This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[291]
As to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, for they
are visible in their own nature, and appear to teach not impiety, but the
truest piety in the world. They do not make men hate one another, but encourage
people to communicate what they have to one another freely; they are enemies
to injustice, they take care of righteousness, they banish idleness and
expensive living, and instruct men to be content with what they have, and
to be laborious in their calling; they forbid men to make war from a desire
of getting more, but make men courageous in defending the laws; they are
inexorable in punishing malefactors; they admit no sophistry of words,
but are always established by actions themselves, which actions we ever
propose as surer demonstrations than what is contained in writing only:
on which account I am so bold as to say that we are become the teachers
of other men, in the greatest number of things, and those of the most excellent
nature only; for what is more excellent than inviolable piety? what is
more just than submission to laws? and what is more advantageous than mutual
love and concord? and this so far that we are to be neither divided by
calamities, nor to become injurious and seditious in prosperity; but to
contemn death when we are in war, and in peace to apply ourselves to our
mechanical occupations, or to our tillage of the ground; while we in all
things and all ways are satisfied that God is the inspector and governor
of our actions. If these precepts had either been written at first, or
more exactly kept by any others before us, we should have owed them thanks
as disciples owe to their masters; but if it be visible that we have made
use of them more than any other men, and if we have demonstrated that the
original invention of them is our own, let the Apions, and the Molons,
with all the rest of those that delight in lies and reproaches, stand confuted;
but let this and the foregoing book be dedicated to thee, Epaphroditus,
who art so great a lover of truth, and by thy means to those that have
been in like manner desirous to be acquainted with the affairs of our nation.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.