Let us see the character of these three Legislators, examine their conduct, and then judge afterwards who are the best founded: those who revered them as Holy men and Gods, or those who treated them as schemers and impostors. II. The celebrated Moses, grandson of a great magician, [28] by the account of Justin Martyr, had all the advantages proper for what he afterwards became. It is well known that the Hebrews, of whom he became the Chief, were a nation of shepherds whom King Pharaoh Orus I. received in his country in consideration of services that he had received from one of them in the time of a great famine. He gave them some lands in the east of Egypt in a country fertile in pasturage, and consequently adapted for their flocks. During 200 years they rapidly increased, because, being considered foreigners they were not required to serve in the armies of Pharaoh, and because of the natural advantages of the lands which Orus had granted them. Some bands of Arabs came to join them as brothers, for they were of a similar race, and they increased so astonishingly that the land of Goshen not being able to contain them they spread all over Egypt, giving Pharaoh Memnon II. good reason to fear that they might be capable of some dangerous attempt in case Egypt was attacked (as happened soon after) by their active enemies, the Ethiopians. Thus a policy of state compelled this Prince to curtail their privileges, and to seek means to weaken and enslave them. Pharaoh Orus II. surnamed Busiris because of his cruelty, and who succeeded Memnon, followed his plan regarding the Jews. Wishing to perpetuate his memory by the erection of the Pyramids and building the city of Thebes, he condemned the Hebrews to labor at making bricks, the material in the earth of their country being adapted for this purpose. During this servitude the celebrated Moses was born, in the same year that the King issued an edict to cast all the male Hebrew children into the Nile, seeing that he had no surer means of exterminating this rabble of foreigners. Moses was exposed to perish in the waters in a basket covered with pitch, which his mother placed in the rushes on the banks of the river. It chanced that Thermitis, daughter of Orus, was walking near the shore and hearing the cries of the child, the natural compassion of her sex inspired her to save it. Orus having died, Thermitis succeeded him, and Moses having been presented to her, she caused him to be educated in a manner befitting the son of a Queen of the wisest and most polished nation of the universe. In a word he was tutored in all the science of the Egyptians, and it is admitted, and they have represented Moses to us as the greatest politician, the wisest philosopher and the most famous magician of his time. It followed that he was admitted to the order of Priesthood, which was in Egypt what the Druids were in Gaul, that is to say--everything.