Legatio Ad Gaium

"For when the Jews saw what they had done, and were very indignant at the holiness and sanctity and beauty of the sacred place being thus obscured and defaced, they collected together and destroyed the altar; so the sojourners immediately went to Capito who was in reality the contriver of the whole affair; and he, thinking that he had made a most lucky hit, which he had been seeking for a long time, writes to Caius dilating on the matter and exaggerating it enormously;

and he, when he had read the letter, ordered a colossal statue gilt all over, much more costly and much more magnificent than the rich altar which had been erected in Jamnia, by way of insult to be set up in the temple of the metropolis, having for his most excellent and sagacious counsellors Helicon, that man of noble birth, a chattering slave, a perfect scum of the earth, and a fellow of the name of Apelles, a tragic actor, who when in the first bloom of youth, as they say, made a market of his beauty, and when he was past the freshness of youth went on the stage;

and in fact all those who go on the stage selling themselves to the spectators, and to the theatres, are not lovers of temperance and modesty, but rather of the most extreme shamelessness and indecency. "On this account Apelles was taken into the rank of a fellow counsellor of the emperor, that Caius might have an adviser with whom he might indulge in mocking jests, and with whom he might sing, passing over all considerations of the general welfare of the state, as if everything in every quarter of the globe was enjoying profound peace and tranquillity under the laws.

"Therefore Helicon, this scorpion-like slave, discharged all his Egyptian venom against the Jews; and Apelles his Ascalonite poison, for he was a native of Ascalon; and between the people of Ascalon and the inhabitants of the holy land, the Jews, there is an irreconcileable and never-ending hostility although they are bordering nations."