Against Celsus 7.36

After this, in answer to what we have said as well as we could, Celsus again says something like this: “And they will say again: How will they know God if they do not apprehend him by sense? What is it possible to learn without sense?” Then, answering this, he says: “This is the voice not of a man, nor of the soul, but of the flesh. Nevertheless, let them listen, if they are able to understand anything, cowardly and body-loving race that they are: if you close your senses and look up with the mind, and turning from the flesh awaken the eyes of the soul, only so will you see God. And if you seek a guide for this road, you must shun the deceivers and sorcerers and those who pander to idols, so that you may not be utterly ridiculous, blaspheming the others, the gods that are displayed, as idols, while worshipping one more wretched than even real idols, not even an idol any longer but truly a corpse, and seeking a father like him.” First we must say, in reply to his impersonation, in which he puts in our mouths words as though spoken by us in defence of the resurrection of the flesh, that the virtue of one who writes speeches in character is to keep the intention and the character of the person portrayed, and the fault is when someone puts words that do not fit into the mouth of the speaker. Equally blameworthy are those who, in speeches in character, put upon barbarians and uneducated people or household slaves, who have never heard philosophical discourse nor spoken well, a philosophy which the writer has learned but which the person portrayed could not be expected to know; and again those who put upon characters supposed to be wise and to know divine things what is said by the uneducated out of ordinary passions and reported out of ignorance. That is why Homer is admired in many respects, having kept the characters of the heroes as he established them from the start, for instance that of Nestor, or Odysseus, or Diomedes, or Agamemnon, or Telemachus, or Penelope, or any of the others; while Euripides is mocked by Aristophanes as one who speaks out of season, because he often put speeches of doctrines which he had learned from Anaxagoras or some other wise man into the mouths of barbarian women or slaves.