It is now lost, but its general character is well known from the works of Eusebius, Jerome, and others.  The style was caustic and trenchant.  An endeavour was made to show that both the historical scriptures of the Old Testament and the Gospels and Acts in the New were full of discrepancies and contradictions.  The history and antiquities of the Jews, as put forth in the Bible, were examined, and declared to be unworthy of credit.  A special attack was made on the genuineness and authenticity of the book of Daniel, which was pronounced to be the work of a contemporary of Antiochus Epiphanes, who succeeded in palming off upon his countrymen his own crude production as the work of the venerated sage and prophet.  Prevalent modes of interpreting scripture were passed under review, and the allegorical exegesis of Origen was handled with especial severity.  The work is said to have produced a vast effect, especially among the upper classes, whose conversion to Christianity it tended greatly to check and hinder.  Answers to the book, or to particular portions of it, were published by Eusebius of Caesarea, by Apollinaris, and by Methodius, Bishop of Tyre; but these writers had neither the learning nor the genius of their opponent, and did little to counteract the influence of his work on the upper grades of society.[14488]

The literary importance of the Phoenician cities under the Romans is altogether remarkable.  Under Augustus and Tiberius—­especially from about B.C. 40 to A.D. 20—­Sidon was the seat of a philosophical school, in which the works of Aristotle were studied and explained,[14489] perhaps to some extent criticised.[14490] Strabo attended this school for a time in conjunction with two other students, named Boethus and Diodotus.  Tyre had even previously produced the philosophers, Antipater, who was intimate with the younger Cato, and Apollonius, who wrote a work about Zeno, and formed a descriptive catalogue of the authors who had composed books on the subject of the philosophy of the Stoics.[14491] Strabo goes so far as to say that philosophy in all its various aspects might in his day be better studied at Tyre and Sidon than anywhere else.[14492] A little later we find Byblus producing the semi-religious historian, Philo, who professed to reveal to the Greeks the secrets of the ancient Phoenician mythology, and who, whatever we may think of his judgment, was certainly a man of considerable learning.  He was followed by his pupil, Hermippus, who was contemporary with Trajan and Hadrian, and obtained some reputation as a critic and grammarian.[14493] About the same time flourished Marinus, the writer on geography, who was a Tyrian by birth, and “the first author who substituted maps, mathematically constructed according to latitude and longitude, for the itinerary charts” of his predecessors.[14494] Ptolemy of Pelusium based his great work entirely upon that of Marinus, who is believed to have utilised the geographical and hydrographical