Against Flaccus (166-170)

With such discourses as these, he was continually being cast down, and in a manner, as I may say, prostrated; and avoiding all places where he might be likely to meet with many persons on account of the shame which clung to him, he never went down to the harbour, nor could he endure to visit the market-place, but shut himself up in his house, where he kept himself close, never venturing to go beyond the outer court.

But sometimes indeed, in the deepest twilight of the dawn, when every one else was still in bed, so that he could be seen by no one whatever, he would go forth out of the city and spend the entire day in the desolate part of the island, turning away if any one seemed likely to meet him; and being torn as to his soul with the memorials of his misfortunes which he saw about him in his house, and being devoured with anguish, he went back home in the darkness of the night, praying, by reason of his immoderate and never-ending misery, that the evening would become morning, dreading the darkness and the strange appearances which represented themselves to him when he went to sleep, and again in the morning he prayed that it might be evening; [*] for the darkness which surrounded him was opposed to everything light or cheerful.

And a few months afterwards, having purchased a small piece of land, he spent a great deal of his time there living by himself, and bewailing and weeping over his fate.

It is said too, that often at midnight he became possessed like those who celebrate the rites of the Corybantes, and at such times he would go forth out of his farm-house and raise his eyes to heaven and to the stars, and beholding all the beauty really existing in the world, he would cry out,

"O King of gods and men! you are not, then, indifferent to the Jewish nation, nor are the assertions which they relate with respect to your providence false; but those men who say that that people has not you for their champion and defender, are far from a correct [*]