Against Celsus 6.39

Then, against those who, as he says, use a kind of magic and sorcery and invoke barbarous names of certain demons, he says such things, that these people act like those who tell marvels about the same beings to those who do not know that their names are different among the Greeks and among the Scythians. Then he sets out, taking it from Herodotus, that the Scythians call Apollo Gongosyrus, Poseidon Thagimasadas, Aphrodite Argimpasa, and Hestia Tabiti. Anyone who is able will examine whether here too Celsus, along with Herodotus, is not mistaken, since the Scythians do not understand the same things as the Greeks about those whom they consider gods. For what likelihood is there that Apollo is called Gongosyrus among the Scythians? For I do not think that Gongosyrus, translated into Greek, gives the etymology of Apollo, or that Apollo in the Scythian language means Gongosyrus. Nor will one say the same about the rest: for the Greeks named those they considered gods starting from certain things and etymologies, the Scythians from others, and likewise the Persians from others, and the Indians or Ethiopians or Libyans from others, or as each chose to name them, since they did not remain in the first and pure conception of the Creator of the universe. We have said enough on this earlier too, when we wished to show that Sabaoth and Zeus are not the same, and quoted something from the divine writings about languages. So we willingly pass over these things, in which Celsus calls us to repeat ourselves. Then again, jumbling together matters of magical sorcery, and attaching them perhaps to no one, since there are no sorcerers who practise under the pretext of this form of piety, or perhaps to some who use such things with the easily deceived so as to seem to do something by divine power, he sets out certain things, saying: Why need I list all those who have taught purifications, or releasing songs, or averting cries, or rattlings, or demonic figures, or all kinds of protective remedies made of clothes or numbers or stones or plants or roots, and in general of every sort of thing? Reason does not require us to answer for these, since we are not in the least involved in such suspicions.