Against Celsus 4.77

Next, forgetting that his purpose is to accuse Jews and Christians, he raises against himself an iambic line of Euripides that opposes his view, and, closing with what was said, accuses it of being wrongly said. Celsus's passage runs thus: "And if you quote the line of Euripides, that 'sun and night are servants to mortals,' why to us rather than to ants and flies? For to them too 'night' comes for rest, and day for seeing and working." It is clear, then, that not only some Jews and Christians have said that the sun and the things in heaven serve us, but also the one some call the philosopher of the stage, who had been a hearer of Anaxagoras's natural philosophy; he says, by synecdoche from the one rational being, man, that the things ordered in the universe serve all rational beings, which again are indicated by synecdoche in "sun and night." Or perhaps the tragedian also named the day from the sun, which makes the day, teaching that the things that most need day and night are those beneath the moon, and others not so much as those on earth. Day, then, and "night serve mortals," having come into being for the sake of rational beings. And if ants and flies, working by day and resting by night, share incidentally in what came into being for human beings, it must not be said that day and night come into being for ants and flies too, nor for no reason at all; rather one must believe that these things came into being by providence for the sake of human beings.