I think an important note. The title of Hierocles's treatise (which is the first cited Greek text of Eusebius) is Φιλαλήθης λόγος; Celsus authored a treatise called Αληθής Λόγος. This mockery of the visionary figure is sometimes combined with disdain of Peter’s intellectual abilities. There seems to be some overlap in their arguments in terms of an aristocratic contempt towards the humble origin of the Galilean fisherman Peter. It is argued that since the former craftsman could not master any intellectual subtlety, he could only rely on his ability to tell lies. Celsus made use of the argument:
Jesus collected round him ten or eleven infamous men, the most wicked tax collectors and sailors and with these fled hither and thither, gathering a means of livelihood in a disgraceful and importunate way. Let us now deal with this as well as we can. It is evident to readers of the gospels, which Celsus does not appear even to have read that Jesus chose twelve apostles, of whom only Matthew was a tax collector. Those whom he muddles together as sailors are probably James and John since they left the ship and their father Zebedee and followed Jesus. For Peter and his brother Andrew, who earned the necessities of life with a fishing net, are to be reckoned not among sailors, but, as the Bible says, among fishermen.
The Proconsul of Bithynia Sossianus Hierocles (4th c.), in his Φιλαλήθης λόγος makes the same claim, according to Lactantius:
He laid into Paul and Peter especially, and into the other disciples, as “disseminators of falsehood,” claiming that they were also “untrained and uneducated, since some of them made a living as fishermen”: was he put out because fishing had had no commentary from an Aristophanes or an Aristarchus?