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Against Apion by Flavius Josephus
page 114 of 134 (85%)
be
able to conquer all those against whom they make war. I
need not add this, that they have not been fully able to
observe their laws; for not only a few single persons, but
multitudes of them, have in heaps neglected those laws, and
have delivered themselves, together with their arms, into the
hands of their enemies.

33. Now as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell
of so many; nay, not of more than one or two that have
betrayed our laws, no, not out of fear of death itself; I do
not
mean such an easy death as happens in battles, but that
which comes with bodily torments, and seems to be the
severest kind of death of all others. Now I think those that
have conquered us have put us to such deaths, not out of
their hatred to us when they had subdued us, but rather out
of their desire of seeing a surprising sight, which is this,
whether there be such men in the world who believe 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
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