The untutored philosophers of Voltaire’s stories were quite in the mode of the eighteenth century, which had discovered the “noble savage,” and were quite convinced that civilization was a retrogression from a state of rude and primitive virtue. It was, further, a convenient cloak behind which one might criticise an autocratic régime. Hence the flood of “Turkish,” “Chinese,” “Japanese,” etc. “Letters,” of which Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes are the most famous. Modern instances are “The Traveller from Altruria” of Mr. Howells, and Mr. Dickinson’s “Letters of a Chinese Official.” Footnote 88: Cited by Diogenes Laertius, i. 9 (Müller, Frag. hist. graec. ii. 328). Footnote 89: Reinach, Textes, p. 13; Müller, Frag. ii. 437; Clemens Alex, i. 15. Megasthenes had previously resided at the court of Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia (southern Afghanistan). Arrian, Anab. V. vi. 1. Footnote 90: Clemens Alex. Str. v. (Sylberg), pp. 607 seq. Justin Coh. ad Graecos, 25. Footnote 91: Cf. Ecclesiasticus l. 26; Zech. ix. 2. Footnote 92: At Elephantine we learn from the papyri recently from there (Pap. 1, Sachau) that the Jews had a shrine consecrated to יהו and that in 410 B.C.E. it was destroyed by the priests of a rival Egyptian temple. Footnote 93: Reinach, Textes, p. 39. Müller, Frag. iii. 35. CHAPTER VII EGYPT Footnote 94: This fragment, of the authenticity of which little doubt can be entertained, must be distinguished from the books attributed to Hecataeus about the Jews and Abraham. Josephus uses both in his “Defense” against Apion (i. 22 seq.), but their authenticity was questioned even in ancient times (cf. Herennius Philo, cited by Origenes, C. Cels. i. 15; Reinach, Textes, p. 157). They are almost certainly Jewish works of the first century B.C.E. The text of the real Hecataeus (Reinach, Textes, p. 14 seq.) is anything but certain. We have it only in a long citation by Diodorus, xl. 3. This book of Diodorus, however, has disappeared, and is found only in the _Bibliotheca_ made by the Byzantine patriarch Photius in the ninth century C.E. (cod. 244). Footnote 95: