TUE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
667
present the formal cluirgi; of ilisloyallv a,!.'ainst the It was a fiirci;oiic ciiiichisioii of Alexandria. that he wuulililcfeal I'liilo(llie philosoHis Polit- lih<-n. till- JHiul of the Jewish delejjatioii (Josephus, "Ant." xviii. M, sj 1). ical Activity. After t his he seems to have sett lei down in Home, and ojiened a school there,
Jews
1
lie probably ntimlierinjr I'liiiy amoiis; his diseiples. siilTcrinj^, as Jose]ilius narrates, from an ugly disease to remedy whieh he vainly resorted to circumcision, the operation he had so often derided in his vritin<;s (Josephus. "('onlra Ap." ii. 14).
died there,
Apion was a man of ^^reat vi'rsatility of intellect, supertieially familiar wilhall braiuhcsof knowledge {TnpiepyuTarnr: yi)ii/iiiariiiijv, Julins Afrieanils). lie lectured on the Pyramids and on I'ytliagoras, on the virtues and vices of Sappho and Anacreou, on the birthjdaee of Homer as well as on Lais, the noted lie loved to dwell on the niiraeidous courtezan. tilings in natural science, whereof he eagerly acciimidated facts to illustrate all sorts of mythological and sujierslitious views, lie was also a magnetic orator who knew how toa|ipeal to the imagination of Of his extreme vanity both Josephus the people. i)roofs. He held out the promise of glorious immortality to any one to whom he should inscribe a work of his. "'Thus," says Pliny, "speaks one who is the trumpet of his own fame rather than that of the world, as Tiberius Again, after eiiucalled him " (Pliny, preface '2.")). meral ing the rcmarkalile men he Greeks pn iduced. he proclaims Alexandria happy in jiossessing a citizen More like himself (Josephus, "C'<intra Ap." ii. Hi). serious is that trait of his elauwter for which he was called a "Cretan," as synonymous with impostor (see Von Outschmiil, "Kleinere Schriften," iv. ;!."iT). He pretended (Pliny, " llisloria Xaturalis." xxx. (ilto liave raised up Homer's shade from the dead liy the help of some magic plant, and to have received fioni it information about the poet's ))lace of birth and parentage, whieh he was not permitted to disclose; to have received from Kleson, an inhabitant of Ithaca, (luring his stay there, an exact description of J'eiiel ope's suitors' game of draughts (.Vlhenaus, i. l(i); to have heard from Kgyptian sages the true account of Closes and the Exodus, an account which he sim ply copied from Manilho (Josephus,
and Pliny the Elder give ample
t
Claim of
i/i.
ii.
2); to
have lucn an eyewitness
of the scene at the Circus Maximus when the lion recognized Androclus Knowlas his benefactor (Uellius, I.e. vi. 4); edge. and of the scene at Puteoli when the dolphin displayed love for a youth ((lellius, /.c. vii. It is almost inconceivable how Von (iut.schniid 8). {I r. p. :!()()) can defend Apion against the I'liargcs of charlatanism made by I.ehrs. Trust worthy contemporaries like Pliny the Elder. Sineca. (Wllius, and Athcna'us represent him exactly as does Josephus, as a man ipon whose statements little reliance can be placed. In the "Clementine Homilies" (iv. M elff'/., v. r> rt x(7.)he is introilucid bnlh as n believer if not a fraudulent practitioner of the art in mai.'ic anil a difeniler of (ireek mythology. Apion wasa voluminous writer, but fewof his wri lings have been preserved except what is found in the He wrote a (|Uotalions of Josephus, his adversary. treatise on the Ijiliii language, and wasoneof thetlrsl to compose a glossjiry on Homer, probably, as Von Oulschmiil says, enibodied in the "Lexicon Homer icon " of his disciple .pollonius, and hence in the " Etymologicon." He wrote a I'ulogy on Alexander the (ireat, as (iutschmid supposes, in ricoL'inliiin of the honor of citizenship conferred upon him by the Aloxaudriaus. Another book of his bore the title
Universal
—
—
Apif^oros
Apion
" On Homer as a Magician," wherein he treated of the superstitious side of Homeric life, such as the magi<plant uu/v, Circe and Hades, in a manner in keeping with the taste of his age. Apion was the author of
"comments" on Homer and on Aristophanes, and also wrote a discourse on Apicius, the gourmet. Hut his chief work was on Egj'ptian history, written in close imitation of Mauetho's work of the same title, " ,^£gy pt iaca, " and embodying the conHis tents of Jlauetho's other works, the Egyptian one on the ancient life and worshiii of History, the Egyptians, and the other on their theology. It was divided into five books, the first three corresponding with tin- three of Manetho's books, the other two books with two other works of Jlanetho, and presented in pojiular style whatever seemed to be marvelous and interesting to a credulous age. While collecting his stories thus from the most dubious .sources in Egyptian history, hi' assumes to sjieak with the authority of one who has made personal researches regarding the things
whieh he relates, and on the very spot where they occurred. It appears that he made it his especial object to explain animal-worship and other religious practises of the Egyptians by ob.servations of the marvels of nature, and so he wrote a special work on the study of nature and its forms, wherein he also follows Manetho's example and adopts his pantheistic view. As has been cicarlv shown by Schiirer ("(Jesch. d. Jnd. Volkes," iii. 2," 4lW), it was in the third book of his " /Egj'ptiaca " (and not in a special book against the .lews, as was erroneously a.ssuined by the Church fathers, and asserted ever since) that those slanders were made by Apion against the Jews which found their way to Tacitus (" History," v. 1-.-)) and many other writers in Home, and against which Josei)hiis wrote the second part of his splendid apologetic work, known by the title "Contra Apionem." In the polemical portion of his book, Apion repeated whatever Manetho. ApolloniusMolo, Posidonius, ChaTemon, and I.ysiniachus had ever He first attacks them written against the Jews. from the point of view of an Egyptian. He reiterates with considerable embellishment the slanderous tale told by Manetho, of the Jewish people having been led out of Egypt, a horde of Type of lepers, blind and lame. He pietends an Anti- to have heard from he ancient men of Semitic. Egypt that Moses was of the city of Heliopolis, the city of the sun. anil that is why he taught his people to offer prayers toward the rising sun. To account for the origin of the Sabbath, he tells a story current among the pcopli' of the time (if not invented by him) as follows: When the 1 II), tldtl lepers (this is the number also given by Lysiiuaehus), expelled from Egypt, had traveled for six days, they developed buboes in their groins, and so they rested on the seventh ilay The name for this malady for their recuperation. being Sihl><> in the Egyptian language, they called the dav of rest StiUxith (Josephus, "Contra .p." I
ii.
2-3)!
assails the Jews from the point of view Hea.skshow these Jews, coming of an Alexanilrian. from Syria, could claim the name and title of Alexandrian citizens, and he upbniids them for not worshiping the same gods as the Egyptians, and specifically for not erecting images to the emperors as all the rest were content to do. Finally, he deriiles the religion of the Jews by reilenitingall sorts of riilicidous slanders concerning Thus he writes that when till' Temple of Jerusalem. Antiochus Epiphanes entered the holy place, he found there an ass's head, made of gold and worth a
Apion next
