Apion's End and Moses' Laws

Apion also deserves great admiration for his remarkable shrewdness in what I am about to mention. He says it is proof that we neither have just laws nor worship God as we ought, that we are not rulers but rather subjects, now of one nation and now of another, and that our city has met with certain disasters; whereas they, of course, as citizens of a most imperial city, have been used from of old to rule, and not to be subjects of the Romans. Yet one might well give up such boasting. For there is no other people in the world that could not fairly say this argument of Apion's was aimed at itself. Few nations have had the fortune to hold power for one age after another, and even these the changes of fortune have brought back under the yoke of others; most nations have often been subject to others. The Egyptians alone, it seems, because the gods — as they say — fled into their country and saved themselves by changing into the shapes of beasts, won the special privilege of serving none of the conquerors of Asia or Europe: these same Egyptians who in all the ages have not had one day of freedom, not even from their own masters at home. I will not reproach them with how the Persians treated them, not once but many times, sacking their cities, razing their temples and slaughtering the animals they hold to be gods. It is not right to copy the ignorance of Apion, who took no thought for the misfortunes of the Athenians or of the Spartans, though all men call the Spartans the bravest of the Greeks and the Athenians the most pious. I pass over the kings famed for their piety, one of whom was Croesus, and the disasters they met with in their lives. I pass over the burning of the Acropolis of Athens, the temple at Ephesus, the temple at Delphi and countless others; and no one has reproached the sufferers for these things, but those who did them. [a]

But Apion has turned up as a new kind of accuser of our nation, forgetting the misfortunes of his own people in Egypt; Sesostris, the fabled king of Egypt, has blinded him. We, for our part, would not boast of our own kings David and Solomon, though they subdued many nations. Let us leave them aside. But Apion is ignorant of what everyone knows: that the Egyptians were servants of the Persians, and after them of the Macedonians when they ruled Asia, and were no different from slaves; while we were free, and ruled the cities around us besides, for about a hundred and twenty years, until Pompey the Great. And when all the kings everywhere had been warred down by the Romans, ours alone, because of their loyalty, were kept on as allies and friends.

But, he says, we have not produced any remarkable men, such as inventors of arts or men outstanding in wisdom. He lists Socrates, Zeno, Cleanthes and some others of that kind; and then — the most remarkable thing of all that he says — he adds himself to the list, and congratulates Alexandria on having such a citizen. He needed a witness to himself, for to everyone else he seemed a worthless crowd-pleaser, corrupt in both his life and his speech; so that one might rightly pity Alexandria if it prided itself on him. As for the men our nation has produced, who deserve praise as much as any, those who read our Antiquities know them. [e]

The rest of what is written in his accusation should perhaps be left without defense, so that he may be his own accuser and the accuser of the rest of the Egyptians. He blames us for sacrificing animals and for not eating pork, and he mocks the circumcision of the genitals. Now the killing of tame animals is common to us and to all other men. But Apion, by finding fault with those who sacrifice, has exposed himself as an Egyptian by race. A Greek or a Macedonian would not have been upset by it. They vow to sacrifice hecatombs to the gods and use the victims for feasting, and the world has not been emptied of cattle on that account, as Apion feared it would be. But if everyone followed the customs of the Egyptians, the world would have been emptied of men and filled with the wildest beasts, which they think are gods and rear with great care. Again, if anyone had asked him which of all the Egyptians he considered the wisest and most god-fearing, he would certainly have admitted that it was the priests. For they say that from the beginning the kings charged them with two tasks: the service of the gods and the cultivation of wisdom. Now these priests are all circumcised and abstain from pork; indeed, not one of the other Egyptians sacrifices a pig to the gods. Was Apion, then, blind in mind when he set out to revile us on the Egyptians' behalf, while in fact accusing the very people who not only practice the customs he reviles but also taught others to be circumcised, as Herodotus says? So it seems to me that Apion rightly paid a fitting penalty for his blasphemy against the laws of his own country. He was circumcised out of necessity, because an ulcer had formed on his genitals; the circumcision did him no good, and he died rotting away, in terrible pain. Men of good sense ought to keep strictly to their own laws concerning piety, and not revile those of others. But he fled from his own laws and told lies about ours. Such was the end of Apion's life; and let this be the end of what we have to say about him here. [f]

Apollonius Molon, Lysimachus and some others, partly from ignorance but mostly from ill will, have written accounts of Moses our lawgiver and of our laws that are neither just nor true. They slander Moses as a sorcerer and a deceiver, and claim that our laws teach us vice and no virtue at all. So I wish to speak briefly, as well as I can, about our whole form of government and about its particular parts. For I think it will become plain that our laws are excellently framed for piety, for fellowship with one another, for kindness to all mankind, and also for righteousness, for endurance in hardship and for contempt of death. I ask those who will read this writing not to read it with envy. I have not chosen to write a eulogy of ourselves; but since we are accused of many false things, I consider the most just defense to be the one drawn from the laws by which we continue to live. Besides, Apollonius did not draw up his accusation all in one place, as Apion did, but scattered it here and there. In one place he reviles us as godless and haters of mankind; in another he reproaches us with cowardice; and in yet another, on the contrary, he accuses us of recklessness and madness. He also says that we are the least gifted of the barbarians, and that this is why we alone have contributed no invention to human life. All these charges will, I think, be clearly refuted if it appears that our laws command the very opposite of what he says, and that we keep them with all exactness. If I am forced to mention the customs of other nations that are contrary to ours, those who presume to set ours beside their own as worse have only themselves to blame. After that, I think, they will be left with neither claim: neither that we do not have these laws, the chief of which I will set out, nor that we do not keep our own laws more faithfully than anyone. [i]

Let me go back a little and say this first. Among men who lived without law and order, those who first came to desire order and a common law, and who first made a beginning of it, could fairly be credited with surpassing others in gentleness and in natural virtue. Indeed, each people tries to trace its own institutions back to the greatest antiquity, so as not to seem to have copied others, but to have been the ones who guided others into an orderly life under law. That being so, the virtue of a lawgiver is to see what is best and to persuade those who are to use the laws he lays down; the virtue of the people is to abide by all that has been decided and to change nothing, whether in prosperity or in misfortune. Now I say that our lawgiver is older than any lawgiver recorded anywhere. Your Lycurguses and Solons, and Zaleucus of the Locrians, and all those so admired among the Greeks, seem to have been born yesterday or the day before when set beside him; indeed, in ancient times the very word "law" was not known among the Greeks. Homer is a witness to this, for nowhere in his poetry does he use it. There was no such thing in his time; the masses were governed by loosely defined maxims and the commands of their kings. From then on they went on for a long time using unwritten customs, always changing many of them to suit the occasion. But our lawgiver, who was the most ancient of all — even those who say everything against us admit as much — showed himself the best leader and counselor to the people. He took the whole ordering of their life into his law, persuaded them to accept it, and saw to it that it would be kept most firmly forever. [j]