to Origen, “a real gem of brilliant criticism spiced with a gentle touch of fine irony” (Gelzer), which combats the authenticity and credibility of the Pseudo-Daniel’s history of Susannah. We have also a fragment quoted in Eusebius from an Epistle to a certain Aristides, which attempts a reconciliation of the genealogies in Matt. and Luke by distinguishing παῖδες νόμῳ and παῖδες φύσει with reference to Deut. xxv. 5. According to Eusebius “the chronologist Julius Africanus,” according to Suidas “Origen’s friend Africanus with the prænomen Sextus,” is also the author of the so called Κεστοί (_embroidery_), a great comprehensive work of which only fragments have been preserved, in which all manner of wonderful things from the life of nature and men, about agriculture, cattle breeding, warfare, etc., were recorded, so that it had the secondary title Παράδοξα. The excessive details of pagan superstition here reported, much of which, such as that relating to the secret worship of Venus, was distinctly immoral, and its dependence on the secret writings of the Egyptians seem now as hard to reconcile with the standpoint of a believing Christian, as with the sharpness of intellect shown in his criticism of the letter of Susannah. It has therefore been assumed that alongside of the Christian chronologist Julius Africanus there was a pagan Julius Africanus who wrote the Κεστοί,--or, seeing the identity of the two is strongly evidenced both on internal and external grounds, the composition of the Κεστοί is assigned to a period when the author was still a heathen. The facts, however, that the Chronicles close with A.D. 221 and that the Κεστοί is dedicated to Alex. Severus (A.D. 222-235), seem to guarantee the earlier composition of the Chronicles. The author of the Κεστοί, too, by his quotation of Ps. xxxiv. 9 with the formula θεία ῥήματα, shows himself a Christian, and on the other hand, the author of the Chronicles says that at great cost he had made himself acquainted in Egypt with a celebrated secret book. § 31.9.