And when they came near to them they put forth immodest wanton looks, and sought to entice them with caressing words, and dances, and lascivious movements; and in this way they enticed the shallow-minded company of the young men, youths whose dispositions had no ballast nor steadiness in them. And by the shame of their own bodies they captivated the souls of those who came to them, bringing them over to unholy sacrifices which ought not to have been sacrificed, and to libations which should never have been offered in honour of deities made with hands, and thus they alienated them from the worship of the one only and truly divine God. And when they had accomplished their purpose, they sent the glad tidings to the men of their nation;

and they would have been likely to draw over others also of the firmer and strongerminded sort, if the bountiful and merciful God had not taken compassion upon their unhappy state, and by the prompt punishment of those who had gone astray and wrought folly (and they were twenty-four thousand men), by which he admonished and checked by terror those others who were in danger of being carried away by the torrent.

But the ruler of the whole nation, infusing into the ears of his people doctrines of piety, and charming the souls of his subjects with them, selected and picked out a thousand men of each tribe, choosing them with regard to their excellence, and he bade them to inflict upon the enemy punishment for the treachery which they had contrived by means of the women, when they hoped to destroy the whole multitude by casting them down from the heights of their pure and sublime piety, though, in effect, they were only able to delude those whom I have enumerated.