rld. They do not make men hate one another, but
encourage people to communicate what they have to one another freely;
they are enemies to injustice, they take care of righteousness, they
banish idleness and expensive living, and instruct men to be content
with what they have, and to be laborious in their calling; they forbid
men to make war from a desire of getting more, but make men courageous
in defending the laws; they are inexorable in punishing malefactors;
they admit no sophistry of words, but are always established by actions
themselves, which actions we ever propose as surer demonstrations than
what is contained in writing only: on which account I am so bold as to
say that we are become the teachers of other men, in the greatest number
of things, and those of the most excellent nature only; for what is more
excellent than inviolable piety? what is more just than submission to
laws? and what is more advantageous than mutual love and concord? and
this so far that we are to be neither divided by calamities, nor to
become injurious and seditious in prosperity; but to contemn death
when we are in war, and in peace to apply ourselves to our mechanical
occupations, or to our tillage of the ground; while we in all things
and all ways are satisfied that God is the inspector and governor of
our actions. If these precepts had either been written at first, or more
exactly kept by any others before us, we should have owed them thanks as
disciples owe to their masters; but if it be visible that we have made
use of them more than any other men, and if we have demonstrated that
the original invention of them is our own, let the Apions, and the
Molons, with all the rest of those that delight in lies and reproaches,
stand confuted; but let this and the foregoing book be dedicated to
thee, Epaphroditus, who art so great a lover of truth, and by thy means
to those that have been in like manner desirous to be acquainted with
the affairs of our nation.

APION BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES

[1] The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies
of Apion, and then, more briefly, against the like calumnies of
Apollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any more particular
reply to those adversaries of the Jews, and gives us a large and
excellent description and vindication of that theocracy which was
settled for the Jewish nation by Moses, their great legislator.

[2] Called by Tiberius Cymbalum Mundi, The drum of