For, when you wished to praise Busiris, you chose to say that he forced the Nile to break into branches and surround the land Cf. Hdt. 2.16 , where the same verb
 ( περιρρήγνυμι ) is used in connexion with the
 branches of the Nile in the Delta. , and
 that he sacrificed and ate strangers who came to his country; but you gave no proof that
 he did these things. And yet is it not ridiculous to demand that others follow a procedure
 which you yourself have not used in the slightest degree? Nay, your account is far less credible than mine, since I attribute to him no impossible
 deed, but only laws and political organization, which are the accomplishments of honorable
 men, whereas you represent him as the author of two astounding acts which no human being
 would commit, one requiring the cruelty of wild beasts, the other the power of the gods.
 Further, even if both of us, perchance, are wrong, I, at any rate, have used only such
 arguments as authors of eulogies must use; you, on the contrary, have employed those which
 are appropriate to revilers. Consequently, it is obvious that you have gone astray, not
 only from the truth, but also from the entire pattern which must be employed in eulogy.
 Apart from these considerations, if your discourse should be put aside and mine
 carefully examined, no one would justly find fault with it. For if it were manifest that
 another had done the deeds which I assert were done by him, I acknowledge that I am
 exceedingly audacious in trying to change men’s views about matters of which all the world
 has knowledge. But as it is, since the question is open to the judgement of all and one must resort to
 conjecture, who, reasoning from what is probable, would be considered to have a better
 claim to the authorship of the institutions of Egypt rather than a son of Poseidon, a descendant of Zeus on his mother’s
 side, the most powerful personage of his time and the most renowned among all other
 peoples? For surely it is not fitting that any who were in all these respects inferior
 should, in preference to Busiris, have the credit of being the authors of those great
 benefactions.