Against Apion | Page 7

about such affairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to
inform themselves about them from those that knew them; examples of which may be
had in this late war of ours, where some persons have written histories, and published
them, without having been in the places concerned, or having been near them when the
actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently
abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of Histories.
9. As for myself, I have composed a true history of that whole war, and of all the
particulars that occurred therein, as having been concerned in all its transactions; for I
acted as general of those among us that are named Galileans, as long as it was possible
for us to make any opposition. I was then seized on by the Romans, and became a captive.
Vespasian also and Titus had me kept under a guard, and forced me to attend them
continually. At the first I was put into bonds, but was set at liberty afterward, and sent to
accompany Titus when he came from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem; during which
time there was nothing done which escaped my knowledge; for what happened in the
Roman camp I saw, and wrote down carefully; and what informations the deserters
brought [out of the city], I was the only man that understood them. Afterward I got
leisure at Rome; and when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of
some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue, and by these means I composed
the history of those transactions. And I was so well assured of the truth of what I related,
that I first of all appealed to those that had the supreme command in that war, Vespasian
and Titus, as witnesses for me, for to them I presented those books first of all, and after
them to many of the Romans who had been in the war. I also sold them to many of our
own men who understood the Greek philosophy; among whom were Julius Archelaus,
Herod [king of Chalcis], a person of great gravity, and king Agrippa himself, a person
that deserved the greatest admiration. Now all these men bore their testimony to me, that
I had the strictest regard to truth; who yet would not have dissembled the matter, nor been
silent, if I, out of ignorance, or out of favor to any side, either had given false colors to
actions, or omitted any of them.
10. There have been indeed some bad men, who have attempted to calumniate my history,
and took it to be a kind of scholastic performance for the exercise of young men. A
strange sort of accusation and calumny this! since every one that undertakes to deliver the
history of actions truly ought to know them accurately himself in the first place, as either
having been concerned in them himself, or been informed of them by such as knew them.
Now both these methods of knowledge I may very properly pretend to in the composition
of both my works; for, as I said, I have translated the Antiquities out of our sacred books;
which I easily could do, since I was a priest by my birth, and have studied that
philosophy which is contained in those writings: and for the History of the War, I wrote it

as having been an actor myself in many of its transactions, an eye-witness in the greatest
part of the rest, and was not unacquainted with any thing whatsoever that was either said
or done in it. How impudent then must those deserve to be esteemed that undertake to
contradict me about the true state of those affairs! who, although they pretend to have
made use of both the emperors' own memoirs, yet could not they he acquainted with our
affairs who fought against them.
11. This digression I have been obliged to make out of necessity, as being desirous to
expose the vanity of those that profess to write histories; and I suppose I have sufficiently
declared that this custom of transmitting down the histories of ancient times hath been
better preserved by those nations which are called Barbarians, than by the Greeks
themselves. I am now willing, in the next place, to say a few things to those that endeavor
to prove that our constitution is but of late time, for this reason, as they pretend, that the
Greek writers have said nothing about us; after which I shall produce testimonies for our
antiquity out of the writings of foreigners; I shall also demonstrate that such as cast
reproaches upon our nation do it very unjustly.
12. As for ourselves, therefore, we