, the fourth of them, is no better than a grom error of the moderns, and not of Josephus, as I have fully proved in the Authent. Rec. part i p 200–—– 204, we her i reter the inquisitive reader.

Sister's son, and adopted son.

did those kings think them unworthy of having the entire custody thereof upon all occasions.

6. But, besides this, Apion objects to us thus.- -" If the Jews," says he "be citizens of Alexandria, why do they not worship the same gods with the Alexandrians?" To which I give this answer:-Since you are yourselves Egyptians, why do you fight it out one against another, and have implacable wars about your religion? At this rate, we must not call you all Egyptians, nor, indeed, in gene. ral men, because you breed up with great care beasts of a nature quite contrary to that of men, although the nature of all men seems to be one and the same. Now, if there be such differences in opinion among you Egyptians, why are you surprised that those who came to Alexandria from another country, and had origi. nal laws of their own before, should persevere in the observance of those laws? But still he charges us with being the authors of sedition: which accusation, if it be a just one, why is it not laid against us all, since we are known to be all of one mind? Moreover, those that search into such matters will soon discover, that the authors of sedition have been such citizens of Alexandria as Apion is; for while they were the Grecians and Macedonians who were in possession of this city, there was no sedition raised against us, and we were permitted to observe our ancient solemnities; but when the number of the Egyptians therein came to be considerable, the times grew confused, and then these seditions brake out still more and more, while our people continued uncorrupted. These Egyptians, therefore, were the authors of these troubles, who not having the constancy of Macedonians, nor the prudence of Grecians, indulged all of them the evil manners of Egyptians, and continued their ancient hatred against us; for what is here so presumptuously charged upon us, is owing to the differences that are amongst themselves; while many of them have not obtained the privileges of citizens in proper times, but style those who are well known to have had that privilege extended to them all no other than foreigners; for it does not appear that any of the kings have ever formerly bestowed those privileges of citizens upon Egyptians, no more than have the emperors done it more lately; while it was Alexander who introduced us into this city at first, the kings augmented our privileges therein, aud the Romans have been pleased to preserve them always inviolable. Moreover, Apion would lay a blot upon us, because we do not erect images for our emperors; as if those emperors did not know this before, or stood in need of Apion as their defender; whereas he ought rather to have admired the magnanimity and modesty of the Romans, whereby they do not compel those that are subject to them to transgress the laws of their countries, but are willing to receive the honours due to them after such a manner as those who are to pay them esteem consistent with piety and with their own laws; for they do not thank people for conferring honours upon them, when they are compelled by violence so to do. Accordingly, since the Grecians and some other nations think it a right thing to make images; nay, when they have painted the pictures of their parents, and wives, and chil dren, they exult for joy; and some there are who take pictures for themselves of such persons as were no way related to them; nay, some take the pictures of such servants as they were fond of. What wonder is it, then, if such as these appear willing to pay the same respect to their princes and lords? But, then, our legislator hath forbidden us to make images, not by way of denunciation beforehand, that the Roman authority was not to be honoured, but as despising a thing that was neither necessary nor useful for either God or man; and he forbade them, as we shall prove hereafter, to make these images for any part of the animal creation, and much less for God himself, who is no part of such anima creation. Yet hath our legislator nowhere forbidden us to pay honours to worthy men, provided they be of another kind, and inferior to those we pay to God: with which honours we willingly testify our respect to our emperors and to the people of Rome: we also offer perpetual sacrifices for them; nor do we only offer them every day at the common expenses of all the Jews, but although we offer no othe

such sacrifices out of our common expenses, no not for our own children, yet do we this as a peculiar honour to the emperors, and to them alone, while we do the same to no other person whomsoever. And let this suffice for an answer in general to Apion, as to what he says with relation to the Alexandrian Jews.

7. However, I cannot but admire those other authors who furnished this man with such his materials; I mean Possidonius and Apollonius [the son of] Molo,* who, while they accuse us for not worshiping the same gods whom others worship, they think themselves not guilty of impiety when they tell lies of us, and frame absurd and reproachful stories about our temple; whereas it is a most shameful thing for free men to forge lies on any occasion, and much more so to forge them about our temple, which was so famous over all the world, and was preserved so sacred by us; for Apion hath the impudence to pretend," That the Jews placed an ass's head in their holy place ;" and he affirms," That this was discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes spoiled our temple, and found that ass's head there made of gold, and worth a great deal of money." To this my first answer shall be this:-That had there been any such thing among us, an Egyptian ought by no means to have thrown it in our teeth, since an ass is not a more contemptible animal than***† and goats, and other such creatures, which among them are gods. But, besides this answer, I say farther, how comes it about that Apion does not understand this to be no other than a palpable lie, and to be confuted by the thing itself as utterly incredible? For we Jews are always governed by the same laws, in which we constantly persevere; and although many misfortunes have befallen our city, as the like have befallen others, and although Theos [Epiphanes,] and Pompey the Great, and Licinius Crassus, and, last of all, Titus Cæsar, have conquered us in war, and gotten possession of our temple: yet have they none of them found any such thing there, nor, indeed, any thing but what was agreeable to the strictest piety; although what they found we are not at liberty to reveal to other nations. But for Antiochus [Epiphanes,] he had no just cause for that ravage in our temple that he made; he only came to it when he wanted money, without declaring himself our enemy, and attacked us while we were his asso. ciates and his friends: nor did he find any thing there that was ridiculous. This is attested by many worthy writers; Polybius of Megalopolis, Strabo of Cappado. cia, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes, Castor the chronologer, and Apollodorus, who all say, that it was out of Antiochus's want of money that he broke his league with the Jews, and despoiled their temple when it was full of gold and silver. Apion ought to have had a regard to these facts, unless he had himself had either an ass's heart or a dog's impudence; of such a dog I mean as they worship; for he had no other external reason for the lies he tells of us. As for us Jews, we ascribe no honour or power to asses, as do the Egyptians to crocodiles and asps, when they esteem such as are seized upon by the former or bitten by the latter to be happy persons, and persons worthy of God. Asses are the same with us which they are with other wise men, viz. creatures that bear the burdens that we lay upon them; but if they come to our thrashing-floors, and eat our corn, or do not perform what we impose upon them, we beat them with a great many stripes, because it is their business to minister to us in our husbandry affairs. But this Apion of ours was either perfectly unskilful in the composition of such fallacious discourses, or, however, when he began [somewhat better,] he was not able to persevere in what he had undertaken, since he hath no manner of success in those reproaches he casts upon us.

8. He adds another Grecian fable, in order to reproach us. In reply to which it would be enough to say, that they who presume to speak about divine worship,

Called more properly Molo or Apollonius Molo, as hereafter; for Apollonius, the sou of Mulo, was another person, as Strabo informs us, lib. xiv.

Furones in the Latin, which what animal it denotes does not now appear.

It is a great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should we all lost; I incan so far of their writings as ontained that description, though it is plain Josephus perused them all, as extant in nis tine.

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