author
active 180 Celsus (Platonic philosopher)
A sharp-tongued 2nd-century Platonist, this writer is remembered for one of the earliest sustained pagan critiques of Christianity. Although his own book survives only in fragments quoted by an opponent, it still offers a vivid glimpse of the religious and philosophical debates of the Roman world.
1 Audiobook
Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, Against the Christians Also Extracts from Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, and Tacitus, Relating to the Jews, Together with an Appendix
by active 180 Celsus (Platonic philosopher), Siculus Diodorus, Flavius Josephus, Emperor of Rome Julian, Porphyry, Cornelius Tacitus
About the author
Little is known for certain about Celsus beyond his activity in the later 2nd century CE. He is usually placed around the 170s, and ancient sources remember him as a philosopher working in a broadly Platonic tradition.
He is best known for The True Word (also translated as The True Doctrine or True Discourse), a forceful attack on Christianity. The original text has not survived on its own; most of what we know comes from Origen, who quoted and answered it at length in Contra Celsum in the 3rd century.
What makes Celsus important is not just his criticism, but the window he gives into his time. His arguments show a thinker defending traditional religion, inherited social order, and philosophical reason against a movement he saw as new and disruptive, making him a key witness to the intellectual clashes of the early Roman Empire.