great torment. Now men of good tempers ought to
observe their own laws concerning religion accurately, and to persevere
therein, but not presently to abuse the laws of other nations, while
this Apion deserted his own laws, and told lies about ours. And this
was the end of Apion's life, and this shall be the conclusion of our
discourse about him.

15. But now, since Apollonius Molo, and Lysimachus, and some others,
write treatises about our lawgiver Moses, and about our laws, which are
neither just nor true, and this partly out of ignorance, but chiefly
out of ill-will to us, while they calumniate Moses as an impostor and
deceiver, and pretend that our laws teach us wickedness, but nothing
that is virtuous, I have a mind to discourse briefly, according to
my ability, about our whole constitution of government, and about the
particular branches of it. For I suppose it will thence become evident,
that the laws we have given us are disposed after the best manner for
the advancement of piety, for mutual communion with one another, for a
general love of mankind, as also for justice, and for sustaining labors
with fortitude, and for a contempt of death. And I beg of those that
shall peruse this writing of mine, to read it without partiality; for
it is not my purpose to write an encomium upon ourselves, but I shall
esteem this as a most just apology for us, and taken from those our
laws, according to which we lead our lives, against the many and the
lying objections that have been made against us. Moreover, since this
Apollonius does not do like Apion, and lay a continued accusation
against us, but does it only by starts, and up and clown his discourse,
while he sometimes reproaches us as atheists, and man-haters, and
sometimes hits us in the teeth with our want of courage, and yet
sometimes, on the contrary, accuses us of too great boldness and
madness in our conduct; nay, he says that we are the weakest of all the
barbarians, and that this is the reason why we are the only people who
have made no improvements in human life; now I think I shall have then
sufficiently disproved all these his allegations, when it shall appear
that our laws enjoin the very reverse of what he says, and that we very
carefully observe those laws ourselves. And if I he compelled to make
mention of the laws of other nations, that are contrary to ours, those
ought deservedly to thank themselves for it, who have pretended to
depreciate our laws in compa