exactly kept by any others before us, we should have owed them thanks as disciples owe to their masters; but if it be visible that we have made use of them more than any other men, and if we have demonstrated that the original invention of them is our own, let the Apions, and the Molons, with all the rest of those that delight in lies and reproaches, stand confuted; but let this and the foregoing book be dedicated to thee, Epaphroditus, who art so great a lover of truth, and by thy means to those that have been in like manner desirous to be acquainted with the affairs of our nation. APION BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES [1] The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies of Apion, and then, more briefly, against the like calumnies of Apollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any more particular reply to those adversaries of the Jews, and gives us a large and excellent description and vindication of that theocracy which was settled for the Jewish nation by Moses, their great legislator. [2] Called by Tiberius Cymbalum Mundi, The drum of the world. [3] This seems to have been the first dial that had been made in Egypt, and was a little before the time that Ahaz made his [first] dial in Judea, and about anno 755, in the first year of the seventh olympiad, as we shall see presently. See 2 Kings 20:11; Isaiah 38:8. [4] The burial-place for dead bodies, as I suppose. [5] Here begins a great defect in the Greek copy; but the old Latin version fully supplies that defect. [6] What error is here generally believed to have been committed by our Josephus in ascribing a deliverance of the Jews to the reign of Ptolemy Physco, the seventh of those Ptolemus, which has been universally supposed to have happened under Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of them, is no better than a gross error of the moderns, and not of Josephus, as I have fully proved in the Authentic. Rec. Part I. p. 200-201, whither I refer the inquisitive reader. [7] Sister's son, and adopted son. [8] Called more properly Molo, or Apollonius Molo, as hereafter; for Apollonins, the son of Molo, was another person, as Strabo informs us, lib. xiv. [9] Furones in the Latin, which what animal it denotes does not now appear. [10] It is great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant in his time. [11] It is remarkable that Josephus here, and, I think, no where else, reckons up four distinct courts of the temple; that of the Gentiles, that of the women of Israel, that of the men of Israel, and that of the priests; as also that the court of the women admitted of the men, [I suppose only of the husbands of those wives that were therein,] while the court of the men did not admit any women into it at all.