All that is known about Celsus personally is what comes from the surviving text of his book and from what Origen says about him. Although Origen initially refers to Celsus as an "Epicurean", his arguments reflect ideas of the Platonizing tradition, rather than Epicureanism. Origen attributes this to Celsus's inconsistency, but modern historians see it instead as evidence that Celsus was not an Epicurean at all. Joseph Wilson Trigg states that Origen probably confused Celsus, the author of The True Word, with a different Celsus, who was an Epicurean philosopher and a friend of the Syrian satirist Lucian. Celsus the Epicurean must have lived around the same time as the author of Contra Celsum and he is mentioned by Lucian in his treatise On Magic. Both Celsus the friend of Lucian and Celsus the author of The True Word evidently shared a passionate zeal against superstitio, making it even easier to see how Origen could have concluded that they were the same person.
