Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 21

We shall shortly examine how the doctrines of the philosophers were seen among the Hebrews; first, however, as is fitting, we must speak of the times of Moses, through which it will be shown beyond dispute that the Hebrew philosophy is the most ancient of all wisdom. Tatian has already treated these matters precisely in his *Address to the Greeks*, and Cassian has done so in the first book of his *Exegetical Works*; nevertheless, the present memorandum also requires us to run through what has been said on the topic.

Apion the grammarian, surnamed Plistonicus, in the fourth book of his *Egyptian Histories* — although he is hostile toward the Hebrews, being Egyptian by birth, and has even composed a work against the Jews — mentions Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and the events of his reign, and cites Ptolemy of Mendes as a witness. Ptolemy's words run thus: Amosis, having become king in the time of Argive Inachus, demolished the city of Avaris, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded in his *Chronicles*. This Ptolemy was a priest, and in three books he set forth the deeds of the Egyptian kings; he states that during the reign of Amosis, king of Egypt, the Jews, led by Moses, made their journey out of Egypt, from which it follows that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus.

The most ancient of Greek history is the Argolic — that is, the history reckoned from Inachus — as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his *Chronicles*. The Attic history, reckoned from Cecrops the two-natured and autochthonous, is, as Tatian says word for word, forty generations younger; the Arcadian history, reckoned from Pelasgus, is nine generations younger, and Pelasgus too is said to be autochthonous. The Phthiotic history, reckoned from Deucalion, is younger still by two generations. From Inachus to the time of the Trojan War, twenty or a few more generations are counted, amounting, so to speak, to about four hundred years.

If the Assyrian history is far older than the Greek, as Ctesias says, it will appear that in the four hundred and second year of the Assyrian empire, and in the thirty-second year of the eighth dynasty of Belochus, the migration of Moses out of Egypt took place under Amosis the Egyptian and Inachus the Argive. In Greece, during the time of Phoroneus, who came after Inachus, there occurred the flood of Ogygus and the kingdom in Sicyon — first of Aegialeus, then of Eurypus, then of Telchin — and the kingdom of Crete in Crete. Acusilaus declares that Phoroneus was the first man born; hence the poet of the *Phoroneis* calls him the father of mortal men. Following Acusilaus, Plato writes in the *Timaeus* that, wishing to draw his interlocutors into discourse about ancient things, he undertakes to speak of the most ancient traditions of the city: of Phoroneus, said to be the first, of Niobe, and of the events after the flood.

Under Phorbas came Actaeus, from whom the Attic Actaea takes its name. Under Triopas came Prometheus, Atlas, Epimetheus, the two-natured Cecrops, and Io. Under Crotopus occurred the conflagration in the time of Phaethon and the flood in the time of Deucalion. Under Sthenelus came the kingdom of Amphictyon, the arrival of Danaus in the Peloponnese, and the foundation of Dardania by Dardanus, whom Homer says was the firstborn of cloud-gathering Zeus, together with the carrying off of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete.