Greeks." Now this liar ought to have said directly that, "we would
bear no good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the
Egyptians." For then his story about the oath would have squared with
the rest of his original forgeries, in case our forefathers had been
driven away by their kinsmen, the Egyptians, not on account of any
wickedness they had been guilty of, but on account of the calamities
they were under; for as to the Grecians, we were rather remote from them
in place, than different from them in our institutions, insomuch that we
have no enmity with them, nor any jealousy of them. On the contrary, it
hath so happened that many of them have come over to our laws, and some
of them have continued in their observation, although others of them had
not courage enough to persevere, and so departed from them again; nor
did any body ever hear this oath sworn by us: Apion, it seems, was the
only person that heard it, for he indeed was the first composer of it.

12. However, Apion deserves to be admired for his great prudence, as to
what I am going to say, which is this, "That there is a plain mark among
us, that we neither have just laws, nor worship God as we ought to do,
because we are not governors, but are rather in subjection to Gentiles,
sometimes to one nation, and sometimes to another; and that our city
hath been liable to several calamities, while their city [Alexandria]
hath been of old time an imperial city, and not used to be in subjection
to the Romans." But now this man had better leave off this bragging,
for every body but himself would think that Apion said what he hath said
against himself; for there are very few nations that have had the good
fortune to continue many generations in the principality, but still the
mutations in human affairs have put them into subjection under others;
and most nations have been often subdued, and brought into subjection
by others. Now for the Egyptians, perhaps they are the only nation that
have had this extraordinary privilege, to have never served any of
those monarchs who subdued Asia and Europe, and this on account, as they
pretend, that the gods fled into their country, and saved themselves by
being changed into the shapes of wild beasts! Whereas these Egyptians
[15] are the very people that appear to have never, in all the past
ages, had one day of freedom, no, not so much as from their own lords.
For I will not reproach them with relating the manner how th