Against Celsus 7.6

But as it is, the Pythian god admired among the Greeks judged no wise man, nor indeed any man at all, worthy of what the Greeks suppose to be divine possession; nor, among women, a virgin or a wise woman helped by philosophy, but an ordinary woman. Perhaps the better people were too good for his activity of possession. And if he were a god, he ought to have used his foreknowledge as a bait, so to speak, for the conversion, healing, and moral improvement of men; but as it is, history records nothing of the kind about him. For even if he said that Socrates was the wisest of all men, he blunted his praise by what he said before this about Euripides and Sophocles: “Sophocles is wise, Euripides wiser.” So Socrates, being thought better than tragic poets called wise by him, men who compete on the stage and in the orchestra for any prize at all and who produce now grief and pity in the spectators, now indecent laughter (for that is the aim of satyr plays), is not at all shown to be venerable for philosophy and truth and praiseworthy for his venerableness. And perhaps he called him the wisest of all men not so much for his philosophy as for the sacrifices and the savour of fat he offered to him and to the other demons. For the demons seem to do what is asked of them by those who bring them offerings more for these reasons than for the works of virtue. That is why Homer, the best of poets, describing what happens and teaching what most persuades the demons to do what those who sacrifice wish, brought in Chryses, who, for a few garlands and thigh-pieces of bulls and goats, obtained what he asked against the Greeks for the sake of his daughter, so that they would be struck by plague and give him back Chryseis. I remember reading in one of the Pythagoreans, who wrote about the hidden meanings in the poet, that the words of Chryses to Apollo and the plague sent by Apollo on the Greeks teach that Homer knew that certain evil demons, delighting in savour and sacrifices, pay as wages to those who sacrifice the destruction of others, if the sacrificers pray for this. And “the lord of wintry Dodona,” whose prophets are “men with unwashed feet who sleep on the ground,” having rejected the male sex for prophecy, uses the priestesses of Dodona, as Celsus himself noted. Let there be one like these at Claros, another at Branchidae, another at the shrine of Ammon, or wherever on earth they prophesy: how, then, will it be shown that they are gods and not certain demons?