before mentioned have made great mistakes about
the true accounts of our nation in the earliest times, because they had
not perused our sacred books; yet have they all of them afforded their
testimony to our antiquity, concerning which I am now treating. However,
Demetrius Phalereus, and the elder Philo, with Eupolemus, have not
greatly missed the truth about our affairs; whose lesser mistakes
ought therefore to be forgiven them; for it was not in their power to
understand our writings with the utmost accuracy.

24. One particular there is still remaining behind of what I at first
proposed to speak to, and that is, to demonstrate that those calumnies
and reproaches which some have thrown upon our nation, are lies, and to
make use of those writers' own testimonies against themselves; and that
in general this self-contradiction hath happened to many other authors
by reason of their ill-will to some people, I conclude, is not unknown
to such as have read histories with sufficient care; for some of them
have endeavored to disgrace the nobility of certain nations, and of some
of the most glorious cities, and have cast reproaches upon certain
forms of government. Thus hath Theopompus abused the city of Athens,
Polycrates that of Lacedemon, as hath he hat wrote the Tripoliticus
[for he is not Theopompus, as is supposed by some] done by the city of
Thebes. Timeils also hath greatly abused the foregoing people and others
also; and this ill-treatment they use chiefly when they have a contest
with men of the greatest reputation; some out of envy and malice, and
others as supposing that by this foolish talking of theirs they may be
thought worthy of being remembered themselves; and indeed they do by no
means fail of their hopes, with regard to the foolish part of mankind,
but men of sober judgment still condemn them of great malignity.

25. Now the Egyptians were the first that cast reproaches upon us;
in order to please which nation, some others undertook to pervert the
truth, while they would neither own that our forefathers came into Egypt
from another country, as the fact was, nor give a true account of our
departure thence. And indeed the Egyptians took many occasions to hate
us and envy us: in the first place, because our ancestors had had the
dominion over their country? and when they were delivered from them, and
gone to their own country again, they lived there in prosperity. In the
next place, the difference of our relig