about this temple; and the testimonies here produced are an
indisputable and undeniable attestation to the antiquity of our
nation. And I suppose that what I have already said may be
sufficient to such as are not very contentious.

22. But now it is proper to satisfy the inquiry of those that
disbelieve the records of barbarians, and think none but Greeks
to be worthy of credit, and to produce many of these very Greeks
who were acquainted with our nation, and to set before them such
as upon occasion have made mention of us in their own writings.
Pythagoras, therefore, of Samos, lived in very ancient times, and
was esteemed a person superior to all philosophers in wisdom and
piety towards God. Now it is plain that he did not only know our
doctrines, but was in very great measure a follower and admirer
of them. There is not indeed extant any writing that is owned for
his (15) but many there are who have written his history, of whom
Hermippus is the most celebrated, who was a person very
inquisitive into all sorts of history. Now this Hermippus, in his
first book concerning Pythagoras, speaks thus: "That Pythagoras,
upon the death of one of his associates, whose name was
Calliphon, a Crotonlate by birth, affirmed that this man's soul
conversed with him both night and day, and enjoined him not to
pass over a place where an ass had fallen down; as also not to
drink of such waters as caused thirst again; and to abstain from
all sorts of reproaches." After which he adds thus: "This he did
and said in imitation of the doctrines of the Jews and Thracians,
which he transferred into his own philosophy." For it is very
truly affirmed of this Pythagoras, that he took a great many of
the laws of the Jews into his own philosophy. Nor was our nation
unknown of old to several of the Grecian cities, and indeed was