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 us, 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 temple, 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 sepulchers
of her progenitors; and while she had received her kingdom from the
first Caesar, she had the impudence to rebel against his son: [7] and
successor; nay, she corrupted 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 further, 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 Caesar had taken Alexandria, she came to
that pitch of cruelty, that she declared she had some hope 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 Caesar
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 Caesar, whereby our merits [to the Romans] are
justified. Apion ought to have looked upon those epistles, and in
parti