they esteem such as are seized upon by the former, or bitten
by the latter, to be happy persons, and persons worthy of
God. Asses are the same with us which they are with other
wise men, viz. creatures that bear the burdens that we lay
upon them; but if they come to our thrashing-floors and eat
our corn, or do not perform what we impose upon them, we
beat them with a great many stripes, because it is their
business to minister to us in our husbandry affairs. But this
Apion of ours was either perfectly unskillful in the
composition of such fallacious discourses, or however, when
he begun [somewhat better], he was not able to persevere in
what he had undertaken, since he hath no manner of success
in those reproaches he casts upon us.

8. He adds another Grecian fable, in order to reproach us. In
reply to which, it would be enough to say, that they who
presume to speak about Divine worship ought not to be
ignorant of this plain truth, that it is a degree of less
impurity
to pass through temples, than to forge wicked calumnies of
its priests. Now such men as he are more zealous to justify a
sacrilegious king, than to write what is just and what is true
about us, and about our temple; for when they are desirous
of gratifying Antiochus, and of concealing that perfidiousness
and sacrilege which he was guilty of, with regard to our
nation, when he wanted money, they endeavor to disgrace us,
and tell lies even relating to futurities. Apion becomes other
men's prophet upon this occasion, and says that "Antiochus
found in our temple a bed, and a man lying upon it, with a
small table before him, full of dainties, from the [fishes of