CHAPTER XXXI

OF AFRICANUS

AT this time, also, flourished Africanus, who wrote the books with the title Cesti. There is an epistle of his extant, addressed to Origen, in which he intimates his doubts on the history of Susannah, in Daniel, as if it were a spurious and fictitious composition; to which Origen wrote a very full answer. Other works of the same Africanus that have reached us, are his five books of Chronography, a most accurate and laboured performance. In these, he says that he had gone to Alexandria, on account of the great celebrity of Heraclas; the same that we have already shown was advanced to the episcopate there, and who was, also, very eminent for his skill in philosophical studies, and the other sciences of the Greeks. Another epistle of the same Africanus is also extant, addressed to Aristides, on the supposed discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ. In this he most clearly establishes the consistency of the two evangelists, from an account which had been handed down from his ancestors, which, in its proper place, we have already anticipated in the first book of the work we have in hand.