The Jews of Alexandria

But let us now see what those terrible and outrageous crimes are that Apion charges against the Jews who live in Alexandria. This is what he says: They came out of Syria and settled beside a sea without a harbor, as neighbors to the place where the waves are cast up on the shore. Now if a place of residence is open to reproach, he is reproaching not his real native country but the one he claims as his own, Alexandria; for everyone agrees that the part of that city by the sea is the finest place to live. If the Jews had taken that quarter by force, and held it so firmly that they were never driven out afterward, that would be proof of their courage. But in fact it was Alexander himself who gave them the place to live in, and they received equal honor there with the Macedonians. I cannot imagine what Apion would have said if they had lived beside the Necropolis instead of being settled close to the royal palace, and if their tribe were not called Macedonians to this very day. [a]

If he had read the letters of King Alexander and those of Ptolemy son of Lagus, and had come across the documents of the kings of Egypt after him, and the pillar that still stands in Alexandria recording the rights that the great Caesar granted the Jews — if, I say, he knew these records and still dared to write the opposite, he was a wicked man; and if he knew none of them, he was an ignorant one. His wondering how Jews could be called Alexandrians shows the same ignorance. For all who are invited to settle in a colony, however much they differ from one another in race, take their name from its founders. Why speak of others? Those of our own people who live in Antioch are called Antiochenes, because Seleucus, the founder of that city, gave them its citizenship. In the same way, the Jews in Ephesus and the rest of Ionia bear the same name as the native-born citizens, because Alexander's successors granted it to them.

And has not the kindness of the Romans shared their own name with nearly everyone — not only with individual men but with great nations entire? The Iberians of old, the Tyrrhenians and the Sabines are now called Romans. If Apion rejects this way of gaining citizenship, let him stop calling himself an Alexandrian. For, as I said before, he was born in the depths of Egypt; how could he be an Alexandrian if citizenship by grant were abolished, as he has demanded in our case? And indeed the Romans, who are now masters of the world, have forbidden the Egyptians alone to share in the citizenship of any city whatever. Yet this fine fellow, while claiming for himself a privilege he was barred from receiving, has set out to slander those who received it justly.

For it was not for lack of people to fill the city he was building with such zeal that Alexander gathered some of our nation there. He tested them all carefully for virtue and loyalty, and then gave our people this privilege as a reward. He held our nation in honor, as Hecataeus also says of us: because of the consideration and loyalty the Jews had shown him, he added the district of Samaria to their land, free of tribute. Ptolemy son of Lagus thought the same as Alexander about the Jews who lived in Alexandria. He entrusted the fortresses of Egypt to them, believing they would guard them both loyally and bravely; and when he wished to hold Cyrene and the other cities of Libya firmly in his power, he sent a body of Jews to settle in them.

His successor, the Ptolemy who was called Philadelphus, not only released all of our people who were captives in his kingdom but often made them gifts of money. Greatest of all, he became eager to know our laws and to read the books of our sacred writings. He sent a request that men be sent to him to translate the law, and to see that it was well written out he gave the charge to no ordinary men, but to Demetrius of Phalerum, Andreas and Aristeas — Demetrius the most learned man of his day, and the other two the men entrusted with guarding his person. He would surely not have been so eager to learn our laws and our ancestral philosophy if he had despised the men who lived by them, instead of greatly admiring them.

Apion has also overlooked almost every one of the kings of those Macedonians he calls his ancestors, though they were very well disposed toward us. The third Ptolemy, called Euergetes, after taking all Syria by force, did not offer thank-offerings for his victory to the gods of Egypt. He came to Jerusalem, offered many sacrifices to God in the way our law prescribes, and dedicated gifts worthy of such a victory. Ptolemy Philometor and his wife Cleopatra entrusted their whole kingdom to Jews, and the generals of their entire army were Onias and Dositheus, both Jews. Apion jeers at their names, when he ought to admire their deeds instead of reviling them, and thank them for saving Alexandria, the city whose citizen he claims to be. For when the Alexandrians were at war with Queen Cleopatra and in danger of being wretchedly destroyed, it was these men who brought about terms of peace and freed them from the miseries of civil war. Apion says: But afterward Onias led a small army against the city, while Thermus, the envoy of the Romans, was there in person. Yes, I would say, and he did rightly and very justly. For the Ptolemy who was called Physcon, when his brother Ptolemy Philometor died, came out of Cyrene intending to drive Cleopatra and the king's sons out of the kingdom, so as to take it for himself unjustly. That is why Onias took up the war against him on Cleopatra's behalf; he would not abandon, in their hour of need, the trust the royal house had placed in him. [g]

God plainly appeared as witness to his just conduct. Ptolemy Physcon dared to fight against Onias's army, and he seized all the Jews in the city, with their children and wives, and exposed them naked and in chains to his elephants so that they would be trampled to death; he had even made the beasts drunk for the purpose. But it turned out the opposite of what he had prepared. The elephants left the Jews set before them, charged at his friends, and killed a great many of them. After this Ptolemy saw a terrifying apparition that forbade him to harm those men; and his favorite concubine, whom some call Ithaca and others Irene, begged him not to carry out so great a wickedness. He gave in to her, and repented of what he had already done and of what he was about to do. That is why the Jews of Alexandria are known to celebrate this day, and rightly, because on it they plainly received deliverance from God. Yet Apion, who slanders everyone, dared to accuse the Jews even over this war against Physcon, when he ought to have praised them for it.

He also mentions Cleopatra, the last queen of Alexandria, as though reproaching us because she was ungrateful toward us — when he should rather have set out to condemn her. There was no injustice and no evil deed she did not commit, against her own family, against the husbands who loved her, and against the Romans as a whole and the emperors who were her benefactors. She killed her sister Arsinoe in a temple, though Arsinoe had done her no harm. She had her brother murdered by treachery. She plundered the gods of her country and the tombs of her forefathers. Having received her kingdom from the first Caesar, she dared to rebel against his son and successor. She corrupted Antony with her love affairs, made him an enemy of his country and faithless to his friends, stripped some of their royal rank, and in her madness drove others to do evil. What more need be said, when she deserted Antony himself in the sea battle — her husband and the father of their children — and forced him to give up his army and his command and follow her? At the last, when Caesar had taken Alexandria, she had sunk so low that she thought her one hope of safety lay in killing the Jews, with her own hand if she could; so cruel and faithless was she toward everyone. Do you suppose, then, that we have nothing to be proud of if, as Apion says, this queen did not measure out wheat to the Jews in a time of famine?

She, at any rate, met the punishment she deserved. As for us, we have the great Caesar as witness of the help and loyalty we gave him against the Egyptians, and the senate too, with its decrees, and the letters of Caesar Augustus, by which our services are confirmed. Apion ought to have looked at these letters and examined, kind by kind, the testimonies given in our favor under Alexander and all the Ptolemies, and the decrees of the senate and of the greatest Roman emperors. If Germanicus was unable to distribute grain to all the residents of Alexandria, that shows a barren season and a shortage of grain; it is no charge against the Jews. What all the emperors have thought of the Jews living in Alexandria is well known. The distribution of wheat was withheld from them no more than from the other Alexandrians. But they kept the great trust the kings had given them long before, the guarding of the river; and those kings did not judge them unworthy of guarding the whole of it.