e that no evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or
to speak any thing contrary to their own laws. Nor ought men to wonder
at us, if we are more courageous in dying for our laws than all other
men are; for other men do not easily submit to the easier things in
which we are instituted; I mean working with our hands, and eating but
little, and being contented to eat and drink, not at random, or at every
one's pleasure, or being under inviolable rules in lying with our wives,
in magnificent furniture, and again in the observation of our times of
rest; while those that can use their swords in war, and can put their
enemies to flight when they attack them, cannot bear to submit to such
laws about their way of living: whereas our being accustomed willingly
to submit to laws in these instances, renders us fit to show our
fortitude upon other occasions also.

34. Yet do the Lysimachi and the Molones, and some other writers,
[unskillful sophists as they are, and the deceivers of young men,]
reproach us as the vilest of all mankind. Now I have no mind to make an
inquiry into the laws of other nations; for the custom of our country is
to keep our own laws, but not to bring accusations against the laws of
others. And indeed our legislator hath expressly forbidden us to laugh
at and revile those that are esteemed gods by other people? on account
of the very name of God ascribed to them. But since our antagonists
think to run us down upon the comparison of their religion and ours, it
is not possible to keep silence here, especially while what I shall say
to confute these men will not be now first said, but hath been already
said by many, and these of the highest reputation also; for who is there
among those that have been admired among the Greeks for wisdom, who
hath not greatly blamed both the most famous poets, and most celebrated
legislators, for spreading such notions originally among the body of the
people concerning the gods? such as these, that they may be allowed to
be as numerous as they have a mind to have them; that they are begotten
one by another, and that after all the kinds of generation you can
imagine. They also distinguish them in their places and ways of living
as they would distinguish several sorts of animals; as some to be under
the earth; as some to be in the sea; and the ancientest of them all to
be bound in hell; and for those to whom they have allotted heaven, they
have set over them one, who in ti