62. But the milder and more kingly part, the way of persuasion, he forsooth takes for himself; he did not, however, play this part quite perfectly, for neither is it in Nature that either the leopard should put off its spots or the Aethiopian his blackness, or the fire its burning, or the wicked one, being a murderer from the beginning, his hatred of man, or that he should put off that spiteful disposition with which he started against us. But as the story goes that the chameleon becomes all kinds of colours and readily assumes every hue except the white (for I pass by the Proteus of the fable, that Egyptian trickster), in the same way that man also was and became everything towards the Christians except clemency, and his humanity was very inhuman, and his persuasiveness compulsion, and his goodness an excuse for savageness: in order that he might appear to use force with good reason, when he had failed in persuading.

ΞΒʹ. Ὃ δὲ ἡμερώτερον καὶ βασιλικώτερον, εἰς ἑαυτὸν δῆθεν φέρει, τὸ τῆς πειθοῦς: οὐ μὴν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς τοῦτό γε διεσώσατο: οὐδὲ γὰρ εἶχε φύσιν ἢ πάρδαλιν ἀποθέσθαι τὸ κατάστικτον, ἢ Αἰθίοπα τὸ μέλαν, ἢ πῦρ τὸ καίειν, ἢ τὸν πονηρὸν τὴν μισανθρωπίαν ἀπαρχῆς ἀνθρωποκτόνον τυγχάνοντα, ἢ ἐκεῖνον τὴν πονηρίαν, ἀφ' ἧς καθ' ἡμῶν ὥρμησεν: ἀλλ' ὥσπερ τὸν χαμαιλέοντα λόγος παντοῖον γίνεσθαι ῥᾳδίως, καὶ πάσας μὲν ἀναλαμβάνειν χρόας, πλὴν μιᾶς τῆς λευκότητος, τὸν γὰρ Πρωτέα παρίημι τὸν τοῦ μύθου τὸν Αἰγύπτιον σοφιστὴν, οὕτω κἀκεῖνος πάντα ἦν καὶ ἐγίνετο Χριστιανοῖς, πλὴν ἡμερότητος, καὶ ἦν λίαν ἀπάνθρωπον αὐτῷ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον, καὶ τὸ πιθανὸν βίαιον, καὶ ἀπολογία τῆς ἀγριότητος ἡ χρηστότης: ἵν' εἰκότως δοκῇ βιάζεσθαι, τοῦ πείθειν ἀποτυγχάνων.