and of one no better in his whole life than a mountebank.
Yet, because there are a great many men so very foolish, that
they are rather caught by such orations than by what is
written with care, and take pleasure in reproaching other
men, and cannot abide to hear them commended, I thought
it to be necessary not to let this man go off without
examination, who had written such an accusation against us,
as if he would bring us to make an answer in open court. For
I also have observed, that many men are very much delighted
when they see a man who first began to reproach another, to
be himself exposed to contempt on account of the vices he
hath himself been guilty of. However, it is not a very easy
thing to go over this man's discourse, nor to know plainly
what he means; yet does he seem, amidst a great confusion
and disorder in his falsehoods, to produce, in the first place,
such things as resemble what we have examined already, and
relate to the departure of our forefathers out of Egypt; and,
in the second place, he accuses those Jews that are
inhabitants of Alexandria; as, in the third place, he mixes
with those things such accusations as concern the sacred
purifications, with the other legal rites used in the temple.

2. Now although I cannot but think that I have already
demonstrated, and that abundantly more than was necessary,
that our fathers were not originally Egyptians, nor were
thence expelled, either on account of bodily diseases, or any
other calamities of that sort; yet will I briefly take notice
of
what Apion adds upon that subject; for in his third book,
which relates to the affairs of Egypt, he speaks thus: "I have