Against Apion — Book 2

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

In the first book, my most honored Epaphroditus, I demonstrated our antiquity, establishing the truth by the writings of the Phoenicians, Chaldaeans, and Egyptians, and producing many Greek writers as witnesses; and I made my reply to Manetho, Chaeremon, and certain others. I will now begin to refute the remaining writers who have said anything against us.

It occurred to me to wonder, in taking up a reply to the things ventured by Apion the grammarian, whether the effort was even worth making. Some of what he has written is similar to what others have said; some of it he has added with real coldness; and most of it displays sheer buffoonery and, to tell the truth, a great deal of ignorance, as though it were the composition of a man both base in character and a rabble-rouser his whole life long. But since most people, through their own foolishness, are captivated by talk of that sort more than by writing composed with any seriousness, and take delight in slander while resenting praise, I judged it necessary not to leave even this man's accusation against us unexamined, given that he wrote it as though delivering a formal indictment.

And indeed I notice something else that attends most people: an excessive satisfaction whenever a man who has set out to abuse another is himself shown up for the very faults he attributes to him. It is not easy to follow his argument through, or to grasp clearly what he means; but roughly speaking, amid much confusion and a welter of falsehoods, part of it falls into the same category as what has already been examined concerning our ancestors' departure from Egypt, part of it is an accusation against the Jews living in Alexandria, and mixed in with these, a third element, is an accusation concerning the sanctity of our temple and our other observances.

That our fathers were not Egyptian by race, and were not driven out from there because of bodily disease or any other such misfortune, I think I have already demonstrated, not merely adequately but more than adequately. I will now touch briefly on what Apion adds to this. In the third book of his Egyptian History he says the following: "Moses, as I have heard from the elders of the Egyptians, was a man of Heliopolis, who, bound by his ancestral customs, offered his prayers in the open air, facing the enclosures such as the sun has, all of them turned toward the east; for that is where the City of the Sun stands. In place of obelisks he set up columns, beneath which was carved a boat, and on it the shadow of a man positioned so as to show that it forever circles the sun on its course through the heavens."

Such, then, is the grammarian's marvelous account. But the falsehood needs no arguing against; it is exposed by the plain facts. For Moses himself, when he built the first tabernacle for God, put no carving of that kind into it, nor did he order those who came after him to make one; and Solomon too, who later built the temple in Jerusalem, kept entirely clear of any such elaborate device as Apion has concocted. As for his claim to have heard from the elders that Moses was a man of Heliopolis, clearly he himself is too young to know, and simply trusted men who knew and had lived with him only on account of their age. Yet this same man, grammarian though he is, could not say with certainty even where Homer the poet's homeland was, nor about Pythagoras either, who lived only, so to speak, yesterday or the day before; but about Moses, who preceded them by so vast a multitude of years, he pronounces so readily, trusting the hearsay of "elders," that he is plainly caught in a lie.

As for the dates on which he says Moses led out the lepers, the blind, and those crippled in the feet, our accurate grammarian is thoroughly at odds even with those before him. Manetho says that the Jews left Egypt in the reign of Tethmosis, three hundred and ninety-three years before the flight of Danaus to Argos; Lysimachus says it was under king Bocchoris, that is to say one thousand seven hundred years before; Molon and certain others give whatever date seemed right to them. But Apion, the most trustworthy of them all, has fixed the exodus with precision at the seventh Olympiad, and its first year at that, in which, he says, the Phoenicians founded Carthage. And he added this detail about Carthage entirely because he supposed it would be for him the clearest possible proof of the truth, without realizing that he was thereby drawing the refutation down on his own head.

For if one must trust the Phoenician records concerning this incredible claim, in those very records king Hiram is recorded as living more than one hundred and fifty years before the founding of Carthage — the same Hiram for whom I furnished proof earlier from the Phoenician records that he was a friend of Solomon, who built the temple in Jerusalem, and contributed a great deal toward the temple's construction. And Solomon himself built the temple six hundred and twelve years after the Jews left Egypt. As for the number of those driven out, Apion, improvising the same figure as Lysimachus, says they were a hundred and ten thousand, and he supplies a marvelous and plausible reason from which, he says, the Sabbath got its name: having journeyed, he says, a distance of six days, they developed swellings in the groin, and for that reason they rested on the seventh day, once they had reached safety in the land now called Judaea, and called the day sabbaton, preserving the Egyptian word — for the Egyptians call groin pain sabbatosis.

Could anyone fail either to laugh at this nonsense or, on the contrary, to despise the shamelessness of writing such things? For clearly, on this account, all hundred and ten thousand of them developed the swelling together. But if they were blind and lame and diseased in every way, as Apion says they were, they could not have covered even a single day's journey; and if they were fit enough to march through a vast wilderness, and moreover to defeat all who stood against them in battle, then they could not have developed the swelling en masse after the sixth day. For that sort of thing does not naturally happen to people simply because they are marching — many tens of thousands of soldiers march a moderate distance every day for many days on end — nor is it plausible that it happened by pure coincidence; that would be the most irrational explanation of all.

And this marvelous Apion has, on the one hand, already stated that they reached Judaea in six days, yet on the other hand says that Moses went up onto the mountain between Egypt and Arabia called Sinai and hid there for forty days, then came down and gave the Jews their laws. Yet how could the same people both remain forty days in a desert, waterless place, and also cross the whole distance between in six days? And this grammarian's transposition regarding the naming of the Sabbath betrays either great shamelessness or terrible ignorance; for sabbo and sabbaton are entirely different words. Sabbaton, in the language of the Jews, means rest from all labor, whereas sabbo, as he himself says, means among the Egyptians the pain of the groin.

Such, then, are the sort of things the Egyptian Apion has newly invented, beyond what others have said, about Moses and the departure of the Jews from Egypt. And why should one be surprised that he lies about our ancestors when he claims they were Egyptian by race, when about himself he told the opposite lie, and though born at the Oasis in Egypt, the foremost of all Egyptians, so to speak, he forswore his true homeland and people, and by falsely claiming to be an Alexandrian confesses the baseness of his own origin. Naturally, then, those he hates and wishes to abuse he calls Egyptians; for had he not considered Egyptians the basest of people, he would not have fled his own origin — since those who take pride in their own homelands glory in being known by them, and expose those who lay claim to them unjustly.

Toward us, however, the Egyptians have done one of two things: either, wishing to claim special distinction, they pretend kinship with us, or else they try to drag us in as partners in their own bad reputation. And this noble Apion appears to have wanted to offer his slander against us to the Alexandrians as a kind of payment for the citizenship granted to him; and knowing their hostility toward the Jews who live among them in Alexandria, he has set out to abuse those Jews in particular, while lumping in all the rest of us as well, lying shamelessly on both counts.

Let us, then, look at what dreadful and outrageous things he has charged against the Jews living in Alexandria. Coming from Syria, he says, they settled by a harborless sea, in the neighborhood of the surf thrown up by the waves. Well, if that location is a matter of reproach, he is reproaching Alexandria itself — not his homeland, but the city he calls his own — since that stretch of coast belongs to it, and everyone agrees it is the finest part for settlement. And if the Jews took possession of it by force, so firmly that they were never afterward expelled, that is proof of their courage; but in fact Alexander gave them the place to settle, and they received equal honor with the Macedonians. I do not know what Apion would have said had they settled near the necropolis instead of being established close to the royal quarters, and had their tribe to this day borne the name Macedonians.

If, then, he had read the letters of king Alexander and of Ptolemy son of Lagus and of the kings of Egypt who came after him, and had come upon their documents, and the pillar standing in Alexandria that contains the rights which the great Caesar granted to the Jews — if, knowing all this, I say, he still dared to write the opposite, he was a scoundrel; and if he knew nothing of it, he was uneducated. As for his wondering how, being Jews, they were called Alexandrians, that betrays the same ignorance; for all who are enrolled as colonists of some settlement, however much they may differ from one another in origin, take their name from the founders. And why speak of others? Among our own people, those who live in Antioch are called Antiochenes, since the founder Seleucus gave them citizenship. Likewise those in Ephesus and throughout the rest of Ionia share the name of the native citizens, this having been granted them by the successors of Alexander. And has not the generosity of the Romans extended their own name to virtually everyone, not only to individuals but to whole great nations? The Iberians of old, and the Etruscans, and the Sabines, are all now called Romans.

But if Apion means to strip away citizenship granted in this manner, let him stop calling himself an Alexandrian; for born, as I said before, in the depths of Egypt, how could he be an Alexandrian by grant of citizenship, given that he himself, in our own case, has argued for abolishing exactly that kind of grant? And yet it is only Egyptians whom the Romans, now masters of the world, have forbidden to share in any citizenship whatsoever. So noble is this man that, while claiming for himself a share in what he himself was barred from obtaining, he undertook to slander those who had rightfully received it. For it was not for lack of settlers that Alexander, in founding with such care the city he was building, gathered some of our people there; rather, testing everyone carefully for virtue and trustworthiness, he granted our people this honor. He held our nation in esteem, as Hecataeus also says of us, that because of the fairness and trust the Jews showed him, Alexander added to their possession the region of Samaria, free of tribute.

Ptolemy son of Lagus held the same view of those settled in Alexandria as Alexander did; for he entrusted the garrisons throughout Egypt to them, believing they would guard them both faithfully and bravely, and wishing to hold Cyrene and the other cities of Libya securely, he sent a portion of the Jews to settle in them. His successor Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, not only released all of our people who were held captive under him, but often made them gifts of money, and, greatest of all, became eager to learn our laws and to read the books of our sacred writings. He accordingly sent, requesting that men be dispatched to translate the law for him, and entrusted the task of having it written out properly not to just anyone, but to Demetrius of Phalerum, Andreas, and Aristeas — Demetrius, distinguished among the scholars of his day, and the other two, men entrusted with the guard of his own person — assigning them to oversee this task, something he surely would not have done had he despised our laws and our ancestral philosophy, and not held it in the highest esteem, along with the men who practiced it.

But nearly all the successive kings of his own Macedonian ancestors, who were most closely disposed toward us, escaped Apion's notice entirely; for the third Ptolemy, called Euergetes, after conquering the whole of Syria by force, did not sacrifice thank-offerings for his victory to the gods of Egypt, but came to Jerusalem and, as is our custom, offered many sacrifices to God, and dedicated offerings worthy of his victory. And Ptolemy Philometor and his wife Cleopatra entrusted their entire kingdom to Jews, and the generals in command of the whole army were Onias and Dositheus, both Jews — whose names Apion mocks, though he ought rather to admire their deeds than abuse them, and to be grateful to them, since they saved Alexandria, the very city whose citizen he claims to be. For when they were at war with queen Cleopatra and in danger of perishing miserably, these men brought about a settlement and delivered the city from civil disaster. But afterward, he says, Onias led an army against the city while Thermus, the Roman envoy, was present there with only a small force. Yet I would say he acted rightly, and quite justly.

For Ptolemy, surnamed Physcon, when his brother Ptolemy Philometor died, came out from Cyrene wishing to expel Cleopatra and the king's sons from the throne, so that he might unjustly seize the kingdom for himself; and for this reason Onias took up war against him on Cleopatra's behalf, and never once, in her hour of need, abandoned the loyalty he owed to the royal house. God himself stood as manifest witness of his justice: for when Physcon Ptolemy presumed to give battle against Onias's army, and seized all the Jews living in the city together with their children and wives, stripped and bound them, and threw them before elephants, so that they might be trampled and perish, and even had the beasts made drunk for the purpose, the outcome turned out the very opposite of what he had prepared — for the elephants, abandoning the Jews set before them, charged instead upon...

His friends killed many of them in the charge. After this, Ptolemy himself saw a terrifying vision that forbade him to harm those people; and his dearest concubine—some call her Ithaca, others Irene—begged him not to carry out so great a crime, and he yielded to her, and repented of what he had already done and of what he had been about to do. This is why the Jews settled in Alexandria are known to keep this day, since they plainly won their deliverance from God, as a feast.

But Apion, the slanderer of everyone, has dared to accuse the Jews even over the war waged against Physcon, when he ought rather to have praised them. He also mentions the last Cleopatra, queen of the Alexandrians, as though reproaching us, because she was ungrateful toward us—and he did not think instead to condemn her, though no injustice or wicked deed was wanting in her, whether toward her own kin or toward the husbands who loved her, or in her common hostility against all the Romans and the emperors who had been her benefactors. She even killed her sister Arsinoe in the temple, though Arsinoe had done her no wrong; she murdered her brother by treachery; she plundered the gods of her fathers and the tombs of her ancestors. And after receiving her kingdom from the first Caesar, she dared to rebel against his son and successor, and by corrupting Antony with her seductions she made him an enemy of his own country and taught him to be faithless to his own friends, stripping some of their royal birthright and driving others out of their minds into wicked deeds. But what more needs to be said, when she abandoned that very man—her husband and the father of their common children—in the naval battle, forcing him to hand over his army and his command and to follow her instead? At the last, when Alexandria was taken by Caesar, she was driven to such a pitch that she judged her only hope of safety lay in killing the Jews with her own hand, since she had shown herself cruel and faithless toward everyone. Should we not be proud, then, if—as Apion says—in a time of famine the Jews had no share of the grain ration? She, at any rate, paid the penalty she deserved; we, however, have as witness to our comfort and our loyalty the greatest of Caesars himself, whom we served faithfully against the Egyptians, and likewise the Senate and its decrees, and the letters of Caesar Augustus, by which our merits are attested. Apion ought to have examined these documents and studied, class by class, the testimonies given under Alexander and under all the Ptolemies, and what was established by the Senate, and what came from the greatest of the Roman commanders.

If Germanicus was unable to distribute grain to everyone residing in Alexandria, this shows a shortage and scarcity of grain, not an accusation against the Jews. What all the emperors have thought of the Jews living in Alexandria is plain to see: the administration of the grain supply was handed over to them no less than to the other Alexandrians, and they have kept, from ancient times, the great trust granted them by the kings—namely, the guarding of the river and of the whole watch—since they were judged in no way unworthy of these responsibilities.

But beyond this, he says, how can they be citizens if they do not worship the same gods as the Alexandrians? To this I reply: how is it, then, that you Egyptians, though you are all Egyptians, fight one another in great and lawless battles over religion? Or do we not, for that very reason, call you all Egyptians and not simply human beings in common, since you worship animals that are hostile to our nature, nurturing them with great care, even though your own race is one and the same? And if such great differences of belief exist among you Egyptians yourselves, why be surprised that people who came to Alexandria from elsewhere have kept to the laws established for them from the beginning?

He also lays the causes of sedition at our door. Yet if he truly accuses the Jews settled in Alexandria on this basis, why does he blame all of us everywhere, when we are known to live in harmony wherever we are? Indeed, anyone will find that the instigators of sedition were citizens of Alexandria just like Apion. As long as the Greeks and Macedonians held this citizenship, they raised no sedition against us, but yielded to the ancient customs. But when the Egyptian population grew among them, on account of the disorders of the times, this trouble was added as well. Our own race, however, remained pure. It was the Egyptians themselves, then, who were the source of this trouble, since the population possessed neither Macedonian steadiness nor Greek good sense, but instead everyone gave way to the base habits of the Egyptians and carried on their ancient hostility toward us.

The truth, in fact, is the opposite of what they presume to reproach us with. Since most of them do not rightly hold the right of this citizenship, they call foreigners those who are known to have received this privilege from the very beginning. For no king ever seems to have granted any Egyptian the right of citizenship, nor does any emperor do so now; but us Alexander himself brought in, the kings increased our privileges, and the Romans have always seen fit to preserve them. So Apion has tried to disparage us on the ground that we do not set up statues of the emperors—as though they did not know this themselves, or needed Apion to defend them—when in fact he ought rather to have admired the greatness of soul and moderation of the Romans, since they do not force their subjects to transgress their ancestral laws, but accept the honors offered them as it is right and proper to give them; for they take no pleasure in honors extracted by compulsion and force. Among the Greeks and certain other peoples it is thought good to set up statues—indeed they take delight in painting the likenesses even of their parents, wives, and children; some even have statues made of people who mean nothing to them, and others do the same even for servants they are fond of. What wonder is it, then, if they are seen to offer this honor to rulers and masters as well? Our lawgiver, however—not because he foresaw that the power of Rome would not deserve honor, but because he judged the practice useless to both God and man—forbade the making of images, since he held it inferior even to that of any living thing, let alone to God, who has no body. He did not, however, forbid the honoring of good men by other means, after God; and by such honors we exalt both our emperors and the Roman people. We offer continual sacrifices on their behalf, and not only do we celebrate these daily at the common expense of all the Jews, but—since we offer no other sacrifices from the common fund, not even for our own children—we render this honor to the emperors alone, a distinction we grant to no other man. Let this, then, stand as our common answer to Apion concerning what has been said about Alexandria.

I am astonished, too, at those who supplied him with this kind of fuel—Posidonius and Apollonius Molon—since they accuse us of not worshiping the same gods as others, while at the same time inventing lies and composing absurd blasphemies about our temple, and do not think themselves guilty of impiety, though it is utterly shameful to lie about free people on any pretext, and far more so to lie about a temple renowned among all people for its great sanctity. In this very sanctuary, Apion has dared to declare, the Jews set up the head of a donkey and worshiped it and held it in the highest religious honor; and he claims this was discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes plundered the temple and found that head made of gold and worth a great sum of money.

To this I say, first, that even if an Egyptian had found any such thing among us, he would have had no right to reproach us for it, since a donkey is no worse than the cats and goats and other creatures that are gods among the Egyptians. Next, how did he fail to see that his own incredible lie is refuted by the facts themselves? For we have always used the same laws, in which we stand without change; and though various misfortunes have troubled our city, as they have others, and though Pompey the Great, and Sosius, and Licinius Crassus, and finally Titus Caesar, conquered it in war and took possession of the temple, none of them found anything of this kind there—only the purest piety, of which there is nothing we may reveal to outsiders. And as for Antiochus, he did not plunder the temple for any just cause, but was driven to it by lack of money; he was not our enemy, and he attacked us, his own allies and friends, without finding anything there deserving of mockery. Many worthy historians bear witness to this as well—Polybius of Megalopolis, Strabo of Cappadocia, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes, Castor the chronicler, and Apollodorus—all of whom say that Antiochus, in need of money, broke his treaty with the Jews and plundered the temple, which was full of gold and silver. Apion ought to have looked into these facts, unless he himself had the heart of a donkey and the shamelessness of the dog they are accustomed to worship; for he lied without even any external reasoning to support him. As for us, we give donkeys neither honor nor any special standing, as the Egyptians do to crocodiles and asps, counting those who are bitten by these creatures or seized by crocodiles as blessed and favored by God. Among us, donkeys are simply what they are among other sensible people: beasts that bear the burdens laid on them; and if they wander into the fields and eat, or fail to keep to the road set for them, they receive many blows, since they serve our agriculture and its necessary tasks.

But either Apion was the most foolish of all men at composing false tales, or else, having taken some starting point from the facts, he was unable to carry it through, since no blasphemy against us can succeed. He has added another story, full of slander against us, drawn from the Greeks—about which it is enough to say this: those who presume to speak of piety ought to know that it is a lesser impurity to pass through temples than for priests to fabricate wicked words. These men were more concerned to defend a sacrilegious king than to write what was just and true about our people and our temple. Wishing to please Antiochus and to conceal his faithlessness and sacrilege, which he committed against our nation out of his need for money, they lied about us in matters yet to be told as well. Apion made himself the prophet of these others and said that Antiochus found in the temple a couch, and a man lying on it, with a table set before him laden with delicacies of sea, land, and air, and that this man was struck with astonishment at the sight; that he at once fell in worship at the king's entrance as though it would bring him the greatest relief, and, falling at his knees with his right hand outstretched, begged for his freedom; and when the king bade him take courage and say who he was, and why he lived there, and what was the reason for his food, the man, with groans and tears, told his sorrowful plight, or so Apion says. He said that he was a Greek, and that while traveling through the province to earn his living he had suddenly been seized by foreigners and brought to the temple, and shut up there, seen by no one, but fattened with every kind of delicacy prepared for him. At first these unlooked-for kindnesses had seemed to bring him only unexpected pleasure, then suspicion, then bewilderment, and at last, on questioning the attendants who came to him, he heard of the unspeakable law of the Jews, for the sake of which he was being fattened, and that they did this every year at a fixed time. They would seize a Greek foreigner, he said, and fatten him for a year, then lead him out to a certain wood and kill him, sacrifice his body according to their rites, taste his entrails, and swear an oath over the immolation of the Greek to maintain enmity against the Greeks, and then throw the remains of the dying man into a certain pit. He goes on to say the man declared that only a few days of his term remained, and begged that, out of shame before the gods of the Greeks, and by overcoming the treachery of the Jews with his own blood, the king would free him from the evils surrounding him.

Such a tale is not only utterly steeped in melodrama but overflows with cruel shamelessness as well; yet it does not clear Antiochus of sacrilege, as those who wrote it to flatter him supposed—for he did not, in fact, approach the temple with any such expectation, but, as they themselves say, found what he had not hoped for. He was, then, wicked by his own will, impious, and altogether godless in the excess of falsehood he ordered told—something very easy to recognize from the facts themselves. For it is not only with the Greeks that a conflict of laws is known to exist, but above all with the Egyptians and many other peoples. Which of these has never at some time sojourned among us, that we should have renewed our conspiracy through bloodshed against them alone? Or how is it possible that all the Jews could gather for these sacrifices, and that so many thousands could find enough entrails to taste, as Apion claims? Or why was the man discovered never named—for Apion did not record his name—or why did the king not escort him back to his own country with honor, since by doing so he could have been thought pious and a great lover of the Greeks, and gained great support for himself against the hatred of the Jews? But I leave this aside; for it is fitting to refute the senseless not with words but with facts.

All who have seen the construction of our temple know what it was like, and how inviolable was the integrity of its purification. It had four courts running around it, and each of these had its own guard prescribed by law. Into the outer court it was permitted for everyone to enter, even foreigners; only women in their menstrual period were forbidden to pass through. Into the second court all Jews might enter, along with their wives, provided they were free of all impurity. Into the third, only Jewish men who were clean and purified might enter. Into the fourth, the priests clothed in their priestly robes; and into the innermost sanctuary, only the chief priests, wrapped in their own distinctive robe. So great is the care given to every point of piety that the priests are appointed to enter only at set hours: in the morning, when the temple is opened, those performing the appointed sacrifices must enter, and again at midday, until the temple is closed. Moreover, no vessel of any kind may be carried into the temple; the only things placed within it are the altar, the table, the censer, and the lampstand, all of which are prescribed in the law as well. Nothing further is done there—no unspeakable mysteries, no feasting takes place inside; for what has already been said has the testimony and open evidence of the whole people. Although there are four tribes of priests, and each of these tribes has more than five thousand men, the service is nonetheless carried out in rotation, on fixed days, and when these are past, others succeed them and come to perform the sacrifices, gathering in the temple at midday to receive from those who preceded them the keys of the temple and all the vessels according to a fixed count, with nothing pertaining to food or drink brought into the temple. Even such things are forbidden to be offered at the altar, except what is prepared for the sacrifices themselves. What, then, are we to call Apion but a man who, examining none of these things, poured out incredible words? But this is shameful; for history...

The grammarian never promised to present the true facts. Knowing full well the piety of our temple, he passed it over, and instead invented the story of the captured Greek and the unspeakable fodder, the most lavish delicacy of foods, and slaves entering where not even the noblest of the Jews may enter, unless they are priests. This, then, is the basest impiety and a deliberate lie meant to seduce those unwilling to examine the truth. Through these evil and unspeakable inventions they have tried to slander us.

Again, playing the pious mocker, he adds Mnaseas to his fable. He says that Mnaseas reported that once, during a long war of Jews against Jews in a certain city of the Jews called Dora, a man who worshiped Apollo there came to the Jews — a man he calls Zabidos — who promised to hand over to them Apollo, the god of the Dorians, and that the god would come to our temple if everyone withdrew. And the whole multitude of the Jews believed him. Zabidos then built a wooden contraption, put it around himself, fixed three rows of lamps on it, and walked about in it so that to those standing far off he appeared as though stars were making their course across the ground. The Jews, struck with astonishment at the extraordinary sight, kept their distance and stayed quiet, while Zabidos, in complete calm, went into the sanctuary and tore off the golden head of the donkey — for that is how he wittily put it in his writing — and then hurried back to Dora.

Are we not entitled, then, to say the same of Apion — that he is loading a donkey, namely himself, and stuffing it full of both foolish talk and lies? He writes of places that do not exist and relocates cities he knows nothing about. Idumea borders our country near Gaza, and Dora is no city of Idumea at all; there is, however, a city called Dora in Phoenicia, by Mount Carmel, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Apion's nonsense — it lies four days' journey from Judea.

And what further does he accuse us of, in saying that we do not share the gods of others, if our own ancestors were supposedly so easily persuaded that Apollo would come to them, and imagined they saw him walking on the earth among the stars? Surely those who perform so many great lamp-lightings had never before seen a lamp! And not one of so many tens of thousands of people happened to meet him as he walked through the country — instead he found the walls empty of guards, even though war was underway. I pass over the rest. The doors of the temple were sixty cubits high and twenty wide, entirely gilded and all but wrought of solid gold; no fewer than two hundred men closed them each day, and it was forbidden to leave them open.

So this lamp-bearer supposed he could easily open them, holding, as he imagined, the donkey's head. Did he, then, bring it back to us again, or did he take it away and carry it off, so that Antiochus might have it ready for a second myth from Apion? He has also invented a lie about an oath of ours, claiming that we swear by the God who made heaven and earth and sea to show goodwill to no foreigner, and above all to no Greek. If he was going to lie, he ought at least to have said, once and for all, "to no foreigner, and above all to no Egyptian" — for that would have matched his original fabrications, if indeed our ancestors were driven out by their Egyptian kinsmen not for wickedness but because of misfortunes. As for the Greeks, we are separated from them more by geography than by way of life, so that we have no hostility or rivalry toward them. On the contrary, many of them have chosen to come over to our laws, and some have remained faithful to them, while others, unable to endure the discipline, have fallen away again. And not one of these has ever claimed to have heard this oath sworn among us — only Apion, it seems, has heard it, since he composed it himself.

One must marvel, too, at the sheer cleverness of Apion in what he is about to say. He claims it is proof that we neither follow just laws nor worship God as we should, but instead serve one nation after another, and that our city has met with certain misfortunes — as though it were not perfectly obvious that these men themselves belong to a city, the most imperial of all, the Romans, who from ancient times have been accustomed to rule rather than to serve! And yet one might well excuse anyone else this kind of arrogance. For there is no other people who could not fairly turn this very charge back against Apion himself: few nations have ever had the fortune to hold power at the right moment, and even these have in turn been yoked into servitude to others by the reversals of fortune, while the greater part of mankind has repeatedly obeyed others.

The Egyptians alone, it seems, because their gods — so they say — fled to their country and were saved by changing into the shapes of beasts, won the extraordinary privilege of never serving any of those who ruled Asia or Europe — they who in the whole of time have never enjoyed a single day of freedom, not even from their own masters! As for how the Persians treated them — not once but many times, sacking their cities, tearing down their temples, slaughtering the very animals they reckon as gods — I would not hold that against the Persians, for it is not fitting to imitate Apion's boorishness, who gave no thought to the misfortunes of Athens or of Sparta, whom everyone calls the bravest and most pious of the Greeks. I pass over the kings famed for piety — Croesus among them — and the calamities of life they suffered. I pass over the burning of the Athenian acropolis, the temple at Ephesus, the one at Delphi, and countless others — and no one has ever blamed these disasters on those who suffered them, but on those who committed them. Yet Apion has turned up as a novel accuser of us, forgetting his own people's troubles in Egypt: Sesostris, the legendary king of Egypt, blinded his own people! We, for our part, would never say of our own kings, David and Solomon, that they subdued many nations by force — but let us leave that aside. What is well known to everyone, Apion has simply ignored: that under the rule of the Persians, and after them the Macedonians, over Asia, the Egyptians were enslaved, no better than mere chattel, while we, being free, even ruled the surrounding cities for close on a hundred and twenty years, down to the time of Pompey the Great; and when every king everywhere was being warred upon by the Romans, our people alone were preserved as allies and friends, on account of their loyalty.

"But," he says, "we have produced no admirable men — no discoverers of arts, no one distinguished for wisdom." And he lists Socrates and Zeno and Cleanthes and men of that sort. Then, most astonishing of all in his list, he adds himself, and calls Alexandria blessed for having such a citizen! He needed himself, evidently, as his own witness — since to everyone else he appeared a wicked demagogue, corrupt in both life and speech, so that one might well pity Alexandria if it truly took pride in this man. As for the men who have arisen among our own people, those who study our Antiquities know that they deserve no less praise than anyone's.

The rest of what is written in the accusation might perhaps have been fitting to pass over as needing no defense, so that Apion could stand convicted by his own words, and by those of the other Egyptians as well. For he charges that we sacrifice animals and do not eat pork, and he mocks the circumcision of the genitals. Now the killing of tame animals is common to all other peoples as well, and Apion, in condemning those who sacrifice, has only proven himself Egyptian by race — for no Greek or Macedonian would have taken offense at this, since these peoples pray to sacrifice whole hecatombs to their gods and use the victims for feasting, and the world has not thereby been emptied of livestock, as Apion feared. And yet, if all peoples followed the customs of the Egyptians, the world would indeed be emptied of men, while it would be overrun with the most savage beasts, which these people, reckoning them gods, carefully rear.

Indeed, if one asked him which of all the Egyptians he considers the wisest and most god-fearing, he would surely admit it is the priests. For these, it is said, were charged by the kings from the very beginning with two duties: the service of the gods and the care of wisdom. And all of them are circumcised and abstain from pork, though not a single one of the other Egyptians ever sacrifices a pig to the gods. Was Apion, then, blind in his understanding, agreeing to abuse us on behalf of the Egyptians while accusing precisely those who not only practice the very customs he reviles, but even taught others to be circumcised, as Herodotus has recorded? For this reason it seems to me altogether fitting that Apion paid the penalty due for his blasphemy against his own ancestral laws: he was circumcised out of sheer necessity, from an ulcer that formed on his genitals, and having gained no benefit from the circumcision, he rotted away and died in terrible agony. Those of sound mind ought to abide strictly by their own laws concerning piety and not revile the laws of others — but he fled from his own laws and lied about ours. Such was the end of Apion's life, and let this also be the end of what we have to say about him here.

Since Apollonius Molon, and Lysimachus, and certain others as well, partly out of ignorance but mostly out of malice, have made speeches neither just nor true about both Moses, our lawgiver, and about our laws — slandering him as a charlatan and an impostor, and claiming that our laws teach us nothing but wickedness and no virtue at all — I wish to speak briefly, as best I am able, about the whole structure of our constitution and its particulars. For I believe it will become clear that we possess laws laid down in the best possible way with a view to piety, to fellowship with one another, to benevolence toward all mankind, and further to justice, to endurance under hardship, and to contempt of death. I ask those who take up this treatise not to read it in a spirit of envy, for I have not chosen to write a eulogy of ourselves, but I regard this defense, drawn from the very laws by which we continue to live, as the most just answer to the many false accusations made against us. Besides, Apollonius did not organize his accusations all together as Apion did, but scattered them here and there: at one point he reviles us as atheists and haters of mankind, at another he reproaches us for cowardice, and at yet another, conversely, he accuses us of recklessness and audacity. He says, too, that we are the most talentless of all barbarians, and that this is why we alone have contributed no discovery to human life. I believe all of this will be clearly refuted once it is shown that the opposite of what has been said is both prescribed for us by our laws and practiced by us with the utmost precision. But if I am forced to mention practices established among others that run contrary to our own, the blame for that rightly falls on those who insist on comparing our practices unfavorably with theirs — and I do not think they will be able to say either that we lack these laws, of which I shall set out the most essential, or that we fail, more than any other people, to abide by our own laws.

Taking up the argument again, then, from a little further back, I would say this first: that among peoples who live without law and without order, those who first desired a shared life of order and law, and were the first to establish it, would reasonably be recognized as excelling in gentleness and natural virtue. Indeed, every people tries to trace its own institutions back to the most ancient possible time, so as not to appear to be imitating others, but rather to have themselves guided others toward a lawful way of life. Given that this is how things stand, it is the mark of a good lawgiver to discern what is best and to persuade those who will use it to accept what he has established, while it is the mark of a good people to abide steadfastly by all that has been decided, and to change nothing on account of either good fortune or misfortune.

I therefore declare that our lawgiver surpasses in antiquity all lawgivers anywhere on record. The Lycurguses, the Solons, Zaleucus of the Locrians, and all those admired among the Greeks appear, by comparison with him, to have come into being only yesterday or the day before — since not even the word "law" itself was known among the Greeks in ancient times. Homer himself is witness to this, never once using the word anywhere in his poetry; indeed it did not yet exist in his day, and the people were governed instead by unformed opinions and by the commands of kings, and continued for a long time afterward to follow unwritten customs, constantly altering many of them to suit circumstance. But our lawgiver, who lived in the most ancient times — a point conceded even by those who say everything they can against us — proved himself the best leader and counselor to his people, and, having comprised the entire structure of their life within the law, persuaded them to accept it and ensured that it would be preserved most securely forever.

Let us look, then, at the first great achievement of his works. When our ancestors resolved to leave Egypt and return to their ancestral land, he took charge of many tens of thousands of them and brought them to safety through countless hardships and seemingly impossible dangers: they had to make their way through a vast, waterless expanse of sand, to defeat their enemies, and to protect their children, their wives, and their possessions while fighting. Through all of this he proved himself the best of generals, the wisest of counselors, and the truest guardian of all. He made the entire multitude depend on himself, and having secured their obedience in everything, he took from it no personal advantage of his own — even though this is precisely the moment when those in power seize armies and tyrannies for themselves, and accustom their peoples to live amid great lawlessness. Instead, holding such power, he judged it right to do the very opposite: to act piously and to show great goodwill toward his people, believing that in this way he would best display his own virtue and provide the surest safety for those who had made him their leader. Since his purpose was noble and his great achievements were being realized, he reasonably came to believe that he had God as his leader and counselor, and having first persuaded himself that everything he did and thought was in accordance with God's will, he considered that this conviction should come before everything else

...to instill this conviction in the multitudes: for those who are persuaded that god oversees their own lives will not tolerate committing any wrong at all. Such, then, was our lawgiver, no charlatan or deceiver, as those who slander him say unjustly, but of the sort the Greeks boast Minos was, and after him the other lawgivers. For while the rest merely propose their laws, Minos claimed that he referred the oracles of his laws to Apollo and his Delphic shrine, either because they believed this was really so, or because they supposed it would be easier to win persuasion that way. But who it was who most succeeded in establishing laws and hit upon the truest conviction about god can be discerned by comparing the laws themselves side by side; for that is now the point to discuss.

Now the differences in customs and laws in detail among all peoples are innumerable, but one may survey them under general heads: some entrusted authority over their government to monarchies, others to the rule of the few, others to the multitude. Our lawgiver, however, looked to none of these, but established what one might call, forcing the term a little, a theocracy, placing the beginning and the mastery of government in god's hands. And he persuaded everyone to look to him as the cause of all the good things shared in common by all people, and of whatever they themselves obtained by prayer in moments of helplessness; and he taught that nothing escapes his notice, neither anything done nor anything anyone might even contemplate within himself. He declared him to be one, uncreated, and unchanging through all eternity, superior in beauty to every mortal form, knowable to us in his power, though unknowable as to what he is in his essence. That the wisest of the Greeks were taught to think this way about god, through his leading the way, I forgo saying for now, but that these views are noble and fitting to the nature and majesty of god, they themselves have borne ample witness.

For Pythagoras and Anaxagoras and Plato, and the philosophers of the Stoa who came after him, and nearly all the rest, evidently held such views about the nature of god. But whereas they philosophized before the few, not daring to bring the truth of the doctrine before multitudes already possessed by other opinions, our lawgiver, since his deeds matched his words, not only persuaded his own contemporaries but instilled in all who would ever descend from them an unshakeable conviction about god. The reason is that he far surpassed everyone, always, in the usefulness of his manner of legislating: he did not make piety a part of virtue, but made the rest of virtue — I mean justice, self-control, endurance, and the harmony of citizens with one another in everything — parts of piety. For all our actions and pursuits and every word bear upon our piety toward god; he left none of these unexamined or undefined.

There are two ways, in general, of instruction and of shaping character: one is by word, through teaching; the other through the practice of habits. Now the other lawgivers differed in their judgments, and each, choosing whichever of the two seemed best to him, left the other aside — the Lacedaemonians and the Cretans, for instance, educated by habits, not by words, while the Athenians and nearly all the other Greeks prescribed by their laws what must or must not be done, but neglected to accustom people to it through actual practice. Our lawgiver, by contrast, joined both together with great care: he did not leave the practice of character mute, nor did he let the teaching that comes from the law go without effect, but beginning from the very first nourishment and the way of life within each household, he left nothing, not even the smallest matter, to the free choice and will of those who would use it.

Even concerning food — what one must abstain from and what one may eat — and concerning those who would share one's table, and the intensity of labor and, conversely, of rest, he himself set a boundary and standard: the law — so that living under it as under a father and master, we might do no wrong, whether willingly or through ignorance. For he did not even leave ignorance as an excuse, but declared the law itself to be the finest and most necessary education, not something to be heard once, or twice, or many times, but he ordered that every week, setting other work aside, people gather to hear the law and learn it thoroughly and accurately — something which, it seems, all other lawgivers have neglected. Indeed, most people are so far from living according to their own laws that they scarcely even know them, and only when they have done wrong do they learn from others that they have transgressed the law; and even those administering the greatest and most sovereign offices among them admit their own ignorance, since they appoint as overseers of the management of affairs men who profess expertise in the laws. Among us, however, ask anyone whatever you like about the laws, and he could tell them all more easily than his own name.

And so, from the very first moment of awareness, learning the laws thoroughly, we hold them, as it were, engraved on our souls; and the transgressor is rare, and there is no possibility of escaping punishment. This above all has produced among us that wondrous concord: for to hold one and the same opinion about god, and to differ in nothing from one another in way of life and habits, produces the finest harmony in human character. For among us alone will one hear no contradictory statements about god, of the kind that are common among others — spoken not only by ordinary people, moved by whatever feeling strikes each of them, but even ventured by some of the philosophers, some of whom have undertaken by their arguments to do away with god's nature altogether, while others strip him of his providence over mankind. Nor will one see any difference among us in the practices of daily life; rather, our deeds are common to all, and there is one single account, agreeing with the law, that god watches over all things. And indeed, that all other pursuits of life must have piety as their end — even the women and household servants among us would tell you that.

Hence, indeed, arises the charge some bring against us, that we have produced no men who are inventors of new deeds or words: others consider it a fine thing to abide by none of their ancestral customs, and give the highest testimony to the cleverness of those who dare to transgress them, whereas we, on the contrary, have supposed that wisdom and virtue consist in this alone — never doing or even thinking anything at all contrary to what was legislated from the beginning. This would reasonably be evidence that the law was laid down in the finest possible way; for practical trial exposes as needing correction whatever does not have this character. But for us, who are persuaded that the law was laid down from the beginning according to the will of god, it would not even be pious not to keep it. For what could anyone alter in it, or what better thing could he discover, or bring in from elsewhere as an improvement? Would it be the whole structure of the constitution?

And what could be nobler or more just than a constitution that has made god the leader of the universe, that entrusts to the priests in common the management of the greatest matters, and that has in turn entrusted to the high priest of all the leadership over the other priests? These the lawgiver from the very outset appointed to this honor not on the basis of wealth or any other advantages that come by chance, but whoever among those with him excelled the rest in powers of persuasion and self-control — to these he committed above all the service of god. This too was part of the exacting care he took over the law and the other practices; for the priests were appointed overseers of everything, judges in disputed matters, and punishers of the condemned. What office, then, could be more sacred than this one? What honor more fitting to god, when the whole multitude is prepared for piety, and the exceptional care of the priests is entrusted to them, and the whole constitution is administered as if it were some kind of sacred rite? For the things that others, observing only a handful of days each year, are unable to keep, though they call them mysteries and rites, these we keep with pleasure and unshakable resolve throughout all time.

What, then, are the prescriptions and prohibitions? They are simple and well known. First and foremost stands the one concerning god, declaring that god possesses all things, complete and blessed, self-sufficient to himself and to all, the beginning and middle and end of all things — manifest in his works and acts of grace, more evident than anything else whatsoever, yet his form and magnitude beyond our power to describe. No material, however costly, is fit for an image of him; every art is without skill to conceive an imitation. We have seen nothing like him, nor do we conceive of anything like him, nor is it holy even to guess. We see his works: light, sky, earth, sun, waters, the birth of living creatures, the springing forth of crops. These god made, not with hands, not with labors, not because he needed anyone to work with him, but simply because he willed it, and at once, beautifully, they came into being.

This god must be served by the practice of virtue; for this is the most sacred manner of god's service. One temple for the one god — for like is always dear to like — common to all, as befits the common god of all. Him the priests will serve continually, and the first among them, always by descent, will lead them. This man, together with his fellow priests, will sacrifice to god, will guard the laws, will judge disputed matters, and will punish those convicted. Whoever disobeys him will pay the penalty as one impious toward god himself.

We offer sacrifices not for our own drunken revelry — for this is unwanted by god — but for sobriety. And at the sacrifices one must first pray for the common welfare, and then for oneself; for we have come into being for fellowship, and whoever prefers this to his own private good is most pleasing to god. Our petition to god should not be that he give us good things — for he has given them of his own will, freely, and set them out in the open for all — but that we may be able to receive them, and, having received them, keep them. The law has prescribed purifications for sacrifices, after a funeral, after childbirth, after intercourse with a woman, and many others, which it would take long to write. Such, then, is our account of god and of his service — and it is, at the same time, the law itself.

What, then, are our laws concerning marriage? The law recognizes only intercourse that is according to nature, with a woman, and this only if it is meant to result in children. Intercourse of males with males it has abhorred, and death is the penalty if anyone should attempt it. It commands that a man marry not with an eye to a dowry, nor by violent seizure, nor again by persuading through trickery and deceit, but that he seek her hand from the one entitled to give her, being of suitable kinship. "Woman is inferior to man," it says, "in every respect." Therefore let her be obedient, not for the sake of degradation, but so that she may be ruled; for god has given mastery to the man. With her alone must the man who has married her live; to make an attempt on another man's wife is impious. And if anyone should do this, there is no escaping the death penalty — neither if he forces a virgin already betrothed to another, nor if he seduces a married woman.

It commanded that all children be reared, and forbade women either to abort or to destroy what has been conceived; a woman who does so would be a child-killer, for destroying a life and diminishing the race. And so, if anyone should even approach a woman after a miscarriage, he cannot count as clean at that time. And after lawful intercourse between man and wife, a washing is required; for the law supposed that the soul, in this act, undergoes a kind of separation into another region — since indeed, entering into bodies, it suffers, and again suffers when separated from them by death. For this reason it prescribed purifications in all such cases. Nor, indeed, did it permit at the births of children the holding of banquets and occasions for drunkenness, but ordained self-control from the very start of a child's upbringing. And it commanded that children be taught letters, both concerning the laws and concerning the deeds of their ancestors, so that they might imitate the latter, and, being reared together with the former, might neither transgress nor have any excuse of ignorance.

It took thought for the reverence due the dead, not through costly funerals or the building of conspicuous monuments, but by having the closest relatives perform the funeral rites, while all who pass by should approach and join in the mourning. It also requires that the house and its inhabitants be purified after a death, so that anyone who has caused a death may be as far as possible from seeming to be clean. It ranked honor for parents second only to honor for god, and hands over to be stoned the one who does not repay their kindnesses but falls short toward them in any way. And it says that the young must hold every older person in honor, since god is the oldest of all.

It allows nothing to be concealed from friends, for it holds that there is no friendship that does not trust in everything; and even if some enmity should arise, it has forbidden the disclosure of secrets. If a judge takes bribes, the penalty is death. To disregard a suppliant when one is able to help him makes one liable to punishment. Whatever a man has not deposited he may not take up; he shall lay hands on nothing belonging to others; he shall take no interest. These and many things like them hold together our fellowship with one another.

How the lawgiver also took thought for fairness toward foreigners is worth seeing, for he will be found to have provided for this better than anyone, so that we might neither corrupt what is our own nor begrudge those who wish to share in what is ours. All who wish to live under the same laws as we do he receives gladly when they come over to us, holding that kinship lies not in descent alone, but also in one's chosen way of life. But those who come merely in passing he was unwilling to admit into close association with us. He has prescribed besides all the other things whose sharing is a necessity: to provide fire, water, and food to all who need them, to point out the way, not to leave a corpse unburied, and to be fair even toward those judged to be enemies.

For he does not permit the burning of their land or the cutting down of fruit-bearing trees, and he has forbidden the stripping of those who have fallen in battle, and he has taken thought for captives, that they be spared outrage, especially the women. So thoroughly has he trained us in gentleness and humanity that he does not even allow disregard for irrational animals, but permitted only their lawful use, and forbade...

He forbade every other kind of hunting; but creatures that flee to houses as suppliants he forbade anyone to destroy. He did not even allow the young to be taken along with their parents, but ordered that even in enemy territory the animals used for labor should be spared and not killed. In this way he took thought from every side for gentleness, using the laws already mentioned to instruct, but appointing others, directed against transgressors, to punish without excuse. For most transgressions the penalty is death: if a man commits adultery, if he rapes a girl, if he dares to force himself on a male, or if the one so assaulted submits to it. The law is equally without mercy in the case of slaves.

But also if anyone commits fraud in weights or measures, or in an unjust and deceitful sale, or steals another's property, or takes up what he did not deposit, for all these offenses there are penalties, not such as prevail elsewhere, but harsher. As for wrongs against parents or impiety toward God, even if a man merely intends them, he is put to death at once. But for those who live by the laws, the prize is neither silver nor gold, nor a crown of wild olive or of parsley, nor any such public proclamation, but each man, with his own conscience bearing witness, has come to believe it—the lawgiver having prophesied it, and God having furnished sure confirmation of the belief, that to those who keep the laws, even if they must die for them, God has granted to come to be again and to receive a better life in the turning of the ages. I would hesitate to write this, were it not made plain to everyone by deeds, that many of our people, often, and in whole bodies,

have chosen to endure everything nobly rather than utter a single word against the law. [And even if nothing of this sort had happened to make our people known to all mankind, and to lay open to view our willing obedience to the laws,] still, someone either wrote an account which the Greeks used to read, or claimed to have encountered, somewhere beyond the known world, men holding such lofty opinions about God, and abiding steadfastly by such laws for so long an age—everyone, I think, would be full of wonder, given the constant changes of fortune elsewhere. Indeed, of those who have attempted to write anything comparable about a constitution and laws, as though they had composed something marvelous, others accuse them of having taken on impossible subjects. And I pass over the other philosophers who worked at anything of this kind in their writings,

but Plato, admired among the Greeks as one who surpassed in dignity of life, in power of speech, and in persuasiveness everyone who had ever engaged in philosophy, is all but continually mocked and ridiculed by those who claim to be skilled in political affairs. And yet, if one examines his work closely, one would find it far easier and much closer to the ordinary habits of most people; indeed Plato himself admitted that it was not safe to publish the true opinion about God to the folly of the masses. But some consider Plato's arguments empty words, elaborately composed with great license, whereas among the lawgivers they have admired Lycurgus most of all, and everyone sings the praises of Sparta, because the Spartans persevered in his laws for so very long a time. Let this much, then, be granted: that obedience to the laws is proof of virtue.

But let those who admire the Lacedaemonians set their span of time beside the more than two thousand years of our own constitution, and let them further reckon that the Lacedaemonians, for as long as they held their freedom on their own account, seemed to keep the laws with precision; but once changes of fortune came upon them, they all but forgot the laws entirely. We, however, though we have passed through countless vicissitudes because of the changes among the rulers of Asia, have not betrayed our laws even in the direst straits—and not for the sake of idleness or luxury did we cherish them, but, if one is willing to consider it, far greater contests and labors have been set upon us than the endurance that is thought to have been imposed on the Lacedaemonians. * They, at any rate, neither working the land nor toiling at crafts, but exempt from all labor, sleek and training their bodies for beauty, passed their time in the city, using other men as servants for all the needs of life and receiving their food ready-made from them—enduring to do and suffer everything honorable and humane for this one fine purpose alone, to prevail over all against whom they might make war. Yet that not even this they achieved, I forbear to say; for not once only, but many times, and in whole bodies, they neglected the commands of the law and surrendered themselves, arms and all, to the enemy. Has anyone, then, ever known among us—I do not say so many, but even two or three—who betrayed the laws, or feared death? I do not mean that easiest death which comes to men in battle, but the death that comes with the mutilation of the body, which seems of all deaths the harshest. Indeed, I think that some who have conquered us inflict it upon their captives not out of hatred, but because they want to see a marvelous spectacle: whether there really exist men who believe that the only evil for them is being forced to act, or to say a word, against their own laws. And one should not be surprised that we are braver in facing death for our laws than everyone else; for even the easiest of our practices others do not readily endure—I mean working with our own hands, frugality in food, never eating or drinking at random or as each man's appetite happens to prompt, never indulging in casual intercourse or extravagance, and again submitting to a fixed, unshakable order even in leisure.

But those who close with the sword and rout the enemy at the first charge have not been able to look steadily at our rules concerning diet. We, on the other hand, precisely from our willing obedience to the law in these matters, are able to display our nobility there as well. Then men like Lysimachus and Molon and other such writers—discredited sophists, deceivers of the young—revile us as the basest of all men. For my part, I would not wish to examine the customs of others; for it is our ancestral practice to guard our own, not to accuse those of other peoples. As for mocking or blaspheming the gods recognized by others, our lawgiver has expressly forbidden this to us, out of respect for the very word 'God.' But since our accusers think to refute us by comparison, it is not possible to remain silent, especially since the case

is about to be judged not by us as its present composers, but by many others who have already made it, and with great acclaim. For which of those admired among the Greeks for wisdom has not censured both the most illustrious poets and the most trusted lawgivers, because from the beginning they sowed such opinions about the gods among the masses—declaring them to be as numerous as they themselves wished, born from one another and coming to be by every kind of generation, and dividing them, moreover, by places and modes of living, just as the species of animals are divided: some beneath the earth, some in the sea, and the oldest of them chained in Tartarus—* while to those to whom they assigned heaven they set over them one who was a father in name but in deed a tyrant and a master, and because of this a conspiracy formed against him by his wife, his brother, and his daughter, whom he had begotten out of his own head, so that they might seize and imprison him, just as he himself had done to his own father. Men of superior judgment rightly find these tales worthy of much censure, and besides this they mock the idea that among the gods some must be beardless boys and others bearded elders, and that others are assigned to particular crafts—one at the forge, another weaving, another making war and fighting among men, others playing the lyre or delighting in archery—and then that quarrels and rivalries over human beings arise among them, to the point not only of raising hands against one another, but of being wounded by men and crying out in pain.

And, most shameless of all: how is it not absurd to attach to almost all of them—male and female gods alike—unrestrained lust in their unions and love affairs? Then the noblest of them, the father himself first of all, looks on while the women he has seduced and made pregnant are imprisoned or drowned, unable even to save his own offspring, mastered as he is by fate, nor can he endure their deaths without tears. Fine tales indeed, these, and the ones that follow them—adultery seen so shamelessly in heaven among the gods that some even confess to envying those caught in it! For what else could be expected, when not even the eldest of them, their king, was able to restrain his impulse for union with his wife long enough even to reach their bedchamber? And then there are the gods who serve mankind—now building for hire, now herding flocks, others bound like criminals in a bronze dungeon—what sensible person would these not provoke to rebuke those who invented such tales and to condemn as great folly those who accepted them? And others still have fashioned Dread and Fear, and even Madness and Deceit—indeed, what one of the worst passions have they not molded into the nature and form of God? And they have persuaded cities to sacrifice even to these, the more decently named among them. And so they find themselves under great necessity to regard some of the gods as givers of good things and to call others averters of evil, and then to buy these off with gifts and favors, just as they would the wickedest of men, expecting to suffer some great harm from them if they fail to pay the fee.

What, then, is the cause of such great inconsistency and offense in matters divine? I myself suppose it is that their lawgivers, from the beginning, neither grasped the true nature of God, nor, so far as they were able to attain any accurate knowledge of it, made this the basis for the rest of the ordering of the constitution, but left it, like any other trivial matter, to the poets to bring in whatever gods they pleased, suffering all things, and to the orators to enroll by decree of the people any foreign god that suited them; and painters and sculptors too enjoyed great license among the Greeks in this regard, each inventing some form of his own—one molding it from clay, another painting it—while those craftsmen most admired of all have ivory and gold at their disposal as material for their ever-fresh inventions. [And some of the temples lie utterly deserted, while others are elaborately adorned with purifications of every kind.] Then the gods who once flourished in honor have grown old; [and those next below them in rank have been demoted to second place—for that is the more decent way to put it]—while new ones, once introduced, receive their own cults, [as, in the digression from what we said before, we leave aside the places that have been left deserted,] and some of the temples lie desolate while others are newly founded, each man establishing one according to his own private wish, when in fact they ought, on the contrary, to keep their belief about God and the honor due to him unchanging.

Apollonius Molon, then, was one of the foolish and deluded; but those who truly philosophized among the Greeks were blind to none of what has been said, nor were they ignorant of the frigid pretexts of the allegories, and for that reason they rightly despised them, and came to agree with us on the true and fitting opinion about God. Starting from this, Plato says that none of the other poets should be admitted into his republic, and even Homer he dismisses with courtesy, crowning him and pouring myrrh over him, so that the right opinion about God should not be obscured by his myths. And Plato imitated our lawgiver most of all in this: that he prescribed no instruction for his citizens so important as that all should learn the laws exactly, and moreover, in the matter of not allowing outsiders to mingle in at random, he took care that the body of citizens should remain pure, made up only of those who abide by the laws. Of none of this did Molon Apollonius take account when he accused us of not admitting those who hold other preconceived opinions about God, and of being unwilling to associate with those who choose to live by a different way of life. But this too is not peculiar to us; it is common to everyone, not only to the Greeks, but also to those held in the

highest repute among the Greeks: the Lacedaemonians regularly practiced the expulsion of foreigners and did not permit their own citizens to travel abroad, suspecting corruption of their laws from both directions. One might perhaps reasonably reproach them for harshness, since they shared neither their citizenship nor their way of life with anyone; we, however, while we do not think it right to imitate the ways of others, gladly welcome those who wish to share in our own. This, I think, would be evidence at once of humanity and of magnanimity. I will say no more about the Lacedaemonians. But how did the Athenians, who thought their city common to all, stand on these matters? Of this Apollonius was ignorant: that they punished without mercy even those who merely uttered a word against their laws concerning the gods. For what other reason did Socrates die? He certainly did not betray the city to its enemies, nor did he plunder any of the temples; but because he swore new oaths and claimed that some divine sign spoke to him—or, as some say, in jest—for this he was condemned to drink hemlock and die. His accuser also charged him with corrupting the young, in that he led them to despise their ancestral constitution and its laws. Thus Socrates, a citizen of Athens, endured such a punishment. Anaxagoras was a Clazomenian; but because, when the Athenians held the sun to be a god, he said it was a fiery molten mass, they condemned him to death by a narrow margin of votes. And on Diagoras of Melos they set a price of one talent for anyone who should kill him, because he was said to mock the mysteries observed among them. And Protagoras, had he not fled in time, would have been seized and put to death for having, as they thought, written something inconsistent with what the Athenians believed about the gods. And why should one wonder that they treated men of such standing this way, when they did not even spare women? For they put to death a priestess, once someone accused her of initiating people into the worship of foreign gods—a thing forbidden by their law, which fixed a punishment against those who introduced a foreign god.

death is the penalty. Men who enforce such a law obviously did not think that other peoples' gods were gods at all - otherwise they would not have begrudged themselves the benefit of a larger pantheon. So much, then, for the Athenians. The Scythians, who delight in the murder of human beings and differ little from wild animals, nevertheless think they must guard their own customs jealously, and they killed Anacharsis, a man admired by the Greeks for his wisdom, when he returned to them, because he seemed to come back saturated with Greek habits.

One could find many put to death among the Persians for the very same reason. But apparently Apollonius delighted in the laws of the Persians and admired them, because the Greeks profited from Persian courage and from the unanimity the Persians held concerning the gods - profited from that unanimity, at least, by burning down their temples, and very nearly became slaves in return for their courage. Yet he became an imitator of every Persian practice, violating other men's wives and castrating boys. Among us, death is fixed as the penalty even if a man wrongs an irrational animal in that way. Neither fear of our conquerors nor rivalry with the practices honored among other nations has ever had the strength to draw us away from these laws of ours.

Nor have we cultivated courage for the sake of waging wars for the sake of greed, but for the sake of preserving our laws. Other losses we endure mildly, but whenever anyone forces us to move our institutions, then we choose war even beyond our strength, and hold out under disaster to the very last extremity. Why, indeed, should we envy the laws of others when we see that they are not kept even by the very people who established them? How could the Spartans not condemn their own exclusive constitution and their carelessness about marriage? How could the Eleans and Thebans not condemn their union with males, against nature and without any restraint?

Practices they once supposed most admirable and most advantageous, they have not entirely abandoned in deed, yet they no longer admit to them - rather, they swear off the very laws concerning them, laws that once held such power among the Greeks that they even attributed unions between males to the gods, and by the same reasoning marriages between full brothers and sisters, composing this as their defense of unnatural and monstrous pleasures.

I set aside for now speaking of the punishments - how many releases most lawgivers from the beginning granted the wicked, legislating fines of money for adultery and marriage for seduction - and how many pretexts of denial are allowed regarding impiety, should anyone attempt to examine them; for among most peoples it has already become a practiced skill to transgress the laws. Not so among us: even if we are deprived of wealth, of cities, and of every other good thing, our law at least remains immortal for us,

and no Jew, however far he might go from his homeland, and however much he might fear a harsh master, will fail to fear the law even before he fears that master. If, then, it is because of the excellence of our laws that we are so disposed toward them, let our critics concede that we have the very best laws. But if they suppose that we cling so persistently to base laws, what would they themselves justly deserve, they who do not keep the better ones?

Since long time is trusted as the truest judge of all things, I would make this my witness to the excellence of our lawgiver and to the account of God that he handed down; for an immense span of time has passed, and if one should compare him to the ages of other lawgivers, one would find him to surpass them all. Indeed, our laws have been proven sound by us, and they have produced in all other men, always and increasingly, a zeal that outstrips their own.

The first to do so were those among the Greeks who practiced philosophy: while seeming outwardly to preserve their ancestral ways, in their actual conduct and in their philosophizing they followed him, holding similar views about God and teaching frugality of life and fellowship with one another. Nor is this all - a great zeal for our piety has already spread for a long time even among the masses,

and there is no city of the Greeks, none whatsoever, nor any nation of barbarians, where the custom of the seventh day, on which we rest, has not spread, and where our fasts and the kindling of lamps and many of our food restrictions are not observed. They also try to imitate our harmony with one another, our distribution of goods, our diligence in crafts, and our endurance under the compulsions imposed for the sake of our laws.

For the most remarkable thing is this: our law has prevailed by itself, apart from any inducement of pleasure to draw men in, and just as God pervades the whole universe, so our law has made its way through all mankind. Let each man examine his own homeland and his own household, and he will not disbelieve what I have said.

One must therefore condemn deliberate wickedness in all mankind, if they have set their desire on emulating what is foreign and base rather than what is their own and good - or else they must stop slandering us out of envy. For we are not laying claim to anything that should provoke envy when we honor our own lawgiver and put our trust in what he prophesied concerning God;

even if we ourselves did not understand the excellence of our laws, we would still be led to think highly of them by the sheer number of those who emulate them. Concerning our laws and our constitution, I have given a precise account in my work on Antiquities. Just now I have mentioned them only so far as was necessary, with no intention either of disparaging the institutions of others or of praising our own,

but only so as to refute those who have written unjustly about us, men who have shamelessly quarreled with the plain truth itself. And now I think I have adequately fulfilled, through this account, what I promised at the outset: I have shown that our people is older in antiquity than our accusers claimed, who said it was very recent, and I have produced many ancient authors in their own writings who make mention of us,

when our accusers insisted that not a single one exists. They also said our ancestors were Egyptians - yet it has been shown that they came into Egypt from elsewhere. They falsely claimed our ancestors were expelled because of bodily disease - yet it has been shown that they returned to their own land by choice and through abundance of strength. Some have reviled our lawgiver as the most worthless of men; but God, long ago, and after him time itself, has proven to be the witness of his virtue.

Concerning the laws, no further discussion was needed, for they have been seen through their own operation teaching not impiety but the truest piety, calling men not to hatred of humanity but to fellowship in what they possess, hostile to injustice, careful of righteousness, banishing idleness and extravagance, teaching self-sufficiency and industriousness, restraining wars waged for greed while preparing men to be courageous in defense of the laws themselves,

unyielding in their punishments, unmoved by clever pretexts of argument, forever confirmed by deeds - for these we always furnish more clearly than any written record could. I would therefore say with confidence that we have introduced to the rest of mankind a very great number of the noblest things together at once. For what is nobler than unwavering piety? What is more just than obedience to the laws? Or what is more advantageous than harmony with one another,

neither breaking apart in misfortunes nor growing insolent and factious in good fortune, but in war holding death in contempt, and in peace devoting ourselves to crafts or farming, and being persuaded that in everything, everywhere, God oversees and directs it all? If these things had been written earlier or kept more faithfully by others, we would owe them gratitude as having become their disciples;

but if we are seen to make use of them more than anyone else, and if we have shown that their first discovery belongs to us, then let the Apions and the Molons, and all who delight in lying and slander, be refuted. And to you, Epaphroditus, who love the truth above all, and for your sake, so that those who likewise wish to know about our people may have it - let this book, along with the one before it, be written.

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