(iv) The treatise _Against Apion_ (in two books) is, on the other hand, the most pleasing of our author’s works, showing a well-designed plan, great literary skill, and a more genuine patriotism, a warmer and more impassioned zeal for his country’s religion, than we find elsewhere. The title (not the author’s) is, like that of the _Life_, unsuitable, Apion not being mentioned until Book II is reached. Older titles were: “On the Antiquity of the Jews” (not sufficiently distinctive), and “Against the Greeks.” It is designed as a reply to criticisms on the _Antiquities_ and a refutation of current attacks upon, and groundless prejudices against, the Jewish nation; it is, in short, an Apology for Judaism with a demonstration of the antiquity of the race. It gives an interesting insight into the anti-Semitism of the first century. Apion is merely one representative of Israel’s enemies; a grammarian and interpreter of Homer, he is best known as the leader of the embassy to Caligula in A.D. 38, which brought accusations against the Jewish residents in Alexandria, and was opposed by a counter-embassy of Alexandrian Jews, headed by Philo. Josephus challenges the extreme antiquity claimed for the Greeks; accounts for the silence of Greek writers with regard to Jewish history; cites evidence for the antiquity of his nation from Egyptian, Phœnician, Babylonian and Greek sources; refutes the malignant and absurd accusations of the anti-Semites; and concludes with an able and eloquent defence of the lawgiver and his code,[21] contrasting his conception of God with the immoral ideas current among the Greeks. The numerous quotations from lost writings give the work a special value. Its date must be later than A.D. 93 (the date of _Ant._), but whether written before or after the _Life_ is uncertain. Two further works, as he tells us at the end of _Ant._, were projected by Josephus, viz.: (1) A summary sketch of the war and the subsequent history of his nation down to A.D. 93-4; (2) “A work in four books concerning God and His being and concerning the Laws, why some actions are permitted to us by them and others are forbidden.” It is unlikely that either was ever completed. But the work on “Customs and Causes,” as he elsewhere calls it, appears, from the mention of the four books and from scattered allusions in the _Antiquities_ to its intended contents, to have already taken shape in his mind, and was perhaps begun. The failure to carry out this scheme is regrettable. From the repeated occurrence, usually with reference to the Seleucid dynasty or Parthian affairs, of the phrase “as we have shown elsewhere,” Josephus might appear to have written a monograph on Syrian history. But the variations on the phrase, “as has been shown elsewhere” (_lit._ “in others”) and (twice) “... _by others_,” make it probable that the use of the first person, where it occurs, has been carelessly taken over from one of his authorities.