And if you cling to the education of those men, why do you do battle with me for choosing the doctrines I wish? For how is it not absurd that the robber, on account of the name charged against him, is not punished before the truth is accurately ascertained, while we are hated on a prejudice of slander without examination? Diagoras was an Athenian, but you punished him for divulging the mysteries of the Athenians; and yet, while reading his Phrygian discourses, you have hated us. You possess the memoirs of Leon, yet you are vexed at the refutations from us; and having among yourselves the opinions of Apion concerning the Egyptian gods, you proclaim us most godless. The tomb of Olympian Zeus is shown among you, even though someone says the Cretans are liars. The assembly of the many gods is nothing. And even if Epicurus, despising them, carries the torch, the rulers gain nothing more than God. The apprehension which I have concerning the universe I do not conceal. Why do you counsel me to lie about my citizenship? Why, while saying one ought to despise death, do you proclaim that one should flee it by craft? I, for my part, do not have the heart of a deer; but the practices of your discourses turn out to be like the immoderate-tongued Thersites. How shall I be persuaded by the one who says that the sun is a red-hot mass and the moon is earth? For such things are a contest of words and not an arrangement of truth. Or how is it not foolish to be persuaded by the books of Herodorus concerning the account about Heracles, proclaiming an earth above, and that the lion slain by Heracles came down from it? And what would Attic diction profit, and the heap of philosophers, and the persuasiveness of syllogisms, and measurements of the earth, and positions of the stars, and the courses of the sun? For to busy oneself about such inquiry is the work of a man legislating doctrines for himself.