The third name, Apion, has become especially familiar from the apology of Josephus. The latter refers to him throughout as an Egyptian, and in spite of certain very warm and modern defenders, he very likely was of Egyptian stock. From the Oasis where he was born, he came to Alexandria, where he established a great reputation. Undoubtedly possessed of fluency and charm as a speaker, he was a most thoroughgoing charlatan, a noisy pedant wholly devoid of real critical skill. He boasted of magical power, through which he was enabled to converse with the shade of Homer. His vanity prompted the most ludicrous displays of arrogance. Tiberius Caesar dubbed him the _cymbalum mundi_, “the tom-tom of the world,” a characterization that seems to have been generally accepted.[222] In the appeal of the Jewish residents of Alexandria against the maladministration of the prefect Flaccus, argued before the emperor, he represented the Alexandrian community, whose acts were the basis of the charge made by the Jews. As such he no doubt delivered an anti-Jewish invective, and it is at least likely that this speech formed the substance of his book on the subject, just as the defense of the Jews and the attack upon Flaccus are contained in the two extensive fragments of Philo, the _Legatio ad Gaium_, and the _In Flaccum_. It has been doubted whether he really wrote such a book, although there are express statements that he did. It is true enough that those who assert it may easily have been misled by the fact that certain books of his History of Egypt may have contained these anti-Jewish passages or most of them. None the less, the fact that he must have prepared a set speech in the case mentioned, coupled with the statements of Clemens of Alexandria and Julius Africanus, renders the older view the more probable.[223] There would of course be nothing strange if the books of the History of Egypt and a special monograph contained essentially the same material. As to other similar pamphlets, we hear of a περὶ Ἰουδαίων by a certain Nicarchus, son of Ammonius, which may have had an “Egyptian” bias, in that Moses is said to have been afflicted with white scales upon his body—an assertion that seems to be a revamping of Manetho’s “leprous outcasts.” But the title of the book does not point to a wholly hostile attitude, nor does the passage referred to necessarily imply such an attitude.[224] Taking all these passages together, from Manetho to Apion, one thing must be evident: Manetho himself, Mnaseas, Agatharchidas, Chaeremo, Lysimachus, Apion, are either Egyptians or are trained in Alexandria, and represent the Egyptian side of a bitter racial strife, as intense and lasting as was generally the case when the same community contained several compact groups of different political rights and privileges.