Alexander

No doubt, my dear Celsus,[*](The scholiast thinks this Celsus the writer of the True Word, an attack upon Christianity, to which Origen replied in his eight books contra Celsum. He is certainly identical with the man whom Origen himself believed to be the author of that work, who, he says, was an Epicurean living under Hadrian and the Antonines, author also of a treatise against sorcery (vide c. 21 and note). And the True Word itself, a large part of which is preserved in Origen, seems to have been written about a.d. 180. But as Origen is not sure who wrote it, and as it is considered Platonic rather than Epicurean in character, the prevailing opinion is that its author is not the Celsus of Lucian, but an otherwise unknown Platonist of the same name and date. ) you think it a slight and trivial matter to bid me set down in a book and send you the history of Alexander, the impostor of Abonoteichus, including all his clever schemes, bold emprises, and sleights of hand; but in point of fact, if one should aim to examine each detail closely, it would be no less a task than to record the exploits of Philip’s son Alexander. The one was as great in ' villainy as the other in heroism. Nevertheless, if it should be your intention to overlook faults as you read, and to fill out for yourself the gaps in my tale, I will undertake the task for you and will essay to clean up that Augean stable, if not wholly, yet to the extent of my ability, fetching out some few basketsful, so that from them you may judge how great, how inexpressible, was the entire quantity

of filth that three thousand head of cattle were able to create in many years.