Celsus’s heroes weighed

Since, then, he sends us back to Heracles, let him set before us records of Heracles’ sayings, and let him defend his unseemly slavery in the house of Omphale. Let him show whether divine honour was due to the one who took the farmer’s ox by force, like a robber, feasted on it, and enjoyed the curses the farmer called down on him as he ate; so that even to this day the demon of Heracles is said to receive its sacrifice with curses. He also calls us to repeat ourselves about Asclepius, though we have already spoken about him; but we are content with what we said there.

And what did he admire in Orpheus, that he says that he “by common consent had a holy spirit” and lived a good life? I should be surprised if Celsus too, who now sings the praises of Orpheus out of rivalry with us and in order to belittle Jesus, did not turn away from his poems when he came upon his impious myths about the gods, as deserving to be banished from the good state even more than the poems of Homer (Plato, Republic 398a, 607a). For Orpheus said far worse things than Homer about the so-called gods.

Anaxarchus, to be sure, was noble when he said to Aristocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, “Pound, pound the bag of Anaxarchus.” But this is the one thing about Anaxarchus that the Greeks know and admire; and even if, as Celsus holds, some people ought rightly to revere a man for his virtue, it would not have been reasonable, on the strength of this, to proclaim Anaxarchus a god.

He also sends us to Epictetus, admiring what Epictetus did indeed say nobly; yet not so nobly that his saying when his leg was broken can be compared with the marvellous works of Jesus, which Celsus disbelieves, and with his words. For these were spoken with divine power, and to this day they convert not only some of the simpler folk but also many of the more intelligent.