Against Celsus 3.50

Let us see also his next words, which run: “But we see, surely, that those in the marketplaces who put on the most disreputable shows and go about collecting money would never come forward into a gathering of sensible men, nor dare to display their tricks among them; but wherever they see adolescents and a crowd of house-slaves and a throng of foolish people, there they push themselves in and show off.” See how in these words too he slanders us, likening us to those who put on the most disreputable shows in the marketplaces and collect money. What disreputable things, pray, do we display? Or what do we do that resembles them, we who, both through readings and through expositions of the readings, exhort people to piety toward the God of the universe and to the virtues enthroned with it, and turn them away from despising the divine and from all things done contrary to right reason? Philosophers too would pray to gather so many hearers of words that summon them to the good; which some of the Cynics in particular have done, conversing in public with whoever happened by. Will they then say that these men too, who do not assemble those thought to be educated but call hearers from the crossroads and gather them, are like those who put on the most disreputable shows in the marketplaces and collect money? But neither Celsus nor anyone of the same mind accuses those who, from what seems to them love of mankind, address their words even to the common people.