⁶³³ The following excerpt from Ps.-Hecataeus is so truncated as to be obscure: What honor? Who are “us” within whom he was acquainted? Who are “those in his company”? What is “the difference” (if that the right translation)? And what does the final clause mean? It appears that Josephus is less interested in the narrative context and in the figure of Ezekias himself than in some element in this citation, and that his eye is drawn in particular by the reference to a “constitution” ( πολιτεία), a term of great significance to him in 2.145-286, as in Antiquities (see Mason in Feldmann 2000: xxiv-xxix). The impression of a priestly, written constitution exactly fits the image he projects in book 2, and the allusion to this by a “Greek” author is a gift too valuable to ignore, even if accompanied by obscurities.