Hdt. ii. 69; cf. Juv. Sat. xv. 36, ‘numina vicinorum Odit uterque locus.’ This is one of the few places where Athanasius has any Egyptian ‘local colour’ (cf. supra 9 and 10). M. Fialon is certainly too imaginative (p. 86 contradicted p. 283), when he sees in the contra Gentes an appreciation of the higher religious principles which the modern science (‘toute Francaise’) of Egyptology has enabled us to read behind the grotesque features of popular Egyptian polytheism.