e Persians
used them, and this not once only, but many times, when they laid their
cities waste, demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those
animals whom they esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to
imitate the clownish ignorance of Apion, who hath no regard to the
misfortunes of the Athenians, or of the Lacedemonians, the latter of
whom were styled by all men the most courageous, and the former the
most religious of the Grecians. I say nothing of such kings as have been
famous for piety, particularly of one of them, whose name was Cresus,
nor what calamities he met with in his life; I say nothing of the
citadel of Athens, of the temple at Ephesus, of that at Delphi, nor
of ten thousand others which have been burnt down, while nobody cast
reproaches on those that were the sufferers, but on those that were
the actors therein. But now we have met with Apion, an accuser of our
nation, though one that still forgets the miseries of his own people,
the Egyptians; but it is that Sesostris who was once so celebrated a king
of Egypt that hath blinded him. Now we will not brag of our kings, David
and Solomon, though they conquered many nations; accordingly we will let
them alone. However, Apion is ignorant of what every body knows, that
the Egyptians were servants to the Persians, and afterwards to the
Macedonians, when they were lords of Asia, and were no better than
slaves, while we have enjoyed liberty formerly; nay, more than that,
have had the dominion of the cities that lie round about us, and this
nearly for a hundred and twenty years together, until Pompeius Magnus.
And when all the kings every where were conquered by the Romans, our
ancestors were the only people who continued to be esteemed their
confederates and friends, on account of their fidelity to them.[16]

13. "But," says Apion, "we Jews have not had any wonderful men amongst
us, not any inventors of arts, nor any eminent for wisdom." He then
enumerates Socrates, and Zeno, and Cleanthes, and some others of the
same sort; and, after all, he adds himself to them, which is the most
wonderful thing of all that he says, and pronounces Alexandria to be
happy, because it hath such a citizen as he is in it; for he was
the fittest man to be a witness to his own deserts, although he hath
appeared to all others no better than a wicked mountebank, of a
corrupt life and ill discourses; on which account one may justly pity
Alexandria, if it should value it