Book X seems at first sight likely to solve many of the questions

which every reader who has got so far is compelled to ask. It begins,

in accordance with the habit just noted, with the statement that the

author has now worked through “the Labyrinth of Heresies” and that the

teachings of truth are to be found neither in the philosophies of the

Greeks, the secret mysteries of the Egyptians, the formulas of the

Chaldæans or astrologers, nor the ravings of Babylonian magic.[60]

This links it with fair closeness to the reference in Book IV to the

ideas of the Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Chaldæans, only the

first-named nation being here omitted from the text. It then goes on

to say that “having brought together the opinions[61] of all the wise

men among the _Greeks_ in four books and those of the heresiarchs in

five,” he will make a summary of them. It will be noted that this

is in complete contradiction to the supposition that the missing

Books II and III contained the doctrines of the Babylonians, as he

now says that they comprised those of the Greeks only. The summary

which follows might have been expected to make this confusion clear,

but unfortunately it does nothing of the kind. It does indeed give

so good an abstract of what has been said in Books V to IX inclusive

regarding the chief heresiarchs, that in one or two places it enables

us to correct doubtful phrases and to fill in gaps left in earlier

books. There is omitted from the summary, however, all mention of the

heresies of Marcus, Satornilus, Menander, Carpocrates, the Nicolaitans,

Docetæ, Quartodecimans, Encratites and the Jewish sects, and the list

of omissions will probably be thought too long to be accounted for

on the ground of mere carelessness. But when the summarizer deals

with the earlier books, the discrepancy between the summary and the

documents summarized is much more startling. Among the philosophers, he

omits to summarize the opinions of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Ecphantus,

Hippo, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Academics, Brachmans,

or Druids, while he does mention those of Hippasus, Ocellus Lucanus,

Heraclides of Pontus and Asclepiades, who were not named in any of

the texts of Book I which have come down to us. As for the tenets

and practices of the Persians, Egyptians and others, supposed on the

strength of the statement at the beginning of Book V to have been

narrated in Books II and III, nothing further is here said concerning

them, and, by the little table of contents with which Book X like the

others is prefaced, it will appear that nothing was intended to be

said. For this last omission it might be possible to assign plausible

reasons if it stood alone; but when it is coupled with the variations

between summary and original as regards Book I, the only inference that

meets all the facts is that the summarizer did not have the first four

books under his eyes.

This has led some critics to conclude that the summary is by another

hand. There is nothing in the literary manners of the age to compel us

to reject this supposition, and similar cases have been quoted. The

evidence of style is, however, against it, and it is unlikely that

if the summarizer were any other person than Hippolytus, he would

have taken up Hippolytus’ personal quarrel against Callistus. Yet in

the text of Book X before us the charge of heresy against Callistus

is repeated, although perhaps with less asperity than in Book IX,

the accusations against his morals being omitted. Nor is it easy to

dissociate from Hippolytus the really eloquent appeal to men of all

nations to escape the terrors of Tartarus and gain an immortality of

bliss by becoming converted to the Doctrine of Truth with which the

Book ends, after an excursion into Hebrew Chronology, a subject which

always had great fascination for Hippolytus. Although the matter is not

beyond doubt, it would appear, therefore, that the summary, like the

rest of the book, is by Hippolytus’ own hand.

In these circumstances there is but one theory that in the opinion

of the present writer will reconcile all the conflicting facts. This

is that the foundation of our text _is_ the synopsis that Hippolytus

made, as Photius tells us, after receiving instruction from Irenæus;

that those notes were, as Hippolytus himself says, “set forth” by him

possibly in the form of lectures, equally possibly in writing, but in

any case a long time before our text was compiled; and that when his

rivalry with Callistus became acute, he thought of republishing these

discourses and bringing them up to date by adding to them the Noetian

and other non-Gnostic heresies which were then making headway among the

Christian community, together with the facts about the divinatory and

magical tricks which had come to his knowledge during his long stay in

Rome. We may next conjecture that, after the greater part of his book

was written, chance threw in his way the documents belonging to the

Naassene and other Ophite sects, which went back to the earliest days

of Christianity and were probably in Hippolytus’ time on the verge

of extinction.[62] He had before determined to omit these sects as

of slight importance,[63] but now perceiving the interest of the new

documents, he hastily incorporated them in his book immediately after

his account of the magicians, so that they might appear as what he with

some truth said they were, to wit, the fount and source of all later

Gnosticism. To do this, he had to displace the account of the Jewish

and Samaritan sects with which all the heresiologists of the time

thought it necessary to begin their histories. He probably felt the

less reluctance in doing so, because the usual mention of these sects

as “heresies” in some sort contradicted his pet theory, which was that

the Gnostic tenets were not a mere perversion of Christian teaching,

but were derived from philosophic theories of the creation of things,

and from the mystic rites.

Next let us suppose that at the close of his life, when he was perhaps

hiding from Maximin’s inquisitors, or even when he was at the Sardinian

mines, he thought of preserving his work for posterity by re-writing

it--such copies as he had left behind him in Rome having been doubtless

seized by the Imperial authorities.[64] Not having the material that he

had before used then at his disposal, he had to make the best summary

that he could from memory, and in the course of this found that the

contents of the Books I, II, and III--the material for which he had

drawn in the first instance from Irenæus--had more or less escaped

him. He was probably able to recall some part of Book I by the help of

heathen works like those of Diogenes Laertius, Aetius, or perhaps that

Alcinous whose summary of Plato’s doctrines seem to have been formerly

used by him.[65] The Ophite and other Gnostic heresies he remembers

sufficiently to make his summary of their doctrines more easy,

although he omits from the list heresiarchs like Marcus, Satornilus

and Menander, about whom he had never had any exclusive information,

and he now puts Justinus after instead of before Basilides. Finally,

he remembered the Jewish sects which he had once intended to include,

and being perhaps able to command, even in the mines, the work of a

Romanized but unconverted Jew like Josephus, took from it such facts as

seemed useful for his purpose as an introduction to the chronological

speculation which had once formed his favourite study. With this

summary as his guide he continued, it may be, to warn the companions in

adversity to whom he tells us he had “become an adviser,” against the

perils of heresy, and to appeal to his unconverted listeners with what

his former translator calls not unfitly “a noble specimen of patristic

eloquence.” That he died in the mines is most probable, not only from

his advanced age at the time of exile and the consequent unlikelihood

that he would be able to withstand the pestilential climate, but also

from the record of his body having been “deposited” in the Catacombs

on the same day with that of his fellow-Pope and martyr Pontianus.[66]

Yet the persecution of Maximin, though sharp, was short, and on the

death of the tyrant after a reign of barely three years, there is no

reason why the transcript of Book X should not have reached Rome, where

there is some reason to think it was known from its opening words as

“the Labyrinth.” Later it was probably appended to Books IV to IX of

Hippolytus’ better known work, and the whole copied for the use of

those officials who had to enquire into heresy. To them, Books II and

III would be useless, and they probably thought it inexpedient to

perpetuate any greater knowledge than was necessary for their better

suppression, of the unclean mysteries of either pagan or Gnostic. As

for Book I, besides being harmless, it had possibly by that time become

too firmly connected with the name of Origen for its attribution to

this other sufferer in the Maximinian persecution to be disturbed in

later times.

It only remains to see how this theory fits in with the remarks of

Photius given above. It is fairly evident that Photius is speaking

from recollection only, and that the words do not suggest that

he had Hippolytus’ actual work before him when writing, while he

throughout speaks of it in the past tense as one might speak of a

document which has long since perished, although some memory of its

contents have been preserved. If this were so, we might be prepared

to take Photius’ description as not necessarily accurate in every

detail; yet, as we have it, it is almost a perfect description of

our text. The 32 heresies, as we have shown above, appear in our

text as in Photius’ document. Our text contains not only the large

excerpts from Irenæus which we might expect from Photius’ account

of its inception, but also the “refutations” which do not appear in

the _Adversus Omnes Hæreses_. It extends “up to,” as Photius says,

Noetus and the Noetians, and although it does not contain any mention

of Dositheus or the Dositheans, this may have been given in the part

which has been cut out of Book X.[67] If that were the case, or if

Photius has made any mistake in the matter, as one might easily do

when we consider that all the early heresiologies begin with Jewish

and Samaritan sects, the only real discrepancy between our text and

Photius’ description of Hippolytus’ work is in the matter of length.

But it is by no means certain that Photius ever saw the whole work

put together, and it is plain that he had never seen or had forgotten

the first four books dealing with the philosophers, the mysteries and

the charlatans. Without these, and without the summary, Books V to IX

do not work out to more than 70,000 words in all, and this might well

seem a mere “booklet” to a man then engaged in the compilation of his

huge _Bibliotheca_. Whether, then, Hippolytus did or did not reduce

to writing the exposition of heresies which he made in his youth, it

seems probable that all certain trace of this exposition is lost. It is

certainly not to be recognized in pseudo-Tertullian’s _Adversus Omnes

Hæreses_, and the work of Hippolytus recorded by Photius was probably a

copy of our text in a more or less complete form.

5. THE STYLE OF THE WORK

Photius’ remark that Hippolytus did not keep to the Attic style is an

understatement of the case with regard to our text. Jacobi, its first

critic, was so struck by the number of “Latinisms” that he found in it

as to conjecture that it is nothing but a Greek translation of a Latin

original.[68] This is so unlikely as to be well-nigh impossible if

Hippolytus were indeed the author; and no motive for such translation

can be imagined unless it were made at a fairly late period. In that

case, we should expect to find it full of words and expressions used

only in Byzantine times when the Greek language had become debased by

Slav and Oriental admixtures. This, however, is not the case with our

text, and only one distinctly Byzantine phrase has rewarded a careful

search.[69] On the other hand neologisms are not rare, especially in

Book X,[70] and everything goes to show the truth of Cruice’s remark

that the author was evidently not a trained writer. This is by no means

inconsistent with the theory that the whole work is by Hippolytus,

and is the more probable if we conclude that it was originally spoken

instead of written.

This is confirmed when we look into the construction of the author’s

sentences. They are drawn out by a succession of relative clauses

to an extent very rare among even late Greek writers, more than one

sentence covering 20 or 30 lines of the printed page without a full

stop, while the usual rules as to the place and order of the words

are often neglected. Another peculiarity of style is the constant

piling up of several similes or tropes where only one would suffice,

which is very distinctly marked in the passages whenever the author

is speaking for long in his own person and without quoting the words

of another. In all these we seem to be listening to the words of a

fluent but rather laborious orator. Thus in Book I he compares the

joy that he expects to find in his work to that of an athlete gaining

the crown, of a merchant selling his goods after a long voyage, of a

husbandsman with his hardly won crops, and of a despised prophet seeing

his predictions fulfilled.[71] So in Book V, after mentioning a book

by Orpheus called _Bacchica_ otherwise unknown, he goes on to speak of

“the mystic rite of Celeus and Triptolemus and Demeter and Core and

Dionysus in Eleusis,”[72] when any practised writer would have said the

Eleusinian mysteries simply. A similar piling up of imagery is found in

Book VIII, where he speaks of the seed of the fig-tree as “a refuge for

the terror-stricken, a shelter for the naked, a veil for modesty, and

the sought-for produce to which the Lord came in search of fruit three

times and found none.”[73] But it is naturally in the phrases of the

pastoral address with which Book X ends that the most salient examples

occur. Thus, the unconverted are told that by being instructed in the

knowledge of the true God, they will escape the imminent menace of the

judgment fire, and the unillumined vision of gloomy Tartarus, and the

burning of the everlasting shore of the Gehenna of fire, and the eye of

the Tartaruchian angels in eternal punishment, and the worm that ever

coils as if for food round the body whence it was bred,[74]--or, as he

might have said in one word, the horrors of hell.

Less distinctive than this, although equally noticeable, is the play

of words which is here frequently employed. This is not unknown among

other ecclesiastical writers of the time, and seems to have struck

Charles Kingsley when, fresh from a perusal of St. Augustine, he

describes him as “by a sheer mistranslation” twisting one of the Psalms

to mean what it never meant in the writer’s mind, and what it never

could mean, and then punning on the Latin version.[75] Hippolytus

when writing in his own person makes but moderate use of this figure.

Sometimes he does so legitimately enough, as when he speaks of the

Gnostics initiating a convert into their systems and delivering to him

“the perfection of wickedness”--the word used for perfection having the

mystic or technical meaning of initiation as well as the more ordinary

one of completion[76]; or when he says that the measurements of stellar

distances by Ptolemy have led to the construction of measureless

“heresies.”[77] At others he consciously puns on the double meaning of

a word, as when he says that those who venture upon orgies are not far

from the wrath (ὀργή) of God.[78] Sometimes, again, he is led away by

a merely accidental similarity of sounds as when he tries to connect

the name of the Docetæ, which he knows is taken from δοκεῖν, “to seem,”

with “the _beam_ (δοκός) in the eye” of the Sermon on the Mount.[79] He

makes a second and more obvious pun on the same word later when he says

that the Docetæ do more than _seem_ to be mad; but he is most shameless

when he derives “prophet” from προφαίνειν instead of πρόφημι[80]--a

perversion which one can hardly imagine entering into the head of any

one with the most modest acquaintance with Greek grammar.

But these puns, bad as they are, are venial compared with some of

the authors from whom he quotes. None can equal in this respect the

efforts of the Naassene author, whose plays upon words and audacious

derivations might put to the blush those in the _Cratylus_. Adamas and

Adam, Corybas and κορυφή (the head), Geryon and Γηρυόνην (“flowing

from earth”), Mesopotamia and “a river from the middle,” Papas and

παῦε, παῦε (“Cease! cease!”), Αἰπόλος (“goat herd”) and ἀεὶ πολῶν

(“ever turning”), _naas_ (“serpent”) and ναός (“temple”), Euphrates

and εὐφραίνει (“he rejoices”) are but a few of the terrible puns he

perpetrates.[81] The Peratic author is more sober in this respect,

and yet he, or perhaps Hippolytus for him, derives the name of the

sect from περᾶν (“to pass beyond”),[82] although Theodoret with

more plausibility would take it from the nationality of its teacher

Euphrates the Peratic or Mede; and the chapter on the Sethians does

not contain a single pun. Yet that on Justinus makes up for this by

deriving the name of the god Priapus from πριοποιέω, a word made

up for the occasion.[83] “The great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time,”

viz.:--Basilides, Marcion and Valentinus, seem to have had souls above

such puerilities; but the Docetic author resumes the habit with a

specially daring parallel between Βάτος (“a bush”) and βάτος (Hera’s

robe or “mist”)[84] and Monoimus the Arab follows suit with a sort

of jingle between the Decalogue and the δεκάπληγος or ten plagues

of Egypt, which would hardly have occurred to any one without the

Semitic taste for assonance.[85] Of the less-quoted writers there is

no occasion to speak, because there are either no extracts from their

works given in our text or they are too short for us to judge from them

whether they, too, were given to punning.

Apart from such comparatively small matters, however, the difference in

style between the several Gnostic writers here quoted is well marked.

Nothing can be more singular at first sight than the way in which the

Naassene author expresses himself. It seems to the reader on the first

perusal of his lucubrations as if the writer had made up his mind to

follow no train of thought beyond the limits of a single sentence.

Beginning with the idea of the First Man, which we find running like

a thread through so many Eastern creeds, from that of the Cabalists

among the Jews to the Manichæans who perhaps took it directly from

its primitive source in Babylon,[86] he immediately turns from this

to declare the tripartite division of the universe and everything it

contains, including the souls and natures of men, and to inculcate the

strictest asceticism. Yet all this is written round, so to speak, a

hymn to Attis which he declares relates to the Mysteries of the Mother

with several allusions to the most secret rites of the Eleusinian

Demeter and, as it would appear, of those of the Greek Isis. The

Peratic author, on the other hand, also teaches a tripartite division

of things and souls, but draws his proofs not from the same mystic

sources as the Naassene but from what Hippolytus declares to be the

system of the astrologers. This system, which is not even hinted at in

any avowedly astrological work, is that the stars are the cause of all

that happens here below, and that we can only escape from their sway

into one of the two worlds lying above ours by the help of Christ, here

called the Perfect Serpent, existing as an intermediary between the

Father of All and Matter. Yet this doctrine, which we can also read

without much forcing of the text into the rhapsody of the Naassene, is

stated with all the precision and sobriety of a scientific proposition,

and is as entirely free from the fervour and breathlessness of the

last-named writer as it is from his perpetual allusions to the Greek

and especially to the Alexandrian and Anatolian mythology.[87] Both

these again are perfectly different in style from the “Sethian” author

from whom Hippolytus gives us long extracts, and who seems to have

trusted mainly to an imagery which is entirely opposed to all Western

conventions of modesty.[88] Yet all three aver the strongest belief

in the Divinity and Divine Mission of Jesus, whom they identify with

the Good Serpent, which was according to many modern authors the chief

material object of adoration in every heathen temple in Asia Minor.[89]

They are, therefore, rightly numbered by Hippolytus among the Ophite

heresies, and seem to be founded upon traditions current throughout

Western Asia which even now are not perhaps quite extinct. Yet each of

the three authors quoted in our text writes in a perfectly different

style from his two fellow heresiarchs, and this alone is sufficient to

remove all doubt as to the genuineness of the document.

These three Ophite chapters are taken first because in our text they

begin the heresiology strictly so called.[90] As has been said, the

present writer believes them to be an interpolation made at the last

moment by the author, and by no means the most valuable, though they

are perhaps the most curious part of the book. They resemble much,

however, in thought the quotations in our text attributed to Simon

Magus, and although the ideas apparent in them differ in material

points, yet there seems to be between the two sets of documents a

kind of family likeness in the occasional use of bombastic language

and unclean imagery. But when we turn from these to the extracts from

the works attributed to Valentinus and Basilides which Hippolytus

gives us, a change is immediately apparent. Here we have dignity of

language corresponding to dignity of thought, and in the case of

Valentinus especially the diction is quite equal to the passages from

the discourses of that most eloquent heretic quoted by Clement of

Alexandria. We feel on reading them that we have indeed travelled from

the Orontes to the Tiber, and the difference in style should by itself

convince the most sceptical critic at once of the good faith of our

careless author and of the authenticity of the sources from which he

has collected his information.

6. THE VALUE OF THE WORK

What interest has a work such as this of Hippolytus for us at the

present day? In the first place it preserves for us many precious

relics of a literature which before its discovery seemed lost for ever.

The pagan hymn to Attis and the Gnostic one on the Divine Mission

of Jesus, both appearing in Book V, are finds of the highest value

for the study of the religious beliefs of the early centuries of our

Era, and with these go many fragments of hardly less importance,

including the Pindaric ode in the same book. Not less useful or less

unexpected are the revelations in the same book of the true meaning

of the syncretistic worship of Attis and Cybele, and the disclosure

here made of the supreme mystery of the Eleusinian rites, which we now

know for the first time culminated in the representation of a divine

marriage and of the subsequent birth of an infant god, coupled with the

symbolical display of an “ear of corn reaped in silence.” For the study

of classical antiquity as well as for the science of religions such

facts are of the highest value.

But all this will for most of us yield in interest to the picture

which our text gives us of the struggles of Christianity against its

external and internal foes during the first three centuries. So far

from this period having been one of quiet growth and development for

the infant Church, we see her in Hippolytus’ pages exposed not only to

fierce if sporadic persecution from pagan emperors, but also to the

steady and persistent rivalry of scores of competing schools led by

some of the greatest minds of the age, and all combining some of the

main tenets of Christianity with the relics of heathenism. We now know,

too, that she was not always able to present an unbroken front to these

violent or insidious assailants. In the highest seats of the Church,

as we now learn for the first time, there were divisions on matters of

faith which anticipated in some measure those which nearly rent her

in twain after the promulgation of the Creed of Nicæa. Such a schism

as that between the churches of Hippolytus and Callistus must have

given many an opportunity to those foes who were in some sort of her

own household; while round the contest, like the irregular auxiliaries

of a regular army, swarmed a crowd of wonder-workers, diviners, and

other exploiters of the public credulity, of whose doings we have

before gained some insight from writers like Lucian and Apuleius, but

whose methods and practices are for the first time fully described by

Hippolytus.

The conversion of the whole Empire under Constantine broke once for all

the power of these enemies of the Church. Schisms were still to occur,

but grievous as they were, they happily proved impotent to destroy the

essential unity of Christendom. The heathen faiths and the Gnostic

sects derived from them were soon to wither like plants that had no

root, and both they and the charlatans whose doings our author details

were relentlessly hunted down by the State which had once given them

shelter: while if the means used for this purpose were not such as the

purer Christian ethics would now approve, we must remember that these

means would probably have proved ineffective had not Christian teaching

already destroyed the hold of these older beliefs on the seething

populations of the Empire. That the adolescent Church should thus have

been enabled to triumph over all her enemies may seem to many a better

proof of her divine guidance than the miraculous powers once attributed

to her. We may not all of us be able to believe that a rainstorm put

out the fire on which Thekla was to be burned alive, or that the

crocodiles in the tank in the arena into which she was cast were struck

by lightning and floated to the surface dead.[91] Still less can we

credit that the portraits of St. Theodore and other military saints

left their place in the palace of the Queen of Persia and walked about

in human form.[92] Such stories are for the most of us either pious

fables composed for edification or half-forgotten records of natural

events seen through the mist of exaggeration and misrepresentation

common in the Oriental mind. But that the Church which began like a

grain of mustard seed should in so short a time come to overshadow the

whole civilized world may well seem when we consider the difficulties

in her way a greater miracle than any of those recorded in the

Apocryphal Gospels and Acts; and the full extent of these difficulties

we should not have known save for Mynas’ discovery of our text.

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: pp. 63, 117, 119; Vol. II, 148, 150 _infra_.]

[Footnote 2: Hippolytus, like all Greek writers of his age, must have

been entirely ignorant of the Egyptian religion of Pharaonic times,

which was then extinct. The only “Egyptian” Mysteries of which he could

have known anything were those of the Alexandrian Triad, Osiris, Isis,

and Horus, for which see the translator’s _Forerunners and Rivals of

Christianity_, Cambridge, 1915, I, c. 2.]

[Footnote 3: The pre-Christian origins of Gnosticism and its relations

with Christianity are fully dealt with in the work quoted in the last

note.]

[Footnote 4: Save for a few sentences quoted in patristic writings,

the only extant Gnostic works are the Coptic collection in the British

Museum and the Bodleian at Oxford, known as the _Pistis Sophia_ and the

Bruce Papyrus respectively. There are said to be some other fragments

of Coptic MSS. of Gnostic origin in Berlin which have not yet been

published.]

[Footnote 5: An account by the present writer of this worship in Roman

times is given in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society for

October 1917, pp. 695 ff.]

[Footnote 6: II, pp. 125 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 7: II, p. 124 _infra_.]

[Footnote 8: The facsimile of a page of the MS. is given in Bishop

Wordsworth’s _Hippolytus and the Church of Rome_, London, 1880.]

[Footnote 9: B. E. Miller, _Origenis Philosophumena sive Omnium

Hæresium Refutatio_, Oxford, 1851.]

[Footnote 10: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, _Philosophumena_, etc.

Göttingen, 1856-1859.]

[Footnote 11: P. M. Cruice, _Philosophumena_, etc. Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 12: p. 34 _infra_.]

[Footnote 13: _Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenschaft und

Christliches Leben_, 1852.]

[Footnote 14: References to nearly all the contributions to this

controversy are correctly given in the Prolegomena to Cruice’s edition,

pp. x ff. An English translation of Dr. Döllinger’s _Hippolytus und

Kallistus_ was published by Plummer, Edinburgh, 1876, and brings the

controversy up to date. Cf. also the Bibliography in Salmon’s article

“Hippolytus Romanus” in Smith and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian

Biography_ (hereafter quoted as _D.C.B._).]

[Footnote 15: See the English translation: _Early History of the

Christian Church_, London, 1909, I, pp. 227 ff.]

[Footnote 16: This is confirmed by Dom. Chapman in the _Catholic

Encyclopedia_, _s. vv._ “Hippolytus,” “Callistus.”]

[Footnote 17: The statue and its inscription are also reproduced by

Bishop Wordsworth in the work above quoted.]

[Footnote 18: _Hist. Eccles._, VI, c. 20.]

[Footnote 19: _Haer. Fab._, III, 1.]

[Footnote 20: _Peristeph II._ For the chronological difficulty that

this involves see Salmon, _D.C.B._, _s.v._ “Hippolytus Romanus.”]

[Footnote 21: Duchesne, _op. cit._, p. 233.]

[Footnote 22: “The Cross-references in the Philosophumena,”

_Hermathena_, Dublin, No. XI, 1885, pp. 389 ff.]

[Footnote 23: “Die Gnostischen Quellen Hippolyts” in Gebhardt and

Harnack’s _Texte und Untersuchungen_, VI, (1890).]

[Footnote 24: _Introduction à l’Étude du Gnosticisme_, Paris, 1903, p.

68; _Gnostiques et Gnosticisme_, Paris, 1913, p. 167.]

[Footnote 25: The theory that all existing things come from an

“indivisible point” which our text gives as that of Simon Magus and

of Basilides reappears in the Bruce Papyrus. Basilides’ remark about

only 1 in 1000 and 2 in 10,000 being fit for the higher mysteries

is repeated _verbatim_ in the _Pistis Sophia_, p. 354, Copt. Cf.

_Forerunners_, II, 172, 292, n. 1.]

[Footnote 26: _Scottish Review_, Vol. XXII, No. 43 (July 1893).]

[Footnote 27: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 28: p. 39 _infra_.]

[Footnote 29: p. 41; II, p. 83 _infra_.]

[Footnote 30: II, pp. 119, 151 _infra_.]

[Footnote 31: For the arithmomancy see p. 83 ff. _infra_; the

borrowings from Sextus begin on p. 70, the tricks of the magicians on

p. 92. For other mistakes, see the quotation about the Furies in II,

p. 23, which he ascribes to Pythagoras, but which is certainly from

Heraclitus (as Plutarch tells us), and the Categories of Aristotle

which a few pages earlier are also assigned to Pythagoras. His

treatment of Josephus will be dealt with in its place.]

[Footnote 32: This is especially the case with the story of Callistus,

as to which see II, pp. 124 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 33: _Haer._ xxxi., p. 205, Oehler.]

[Footnote 34: _Haeret. fab._ I, 17-24.]

[Footnote 35: πάλαι.]

[Footnote 36: In _D.C.B._, _art. cit. supra_.]

[Footnote 37: See Oehler’s edition of Tertullian’s works, II, 751

ff. The parallel passages are set out in convenient form in Bishop

Wordsworth’s book before quoted.]

[Footnote 38: _Études sur de nouveaux documents historiques empruntés à

l’ouvrage récemment découvert des Philosophumena_, Paris, 1853.]

[Footnote 39: II, pp. 43, 47 _infra_.]

[Footnote 40: ὁμιλοῦντος Εἰρηναίου. For the whole quotation, see

Photius, _Bibliotheca_, 121 (Bekker’s ed.).]

[Footnote 41: Tertullian (Oehler’s ed.), II, 751. St. Jerome in quoting

this passage says the heretics have mangled the Gospel.]

[Footnote 42: Thus the tractate makes Simon Magus call his Helena

Sophia, and says that Basilides named his Supreme God Abraxas. It knows

nothing of the God-who-is-not and the three Sonhoods of our text:

and it gives an entirely different account of the Sethians, whom it

calls Sethitæ, and says that they identified Christ with Seth. In this

heresy, too, it introduces Sophia, and makes her the author of the

Flood.]

[Footnote 43: Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._ IV, c. 22. He is quoting

Hegesippus. See also Origen _contra Celsum_, VI, c. 11.]

[Footnote 44: II, p. 3 _infra_.]

[Footnote 45: II, pp. 61 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 46: pp. 103, 119; II, pp. 1, 57, 148, 149 _infra_.]

[Footnote 47: p. 66 _infra_.]

[Footnote 48: p. 117 _infra_.]

[Footnote 49: II, p. 97 _infra_.]

[Footnote 50: II, p. 116 _infra_.]

[Footnote 51: p. 37 _infra_.]

[Footnote 52: p. 115 _infra_.]

[Footnote 53: II, p. 20. In II, p. 49, it is mentioned in connection

with the heresy of Marcus, and on p. 104 the same theory is attributed

to the “Egyptians.”]

[Footnote 54: p. 66; II, pp. 21, 64 _infra_.]

[Footnote 55: ἀγαπητοί, p. 113 and p. 180 _infra_. It also occurs on p.

125 of Vol. II in the same connection.]

[Footnote 56: λόγος, pp. 107 and 120 _infra_. He uses the word in the

same sense on p. 113.]

[Footnote 57: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 58: p. 117 _infra_.]

[Footnote 59: Pseudo-Hieronymus, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Honorius

Augustodunensis, like Epiphanius, begin their catalogues of heresies

with the Jewish and Samaritan sects. Philastrius leads off with the

Ophites and Sethians whom he declares to be pre-Christian, and then

goes on to Dositheus, and the Jewish “heresies” before coming to Simon

Magus. Pseudo-Augustine and Prædestinatus begin with Simon Magus and

include no pre-Christian sects. See Oehler, _Corpus Hæreseologicus_,

Berlin, 1866, t. i.]

[Footnote 60: II, p. 150 _infra_.]

[Footnote 61: δόγματα, p. _cit_.]

[Footnote 62: So Origen, _Cont. Cels._, VI, 24, speaks of “the very

insignificant sect called Ophites.”]

[Footnote 63: II, p. 116 _infra_, where he says that he did not think

them worth refuting.]

[Footnote 64: For the search made both by pagan and Christian

inquisitors for their opponents’ books, see _Forerunners_, II, 12.]

[Footnote 65: See n. on p. 51 _infra_.]

[Footnote 66: Cf. Salmon in _D.C.B._, s.v. “Hippolytus Romanus.”]

[Footnote 67: Hippolytus’ denial of the Pauline authorship of the

Epistle to the Hebrews probably appeared in some work other than

our text. Or it may have been cut out by the scribe as offensive to

orthodoxy.]

[Footnote 68: A flagrant case is to be found in p. 81 Cr. where Π (P)

has, according to Schneidewin, been written for R, a mistake that

could only be made by one used to Roman letters. Cf. _Serpens_ and

_serviens_, p. 487 Cr.]

[Footnote 69: ἀφότε for ἀφ’ οὗ, p. 453 Cr.]

[Footnote 70: _e. g._ φυσιογονική (p. 9 Cr.), κοπιαταὶ (p. 86),

ἰχθυοκόλλα (p. 103), ἀρχανθρώπος (p. 153), ἀπρονοήτος (p. 176),

κλεψιλόγος (p. 370), πρωτογενέτειρα (p. 489), κατιδιοποιούμενος (p.

500), ἀδίστακτος (p. 511), ταρταρούχος (p. 523).]

[Footnote 71: p. 35 _infra_.]

[Footnote 72: p. 166 _infra_.]

[Footnote 73: II, p. 99 _infra_.]

[Footnote 74: II, pp. 177 ff.]

[Footnote 75: See Augustine’s sermon in _Hypatia_.]

[Footnote 76: p. 33 _infra_.]

[Footnote 77: p. 83 _infra_.]

[Footnote 78: II, p. 2 _infra_.]

[Footnote 79: II, p. 99 _infra_.]

[Footnote 80: II, p. 175 _infra_.]

[Footnote 81: See pp. 122, 133, 134, 135, 137, 142, 143 _infra_.]

[Footnote 82: p. 154 _infra_.]

[Footnote 83: p. 178 _infra_.]

[Footnote 84: II, p. 102.]

[Footnote 85: II, p. 109.]

[Footnote 86: See _Forerunners_, I, lxi ff.]

[Footnote 87: This applies to the chief Peratic author quoted. The long

catalogue connecting personages in the Greek mythology with particular

stars is, as is said later, by another hand, and is introduced by a

bombastic utterance like that attributed to Simon Magus.]

[Footnote 88: Hippolytus attributes it to the Orphics; but see de Faye

for another explanation.]

[Footnote 89: _Forerunners_, II, 49.]

[Footnote 90: Justinus is left out of the account because he does

not seem to have been an Ophite at all. The Serpent in his system is

entirely evil, and therefore not an object of worship, and his sect is

probably much later than the other three in the same book.]

[Footnote 91: _Acts of Paul and Thekla_, _passim_.]

[Footnote 92: E. A. T. Wallis Budge, _Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in

Dialect of Upper Egypt_, London, 1915, pp. 579 ff.]

BOOK I[1]

THE PHILOSOPHERS

[Sidenote: p. 1, Cruice.] These are the contents[2] of the First Part[3]

of the Refutation of all Heresies;

What were the tenets of the natural philosophers and who these were;

and what those of the ethicists and who these were; and what those of

the dialecticians and who the dialecticians were.

Now the natural philosophers mentioned are Thales, Pythagoras,

Empedocles, Heraclitus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus,

Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Xenophanes, Ecphantus, and

[Sidenote: p. 2.] Hippo. The ethicists are Socrates, pupil of Archelaus

the physicist and Plato, pupil of Socrates. These mingled together the

three kinds of philosophy. The dialecticians are Aristotle, pupil of

Plato and the founder of dialectics, and the Stoics Chrysippus and Zeno.

Epicurus, however, maintained an opinion almost exactly contrary

to all these. So did Pyrrho the Academic[4] who asserts the

incomprehensibility of all things. There are also the Brachmans[5]

among the Indians, the Druids among the Celts, and Hesiod.

(PROÆMIUM)

No fable made famous by the Greeks is to be neglected. For even those

opinions of theirs which lack consistency are believed through the

extravagant madness of the heretics, who, from hiding in silence their

own unspeakable mysteries, are supposed by many to worship God. Whose

opinions also we aforetime set forth within measure, not displaying

them in detail but refuting them in the rough,[6] as we did not hold it

fit to bring their unspeakable deeds [Sidenote: p. 3.] to light. This

we did that, as we set forth their tenets by hints only, they, becoming

ashamed lest by telling outright their secrets we should prove them

to be godless, might abate somewhat from their unreasoned purpose and

unlawful enterprise.[7] But since I see that they have not been put to

shame by our clemency, and have not considered God’s long-suffering

under their blasphemies, I am forced, in order that they may either

be shamed into repentance, or remaining as they are may be rightly

judged, to proceed to show their ineffable mysteries which they impart

to those candidates for initiation who are thoroughly trustworthy.

Yet they do not previously avow them, unless they have enslaved such

a one by keeping him long in suspense and preparing him by blasphemy

against the true God,[8] and they see him longing for the jugglery of

the disclosure. And then, when they have proved him to be bound fast

by iniquity,[9] they initiate him and impart to him the perfection

of evil things,[10] first binding him by oath neither to tell nor to

impart them to any one unless he too has been enslaved in the same

way. Yet from him to whom they have been only communicated, no oath is

[Sidenote: p. 4.] longer necessary. For whoso has submitted to learn

and to receive their final mysteries will by the act itself and by

his own conscience be bound not to utter them to others. For were he

to declare to any man such an offence, he would neither be reckoned

longer among men, nor thought worthy any more to behold the light.

Which things also are such an offence that even the dumb animals do not

attempt them, as we shall say in its place.[11] But since the argument

compels us to enter into the case very deeply, we do not think fit to

hold our peace, but setting forth in detail the opinions of all, we

shall keep silence on none. And it seems good to us to spare no labour

even if thereby the tale be lengthened. For we shall leave behind us

no small help to the life of men against further error, when all see

clearly the hidden and unspeakable orgies of which the heretics are

the stewards and which they impart only to the initiated. But none

other will refute these things than the Holy Spirit handed down in the

Church which the Apostles having first received did distribute to those

who rightly believed. Whose successors we chance to be and partakers

of the same grace of high priesthood[12] and of [Sidenote: p. 5.]

teaching and accounted guardians of the Church. Wherefore we close not

our eyes nor abstain from straight speech; but neither do we tire in

working with our whole soul and body worthily to return worthy service

to the beneficent God. Nor do we make full return save that we slacken

not in that which is entrusted to us; but we fill full the measures

of our opportunity and without envy communicate to all whatsoever the

Holy Spirit shall provide. Thus we not only bring into the open by

refutation the affairs of the enemy;[13] but also whatever the truth

has received by the Father’s grace and ministered to men. These things

we preach[14] as one who is not ashamed, both interpreting them by

discourse and making them to bear witness by writings.

In order then, as we have said by anticipation, that we may show these

men to be godless alike in purpose, character and deed, and from what

source their schemes have come--and because they have in their attempts

taken nothing from the Holy Scriptures, nor is it from guarding the

succession of any saint that they have been hurried into [Sidenote: p.

6.] these things, but their theories[15] take their origin from the

wisdom of the Greeks, from philosophizing opinions,[16] from would-be

mysteries and from wandering astrologers--it seems then proper that we

first set forth the tenets of the philosophers of the Greeks and point

out to our readers[17] which of them are the oldest and most reverent

towards the Divinity.[18] Then, that we should match[19] each heresy

with a particular opinion so as to show how the protagonist of the

heresy, meeting with these schemes, gained advantage by seizing their

principles and being driven on from them to worse things constructed

his own system.[20] Now the undertaking is full of toil and requires

much research. But we shall not be found wanting. For at the last

it will give us much joy, as with the athlete who has won the crown

with much labour, or the merchant who has gained profit after great

tossing of the sea, or the husbandman who gets the benefit of his

crops from the sweat of his brow, or the prophet who after reproaches

and insults sees his predictions come to pass.[21] We will therefore

begin by declaring which of the Greeks first made demonstration of

natural philosophy. For of them especially have the protagonists of

the heretics become the plagiarists, as we [Sidenote: p. 7.] shall

afterwards show by setting them side by side. And when we have restored

to each of these pioneers his own, we shall put the heresiarchs beside

them naked and unseemly.[22]

1. _Thales._

It is said that Thales the Milesian, one of the seven sages, was

the first to take in hand natural philosophy.[23] He said that the

beginning and end of the universe was water;[24] for that from its

solidification and redissolution all things have been constructed and

that all are borne about by it. And that from it also come earthquakes

and the turnings about of the stars and the motions of the winds.[25]

And that all things are formed and flow in accordance with the nature

of the first cause of generation; but that the Divinity is that which

has neither beginning nor end.[26] Thales, having devoted himself to

the system of the stars and to an enquiry into them, became for the

Greeks the first who was responsible for this branch of learning.

And he, gazing upon the heavens and saying that he was apprehending

[Sidenote: p. 8.] with care the things above, fell into a well;

whereupon a certain servant maid of the name of Thratta[27] laughed at

him and said: “While intent on beholding things in heaven, he does not

see what is at his feet.” And he lived about the time of Crœsus.

2. _Pythagoras._

And not far from this time there flourished another philosophy founded

by Pythagoras, who some say was a Samian. They call it the Italic

because Pythagoras, fleeing from Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos,

took up his abode in a city of Italy and there spent his life. Whose

successors in the school did not differ much from him in judgment. And

he, after having enquired into physics, combined with it astronomy,

geometry and music.[28] And thus he showed that unity is God,[29] and

after curiously studying the nature of number, he said that the cosmos

makes melody and was put together by harmony, and he first reduced

the movement of the seven stars[30] to rhythm and melody. Wondering,

however, at the arrangement of the universals,[31] he [Sidenote: p. 9.]

expected his disciples to keep silence as to the first things learned

by them, as if they were mystæ of the universe coming into the cosmos.

Thereafter when it seemed that they had partaken sufficiently of the

schooling of the discourses, and could themselves philosophize about

stars and Nature, he, having judged them purified, bade them speak.

He divided the disciples into two classes, and called these Esoterics

and those Exoterics. To the first-named he entrusted the more complete

teaching, to the others the more restricted. He applied himself[32]

to magic[33] also, as they say, and himself invented a philosophy of

the origin of Nature,[34] based upon certain numbers and measures,

saying that the origin of the arithmetical philosophy comprised this

method by synthesis. The first number became a principle which is

one, illimitable, incomprehensible, and contains within itself all

the numbers that can come to infinity by multiplication.[35] But the

first unit was by hypothesis the origin of numbers, the which is a

male monad begetting like a father all the other numbers. In the

second place is the dyad, a female number, and the same is called even

by [Sidenote: p. 10.] the arithmeticians. In the third place is the

triad, a male number, and it has been called odd by the arithmeticians’

decree. After all these is the tetrad, a female number, and this is

also called even, because it is female. Therefore all the numbers

derived from the genus[36] (now the illimitable genus is “number”)

are four, from which was constructed, according to them, the perfect

number, the decad. For the 1, 2, 3, 4 become 10 if for each number

its appropriate name be substantially kept.[37] This decad Pythagoras

said was a sacred Tetractys, a source of everlasting Nature containing

roots within itself, and that from the same number all the numbers have

their beginning. For the 11 and the 12 and the rest share the beginning

of their being from the 10. The four divisions of the same decad, the

perfect number, are called number, monad,[38] square[39] and cube. The

conjunctions and minglings of [Sidenote: p. 11.] which make for the

birth of increase and complete naturally the fruitful number. For when

the square is multiplied[40] by itself, it becomes a square squared;

when into the cube, the square cubed; when the cube is multiplied by

the cube, it becomes a cube cubed. So that all the numbers from which

comes the birth of things which are, are seven; to wit: number, monad,

square, cube, square of square, cube of square and cube of cube.

He declared also that the soul is immortal and that there is a change

from one body to another.[41] Wherefore he said that he himself had

been before Trojan times Aethalides,[42] and that in the Trojan era

he was Euphorbus, and after that Hermotimus the Samian, after which

Pyrrho of Delos, and fifthly Pythagoras. But Diodorus the Eretrian

and Aristoxenus the writer on music[43] say that Pythagoras went to

visit Zaratas[44] the Chaldæan; and Zaratas explained to him that

there are from the beginning two causes of things that are, a father

and mother: and that the father is light and the mother, darkness: and

the divisions of the light are hot, dry, light (in weight) and swift;

but those of the darkness cold, moist, heavy and slow. From these the

[Sidenote: p. 12.] whole cosmos was constructed, to wit: from a female

and a male; and that the nature of the cosmos[45] is according to

musical harmony, wherefore the sun makes his journey rhythmically. And

about the things which come into being from the earth and cosmos, they

say Zaratas spoke thus: there are two demons,[46] a heavenly one and

an earthly. Of these the earthly one sent on high a thing born from

the earth which is water; but that the heavenly fire partook of the

air, hot and cold. Wherefore, he says, none of these things destroys

or pollutes the soul, for the same are the substance of all. And it is

said that Pythagoras ordered that beans should not be eaten, because

Zaratas said that at the beginning and formation of all things when

the earth was still being constructed and put together, the bean was

produced. And he says that a proof of this is, that if one chews a bean

to pulp and puts it in the sun for some time (for this plays a direct

part in the matter), it will give out the smell of human seed. And he

says that another proof is even clearer. If when the bean is in flower,

we take the bean [Sidenote: p. 13.] and its blossom, put it into a jar,

anoint this, bury it in earth, and in a few days dig it up, we shall

see it at first having the form of a woman’s _pudenda_ and afterwards

on close examination a child’s head growing with it.

Pythagoras perished at Crotona in Italy having been burned along with

his disciples. And he had this custom that when any one came to him

as a disciple, he had to sell his possessions and deposit the money

under seal with Pythagoras, and remain silent sometimes for three and

sometimes for five years while he was learning. But on being again set

free, he mixed with the others and remained a disciple and took his

meals along with them. But if he did not, he took back what belonged to

him and was cast out. Now the Esoterics were called Pythagoreans and

the others Pythagorists. And of his disciples who escaped the burning

were Lysis and Archippus and Zamolxis, Pythagoras’ house-slave, who

is said to have taught the Druids among the Celts to cultivate the

Pythagorean philosophy. And they say that Pythagoras learned numbers

and measures from the Egyptians, and being struck with the plausible,

imposing and with difficulty disclosed wisdom of the priests,

[Sidenote: p. 14.] he imitated them also in enjoining silence and,

lodging his disciples in cells, made them lead a solitary life.[47]

3. _About Empedocles._

But Empedocles, born after these men, also said many things about the

nature of demons, and how they being very many go about managing things

upon the earth. He said that the beginning of the universe was Strife

and Friendship and that the intellectual fire of the monad is God,

and that all things were constructed from fire and will be resolved

into fire.[48] In which opinion the Stoics also nearly agree, since

they expect an ecpyrosis. But most of all he accepted the change into

different bodies, saying:

“For truly a boy I became, and a maiden,

And bush, and bird of prey, and fish,

A wanderer from the salt sea.”[49]

[Sidenote: p. 15.] He declared that all souls transmigrated into all

living things.[50] For Pythagoras the teacher of these men said

he himself had been Euphorbus who fought at Ilion, and claimed to

recognize the shield.[51] This of Empedocles.

4. _About Heraclitus._

But Heraclitus of Ephesus, a physicist, bewailed all things,

accusing the ignorance of all life and of all men, and pitying the

life of mortals. For he claimed that he knew all things and other

men nothing.[52] And he also made statements nearly in accord with

Empedocles, as he said that Discord and Friendship were the beginning

of all things, and that the intellectual fire was God and that all

things were borne in upon one another and did not stand still. And

like Empedocles he said that every place of ours was filled with evil

things, and that these come as far as the moon extending from the

place surrounding the earth, but go no further, since the whole place

above the moon is very pure.[53] Thus, too, it seemed to Heraclitus.

[Sidenote: p. 16.] And after these came other physicists whose opinions

we do not think it needful to declare as they are in no way incongruous

with those aforesaid. But since the school was by no means small,

and many physicists afterwards sprang from these, all discoursing in

different fashion on the nature of the universe, it seems also fit to

us, now that we have set forth the philosophy derived from Pythagoras,

to return in order of succession to the opinions of those who adhered

to Thales, and after recounting the same to come to the ethical

and logical philosophies, whereof Socrates founded the ethical and

Aristotle the dialectic.

5. _About Anaximander._

Now Anaximander was a hearer of Thales. He was Anaximander of Miletus,

son of Praxiades.[54] He said that the beginning of the things that are

was a certain nature of the Boundless from which came into being the

heavens and the ordered worlds[55] within them. And that this principle

is eternal and grows not old and encompasses all the ordered worlds.

And he says time is limited by birth, [Sidenote: p. 17.] substance,[56]

and death. He said that the Boundless is a principle and element of the

things that are and was the first to call it by the name of principle.

But that there is an eternal movement towards Him wherein it happens

that the heavens are born. And that the earth is a heavenly body[57]

supported by nothing, but remaining in its place by reason of its equal

distance from everything. And that its form is a watery cylinder[58]

like a stone pillar; and that we tread on one of its surfaces, but that

there is another opposite to it. And that the stars are a circle of

fire distinct from the fire in the cosmos, but surrounded by air. And

that certain fiery exhalations exist in those places where the stars

appear, and by the obstruction of these exhalations come the eclipses.

And that the moon appears sometimes waxing and sometimes waning through

the obstruction or closing of her paths. And that the circle of the sun

is 27 times greater than that of the moon and that the sun is in the

highest place in the heavens and the circles of the fixed [Sidenote:

p. 18.] stars in the lowest. And that the animals came into being in

moisture evaporated by the sun. And that mankind was at the beginning

very like another animal, to wit, a fish. And that winds come from the

separation and condensation of the subtler atoms of the air[59] and

rain from the earth giving back under the sun’s heat what it gets from

the clouds,[60] and lightnings from the severance of the clouds by

the winds falling upon them. He was born in the 3rd year of the 42nd

Olympiad.[61]

6. _About Anaximenes._

Anaximenes, who was also a Milesian, the son of Eurystratus, said that

the beginning was a boundless air from which what was, is, and shall

be and gods and divine things came into being, while the rest came

from their descendants. But that the condition of the air is such that

when it is all over alike[62] it is invisible to the eye, but it is

made perceptible by cold and heat, by damp and by motion. And that

it is ever-moving, for whatever is changeable[63] changes not unless

it be moved. For it appears different when condensed and rarefied.

For when it diffuses into greater rarity fire is produced; but when

again halfway [Sidenote: p. 19.] condensed into air, a cloud is formed

from the air’s compression; and when still further condensed, water,

and when condensed to the full, earth; and when to the very highest

degree, stones. And that consequently the great rulers of formation

are contraries, to wit, heat and cold. And that the earth is a flat

surface borne up on the air in the same way as the sun and moon and

the other stars.[64] For all fiery things are carried through the air

laterally.[65] And that the stars are produced from the earth by reason

of the mist which rises from it and which when rarefied becomes fire,

and from this ascending fire[66] the stars are constructed. And that

there are earth-like natures in the stars’ place carried about with

them. But he says that the stars do not move under the earth, as others

assume, but round the earth[67] as a cap is turned on one’s head, and

that the sun is hidden, not because it is under the earth, but because

it is hidden by the earth’s higher parts, and by reason of its greater

distance from us. And because of their great distance, the stars give

out no heat. And that [Sidenote: p. 20.] winds are produced when the

air after condensation escapes rarefied; but that when it collects and

is thus condensed[68] to the full, it becomes clouds and thus changes

into water. Also that hail is produced when the water brought down

from the clouds is frozen; and snow when the same clouds are wetter

when freezing. And lightning come when the clouds are forced apart

by the strength of the winds; for when thus driven apart, there is a

brilliant and fiery flash. Also that a rainbow is produced by the solar

rays falling upon solidified air, and an earthquake from the earth’s

increasing in size by heating and cooling. This then Anaximenes. He

flourished about the 1st year of the 58th Olympiad.[69]

7. _About Anaxagoras._

After him was Anaxagoras of Clazomene, son of Hegesibulus. He said

that the beginning of the universe was mind and matter, mind being the

creator and matter that which came unto being.[70] For that when all

things were together, mind came and arranged them. He says, however,

that the material principles are boundless, even the smallest of them.

And that all things partake of movement, being [Sidenote: p. 21.] moved

by mind, and that like things come together. And that the things in

heaven were set in order by their circular motion.[71] That therefore

what was dense and moist and dark and cold and everything heavy came

together in the middle, and from the compacting of this the earth was

established;[72] but that the opposites, to wit, the hot, the brilliant

and the light were drawn off to the distant æther. Also that the earth

is fat in shape and remains suspended[73] through its great size, and

from there being no void and because the air which is strongest bears

(up) the upheld earth. And that the sea exists from the moisture on

the earth and the waters in it evaporating and then condensing in a

hollow place;[74] and that the sea is supposed to have come into being

by this and from the rivers flowing into it. And the rivers, too, are

established by the rains and the waters within the earth; for the earth

is hollow and holds water in its cavities. But that the Nile increases

in summer when the snows from the northern parts are carried down into

it. And that the sun and moon and all the stars are burning stones and

are [Sidenote: p. 22.] carried about by the rotation of the æther.

And that below the stars are the sun and moon and certain bodies not

seen by us whirled round together. And that the heat of the stars is

not felt by us because of their great distance from the earth; but yet

their heat is not like that of the sun from their occupying a colder

region. Also that the moon is below the sun and nearer to us; and that

the size of the sun is greater than that of the Peloponnesus. And that

the moon has no light of her own, but only one from the sun. And that

the revolution of the stars takes place under the earth. Also that the

moon is eclipsed when the earth stands in her way, and sometimes the

stars which are below the moon,[75] and the sun when the moon stands

in his way during new moons. And that both the sun and moon make

turnings (solstices) when driven back by the air; but that the moon

turns often through not being able to master the cold. He was the first

to determine the facts about eclipses and renewals of light.[76] And

he said that the moon was like the earth and had within it plains and

ravines. And that the Milky Way was the reflection of the light of the

stars which are not lighted up by the sun. And that the shooting stars

[Sidenote: p. 23.] are as it were sparks which glance off from the

movement of the pole. And that winds are produced by the rarefaction

of the air by the sun and by their drying up as they get towards the

pole and are borne away from it. And that thunderstorms are produced by

heat falling upon the clouds. And that earthquakes come from the upper

air falling upon that under the earth; for when this last is moved,

the earth upheld by it is shaken. And that animals at the beginning

were produced from water, but thereafter from one another, and that

males are born when the seed secreted from the right parts of the body

adheres to the right parts of the womb and females when the opposite

occurs. He flourished in the 1st year of the 88th Olympiad, about which

time they say Plato was born.[77] They say also that Anaxagoras came to

have a knowledge of the future.

8. _About Archelaus._

Archelaus was of Athenian race and the son of Apollodorus. He like

Anaxagoras asserted the mixed nature of matter and agreed with him as

to the beginning of things. But he said that a certain mixture[78]

was directly inherent in mind, and that the source of movement is the

separation from one another of heat and cold and that the [Sidenote: p.

24.] heat is moved and the cold remains undisturbed. Also that water

when heated flows to the middle of the universe wherein heated air

and earth are produced, of which one is borne aloft while the other

remains below. And that the earth remains fixed and exists because of

this and abides in the middle of the universe, of which, so to speak,

it forms no part and which is delivered from the conflagration.[79] The

first result of which burning is the nature of the stars, the greatest

whereof is the sun and the second the moon while of the others some are

greater and some smaller. And he says that the heaven is arched over

us[80] and has made the air transparent and the earth dry. For that

at first it was a pool; since it was lofty at the horizon, but hollow

in the middle. And he brings forward as a proof of this hollowness,

that the sun does not rise and set at the same time for all parts as

must happen if the earth were level. And as to animals, he says that

the earth first became heated in the lower part when the hot and cold

mingled and man[81] and the other animals appeared. And all things were

unlike [Sidenote: p. 25.] one another and had the same diet, being

nourished on mud. And this endured for a little, but at last generation

from one another arose, and man became distinct from the other animals

and set up chiefs, laws, arts, cities and the rest. And he says that

mind is inborn in all animals alike. For that every body is supplied

with[82] mind, some more slowly and some quicker than the others.

Natural philosophy lasted then from Thales up to Archelaus. Of this

last Socrates was a hearer. But there are also many others putting

forward different tenets concerning the Divine and the nature of the

universe, whose opinions if we wished to set them all out would take

a great mass of books. But it would be best, after having recalled by

name those of them who are, so to speak, the chorus-leaders of all who

philosophized in later times and who have furnished starting-points for

systems, to hasten on to what follows.[83]

9. _About Parmenides._

[Sidenote: p. 26.] For truly Parmenides also supposed the universe to be

eternal and ungenerated and spherical in form.[84] Nor did he avoid the

common opinion making fire and earth the principles of the universe,

the earth as matter, but the fire as cause and creator. [He said that

the ordered world would be destroyed, but in what way, he did not

say.][85] But he said that the universe was eternal and ungenerated and

spherical in form and all over alike, bearing no impress and immoveable

and with definite limits.

10. _About Leucippus._

But Leucippus, a companion of Zeno, did not keep to the same opinion

(as Parmenides), but says that all things are boundless and ever-moving

and that birth and change are unceasing. And he says that fulness and

the void are elements. And he says also that the ordered worlds came

into being thus: when many bodies were crowded together [Sidenote:

p. 27.] and flowed from the ambient[86] into a great void, on coming

into contact with one another, those of like fashion and similar form

coalesced, and from their intertwining yet others were generated

and increased and diminished by a certain necessity. But what that

necessity may be he did not define.

11. _About Democritus._

But Democritus was an acquaintance of Leucippus. This was Democritus of

Abdera, son of Damasippus,[87] who met with many Gymnosophists among

the Indians and with priests and astrologers[88] in Egypt and with

Magi in Babylon. But he speaks like Leucippus about elements, to wit,

fulness and void, saying that the full is that which is but the void

that which is not, and he said this because things are ever moving in

the void. He said also that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ

in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in

others both are greater than with us, and in yet others more in number.

[Sidenote: p. 28.] And that the intervals between the ordered worlds

are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others

flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they

are eclipsed.[89] But that they are destroyed by colliding with one

another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants

and of all water. And that in our cosmos the earth came into being

first of the stars and that the moon is the lowest of the stars, and

then comes the sun and then the fixed stars: but that the planets are

not all at the same height. And he laughed at everything, as if all

things among men deserved laughter.

12. _About Xenophanes._

But Xenophanes of Colophon was the son of Orthomenes.[90] He survived

until the time of Cyrus. He first declared the incomprehensibility of

all things,[91] saying thus:

Although anyone should speak most definitely

He nevertheless does not know, and it is a guess[92] which occurs

about all things.

[Sidenote: p. 29.] But he says that nothing is generated, or

perishes or is moved, and that the universe which is one is beyond

change. But he says that God is eternal, and one and alike on every

side, and finite and spherical in form, and conscious[93] in all

His parts. And that the sun is born every day from the gathering

together of small particles of fire and that the earth is boundless

and surrounded neither by air nor by heaven. And that there are

boundless (innumerable) suns and moons and that all things are from

the earth. He said that the sea is salt because of the many compounds

which together flow into it. But Metrodorus said it was thanks to its

trickling through the earth that the sea becomes salt. And Xenophanes

opines that there was once a mixture of earth with the sea, and that

in time it was freed from moisture, asserting in proof of this that

shells are found in the centre of the land and on mountains, and that

in the stone-quarries of Syracuse were found the impress of a fish

and of seals, and in Paros the cast of an anchor below the surface of

the rock[94] and in Malta layers of all sea-things. And he says that

these came when all things were of old time buried in mud, and that the

impress of them dried in the mud; but [Sidenote: p. 30.] that all men

were destroyed when the earth being cast into the sea became mud, and

that it again began to bring forth and that this catastrophe happened

to all the ordered worlds.[95]

13. _About Ecphantus._

A certain Ecphantus, a Syracusan, said that a true knowledge of the

things that are could not be got. But he defines, as he thinks,

that the first bodies are indivisible and that there are three

differences[96] between them, to wit, size, shape and power. And the

number of them is limited and not boundless; but that these bodies are

moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by a divine power which he

calls [Sidenote: p. 31.] Nous and Psyche. Now the pattern of this is

the cosmos, wherefore it has become spherical in form by Divine power.

And that the earth in the midst of the cosmos is moved round its own

centre from west to east.[97]

14. _About Hippo._

But Hippo of Rhegium[98] said that the principles were cold, like

water, and heat, like fire. And that the fire came from the water, and,

overcoming the power of its parent, constructed the cosmos. But he said

that the soul was sometimes brain and sometimes water; for the seed

also seems to us to be from moisture and from it he says the soul is

born.

These things, then, we seem to have sufficiently set forth. Wherefore,

as we have now separately run through the opinions of the physicists,

it seems fitting that we return to Socrates and Plato, who most

especially preferred (the study of) ethics.

15. _About Socrates._

Now Socrates became a hearer of Archelaus the physicist, and giving

great honour to the maxim “Know thyself” and having established a large

school, held Plato to be the most competent of all his disciples.

He left no writings [Sidenote: p. 32.] behind him; but Plato being

impressed with all his wisdom[99] established the teaching combining

physics, ethics and dialectics. But what Plato laid down is this:--

16. _About Plato._

Plato makes the principles of the universe to be God, matter and (the)

model. He says that God is the maker and orderer of this universe and

its Providence.[100] That matter is that which underlies all things,

which matter he calls a recipient and a nurse.[101] From which, after

it had been set in order, came the four elements of which the cosmos is

constructed, to wit, fire, air, earth and water,[102] whence in turn

all the other so-called compound things, viz., animals and plants have

been constructed. But the model is the thought of God which Plato also

calls _ideas_, to which giving heed as to an image in the soul,[103]

God fashioned[104] all [Sidenote: p. 33.] things. He said that God was

without body or form and could only be comprehended by wise men; but

that matter is potentially body, but not yet actively. For that being

itself without form or quality, it receives forms and qualities to

become body.[105] That matter, therefore, is a principle and the same

is coeval with God, and the cosmos is unbegotten. For, he says, it

constructed itself out of itself.[106] And in all ways it is like the

unbegotten and is imperishable. But in so far as body[107] is assumed

to be composed of many qualities and ideas, it is so far begotten and

perishable. But some Platonists mixed together the two opinions making

up some such parable as this: to wit, that, as a wagon can remain

undestroyed for ever if repaired part by part, as even though the parts

perish every time, the wagon remains complete; so, the cosmos, although

it perish part by part, is yet reconstructed and compensated for the

parts taken away, and remains eternal.

Some again say that Plato declared God to be one, unbegotten and

imperishable, as he says in the _Laws_:--“God, [Sidenote: p. 34.]

therefore, as the old story goes, holds the beginning and end and

middle of all things that are.”[108] Thus he shows Him to be one

through His containing all things. But others say that Plato thought

that there are many gods without limitation[109] when he said, “God

of gods, of whom I am the fashioner and father.”[110] And yet others

that he thinks them subject to limitation when he says: “Great Zeus,

indeed, driving his winged chariot in heaven;”[111] and when he gives

the pedigree[112] of the children of Uranos and Gê. Others again that

he maintained the gods to be originated and that because they were

originated they ought to perish utterly, but that by the will of God

they remain imperishable as he says in the passage before quoted, “God

of gods, of whom I am the fashioner and father, and who are formed

by my will indissoluble.” So that if He wished them to be dissolved,

dissolved they would easily be. But he accepts the nature of demons,

and says some are good, and some bad.

And some say that he declared the soul to be unoriginated and

imperishable[113] when he says: “All soul is immortal for that which is

ever moving is immortal,” and when he shows that it is self-moving and

the beginning of movement. But others say that he makes it originated

but imperishable[114] through God’s will; and yet others composite and

originated and perishable. For he also supposes that [Sidenote: p.

35.] there is a mixing-bowl for it,[115] and that it has a splendid

body, but that everything originated must of necessity perish. But

those who say that the soul is immortal are partly corroborated by

those words wherein he says that there are judgments after death, and

courts of justice in the house of Hades, and that the good meet with

a good reward and that the wicked are subjected to punishments.[116]

Some therefore say that he also admits a change of bodies and the

transfer of different pre-determined souls into other bodies according

to the merit of each; and that after certain definite peregrinations

they are again sent into this ordered world to give themselves another

trial of their own choice. Others, however, say not, but that they

obtain a place according to each one’s deserts. And they call to

witness that he says some souls are with Zeus, but that others of

good men are going round with other gods, and that others abide in

everlasting punishments, (that is), so many as in this life have

wrought evil and unjust deeds.[117] And they say that he declared

some conditions to be [Sidenote: p. 36.] without intermediates, some

with intermediates and some to be intermediates. Waking and sleep are

without intermediates and so are all states like these. But there are

those with intermediates like good and bad; and intermediates like

grey which is between black and white or some other colour.[118] And

they say that he declares the things concerning the soul to be alone

supremely good, but those of the body or external to it to be no longer

supremely good, but only said to be so. And that these last are very

often named intermediates also; for they can be used both well and

ill. He says therefore that the virtues are extremes as to honour, but

means as to substance.[119] For there is nothing more honourable than

virtue; but that which goes beyond or falls short of these virtues ends

in vice. For instance, he says that these are the four virtues, to wit,

Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude, and that there follow on

each of these two vices of excess and deficiency respectively. Thus on

Prudence follow thoughtlessness by deficiency and cunning by excess; on

Temperance, intemperance by deficiency and sluggishness by excess; on

Justice, over-modesty by deficiency and greediness by excess; and on

Fortitude, [Sidenote: p. 37.] cowardice by deficiency and foolhardiness

by excess.[120] And these virtues when inborn in a man operate for

his perfection and give him happiness. But he says that happiness is

likeness to God as far as possible. And that any one is like God when

he becomes holy and just with intention. For this he supposes to be the

aim of the highest wisdom and virtue.[121] But he says that the virtues

follow one another in turn and are of one kind, and never oppose one

another; but that the vices are many-shaped and sometimes follow and

sometimes oppose one another.[122]

He says, again, that there is destiny, not indeed that all things

are according to destiny, but that we have some choice, as he says

in these words: “The blame is on the chooser: God is blameless,” and

again, “This is a law of Adrasteia.” And if he thus affirms the part

of destiny, he knew also that something was in our choice.[123] But he

says that transgressions are involuntary. For to the most beautiful

thing in us, which is the soul, none would admit something evil, that

is, injustice; but that by ignorance and mistaking the good, thinking

to do something fine, they [Sidenote: p. 38.] arrive at the evil.[124]

And his explanation on this is most clear in the _Republic_, where

he says: “And again do you dare to say that vice is disgraceful and

hateful to God? How then does any one choose such an evil? He does

it, you would say, who is overcome by the pleasures (of sense).

Therefore this also is an involuntary action, if to overcome be a

voluntary one. So that from all reasoning, reason proves injustice

to be involuntary.” But some one objects to him about this: “Why

then are men punished if they transgress involuntarily?” He answers:

“So that they may be the more speedily freed from vice by undergoing

correction.”[125] For that to undergo correction is not bad but good,

if thereby comes purification from vices, and that the rest of mankind

hearing of it will not transgress, but will be on their guard against

such error.[126] He says, however, that the nature of evil comes not by

God nor has it any special nature of its own; but it comes into being

by contrariety and by following upon the good, either as excess or

deficiency as we have before said about the virtues.[127] Now Plato,

as [Sidenote: p. 39.] we have said above, bringing together the three

divisions of general philosophy, thus philosophized.

17. _About Aristotle._

Aristotle, who was a hearer of this last, turned philosophy into a

science and reasoned more strictly, affirming that the elements of

all things are substance and accident.[128] He said that there is

one substance underlying all things, but nine accidents, which are

Quantity, Quality, Relation, the Where, the When, Possession, Position,

Action and Passion. And that therefore Substance was such as God, man

and every one of the things which can fall under the like definition:

but that as regards the accidents, Quality is seen in expressions like

white or black; Quantity in “2 cubits or 3 cubits long or broad”;

Relation in “father” or “son”; the Where in such as “Athens” or

“Megara”; the When in such as “in the Xth Olympiad”; for Possession

in such as “to have acquired wealth”; Action in such as “to write and

generally to do anything”; and Passion in such as “to be struck.” He

also assumes that some things have means and that others have not, as

we have said also about Plato. [Sidenote: p. 40.] And he is in accord

with Plato about most things save in the opinion about the soul. For

Plato thinks it immortal; but Aristotle that it remains behind after

this life and that it is lost in the fifth Body which is assumed to

exist along with the other four, to wit, fire, earth, water and air,

but is more subtle than they and like a spirit.[129] Again whereas

Plato said that the only good things were those which concerned the

soul and that these sufficed for happiness, Aristotle brings in a triad

of benefits and says that the sage is not perfect unless there are

at his command the good things of the body and those external to it.

Which things are Beauty, Strength, Keenness of Sense and Completeness;

while the externals are Wealth, High Birth, Glory, Power, Peace, and

Friendship; but that the inner things about the soul are, as Plato

thought: Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude.[130] Also

Aristotle says that evil things exist, and come by contrariety to the

good, and are below the place about the moon, but not above it.

Again, he says that the soul of the whole ordered world is eternal,

but that the soul of man vanishes as we have said [Sidenote: p. 41.]

above. Now, he philosophized while delivering discourses in the Lyceum;

but Zeno in the Painted Porch. And Zeno’s followers got their name

from the place, _i. e._ they were called Stoics from the Stoa; but

those of Aristotle from their mode of study. For their enquiries were

conducted while walking about in the Lyceum, wherefore they were called

Peripatetics. This then Aristotle.[131]

18. _About the Stoics._

The Stoics themselves also added to philosophy by the increased use of

syllogisms,[132] and included it nearly all in definitions, Chrysippus

and Zeno being here agreed in opinion. Who also supposed that God

was the beginning of all things, and was the purest body, and that

His providence extends through all things.[133] They say positively,

however, that existence is everywhere according to destiny using some

such simile as this: viz. that, as a dog tied to a cart, if he wishes

to follow it, is both drawn along by it and follows of his own accord,

doing at the same time [Sidenote: p. 42.] what he wills and what he

must by a compulsion like that of destiny.[134] But if he does not wish

to follow he is wholly compelled. And they say that it is the same

indeed with men. For even if they do not wish to follow, they will be

wholly compelled to come to what has been foredoomed. And they say

that the soul remains after death, and that it is a body[135] and is

born from the cooling of the air of the ambient, whence it is called

Psyche.[136] But they admit that there is a change of bodies for Souls

which have been marked out for it.[137] And they expect that there will

be a conflagration and purification of this cosmos, some saying that

it will be total but others partial, and that it will be purified part

by part. And they call this approximate destruction and the birth of

another cosmos therefrom, _catharsis_.[138] And they suppose that all

things are bodies, and that one body passes through another; but that

there is a resurrection[139] and that all things are filled full and

that there is no void. Thus also the Stoics.

19. _About Epicurus._

[Sidenote: p. 43.] But Epicurus held an opinion almost the opposite

of all others. He supposed that the beginnings of the universals

were atoms and a void; that the void was as it were the place of the

things that will be; but that the atoms were matter, from which all

things are. And that from the concourse of the atoms both God and all

the elements came into being and that in them were all animals and

other things, so that nothing is produced or constructed unless it be

from the atoms. And he said that the atoms were the most subtle of

things, and that in them there could be no point, nor mark nor any

division whatever; wherefore he called them atoms.[140] And although

he admits God to be eternal and imperishable, he says that he cares

for no one and that in short there is no providence nor destiny, but

all things come into being automatically. For God is seated in the

metacosmic spaces, as he calls them. For he held that there was a

certain dwelling-place of God outside the cosmos called the metacosmia,

and that He [Sidenote: p. 44] took His pleasure and rested in supreme

delight; and that He neither had anything to do Himself nor provided

for others. In consequence of which Epicurus made a theory about wise

men, saying that the end of all wisdom is pleasure. But different

people take the name of pleasure differently. For some understood by it

the desires, but others the pleasure that comes by virtue. But he held

that the souls of men were destroyed with their bodies as they are born

with them. For that these souls are blood, which having come forth or

being changed, the whole man is destroyed. Whence it follows that there

are no judgments nor courts of justice in the House of Hades, so that

whatever any one may do in this life and escapes notice, he is in no

way called to account for it.[141] Thus then Epicurus.

20. _About (the) Academics._

But another sect of philosophers was called Academic, [Sidenote: p.

45.] from their holding their discussions in the Academy, whose founder

was Pyrrho, after whom they were called Pyrrhonian philosophers. He

first introduced the dogma of the incomprehensibility of all things, so

that he might argue on either side of the question, but assert nothing

dogmatically. For he said that there is nothing grasped by the mind

or perceived by the senses which is true, but that it only appears to

men to be so. And that all substance is flowing and changing and never

remains in the same state. Now some of the Academics say that we ought

not to make dogmatic assertions about the principle of anything, but

simply argue about it and let it be; while others favoured more the

“no preference”[142] adage, saying that fire was not fire rather than

anything else. For they did not assert what it is, but only what sort

of a thing it is.[143]

21. _About (the) Brachmans among the Indians._

The Indians have also a sect of philosophizers in the Brachmans[144]

who propose to themselves an independent life and abstain from all

things which have had life and from [Sidenote: p. 46.] meats prepared

by fire. They are content with fruits[145] but do not gather even

these, but live on those fallen on the earth and drink the water of the

river Tagabena.[146] But they spend their lives naked, saying that the

body has been made by God as a garment to the soul. They say that God

is light; not such light as one sees, nor like the sun and fire, but

that it is to them the Divine Word, not that which is articulated, but

that which comes from knowledge, whereby the hidden mysteries of nature

are seen by the wise. But this light which they say is (the) Word, the

God, they declare that they themselves as Brachmans alone know, because

they alone put away vain thinking which is the last tunic of the soul.

They scorn death; but are ever naming God in their own tongue, as we

have said above, and send up hymns to Him. But neither are there women

among them, nor do they beget children.[147] Those, however, who have

desired a life like theirs, after they [Sidenote: p. 47.] have crossed

over to the opposite bank of the river,[148] remain there always and

never return; but they also are called Brachmans. Yet they do not

pass their life in the same way; for there are women in the country,

from whom those dwelling there are begotten and beget. But they say

that this Word, which they style God, is corporeal, girt with the

body outside Himself, as if one should wear a garment of sheepskins;

but that the body which is worn, when taken off, appears visible to

the eye.[149] But the Brachmans declare that there is war in the body

worn by them [and they consider their body full of warring elements]

against which body as if arrayed against foes, they fight as we have

before made plain. And they say that all men are captives to their own

congenital enemies, to wit, the belly and genitals, greediness, wrath,

joy, grief, desire and the like. But that he alone goes to God who has

triumphed[150] over these. Wherefore the Brachmans make Dandamis, to

whom Alexander of Macedon paid a visit, divine[151] as one who had won

the war in the body. But they accuse Calanus of having impiously fallen

away from their philosophy. But the Brachmans putting away the body,

like [Sidenote: p. 48.] fish who have leaped from the water into pure

air, behold the Sun.[152]

22. _About the Druids among the Celts._

The Druids among the Celts enquired with the greatest minuteness into

the Pythagorean philosophy, Zamolxis, Pythagoras’ slave, a Thracian

by race, being for them the author of this discipline. He after

Pythagoras’ death travelled into their country and became as far as

they were concerned the founder of this philosophy.[153] The Celts

glorify the Druids as prophets and as knowing the future because

they foretell to them some things by the ciphers and numbers of the

Pythagoric art. On the principles of which same art we shall not be

silent, since some men have ventured to introduce heresies constructed

from them. Druids, however, also make use of magic arts.

[Sidenote: p. 49.] 23. _About Hesiod._[154]

But Hesiod the poet says that he, too, heard thus from the Muses about

Nature. The Muses, however, are the daughters of Zeus. For Zeus having

from excess of desire companied with Mnemosyne for nine days and nights

consecutively, she conceived these nine in her single womb, receiving

one every night. Now Hesiod invokes the nine Muses from Pieria, that is

from Olympus, and prays them to teach him:[155]

“How first the gods and earth became;

The rivers and th’ immeasureable sea

High-raging in its foam: the glittering stars;

The wide-impending heaven; ...

Say how their treasures,[156] how their honours each

Allotted shared: how first they held abode

On many-caved Olympus:--this declare

[Sidenote: p. 50.] Ye Muses! dwellers of the heavenly mount

From the beginning; say who first arose?

“First Chaos was, next ample-bosomed Earth,

The seat eternal and immoveable

Of deathless gods, who still the Olympian height

Snow-topt inhabit. Third in hollow depth

Of the vast ground, expanded wide above

The gloomy Tartarus, Love then arose

Most beauteous of immortals: he at once

Of every god and every mortal man

Unnerves the limbs; dissolves the wiser breast

By reason steel’d, and quells the very soul.

“From Chaos, Erebus and sable Night...

From Night arose the Sunshine and the Day[157]

Whom she with dark embrace of Erebus

Commingling bore.

“Her first-born Earth produced

Of like immensity,[158] the starry Heaven:

That he might sheltering compass her around

On every side, and be for evermore

To the blest gods a mansion unremoved.

“Next the high hills arose, the pleasant haunts

Of goddess-nymphs, who dwell among the glens

Of mountains. With no aid of tender love

[Sidenote: p. 51.] Gave she to birth the sterile Sea, high-swol’n

In raging foam; and Heaven-embraced, anon

She teemed with Ocean, rolling in deep whirls

His vast abyss of waters

“Crœus then,

Cœus, Hyperion and Iäpetus,

Themis and Thea rose; Mnemosyne

And Rhea; Phœbe diademed with gold,

And love-inspiring Tethys; and of these,

Youngest in birth, the wily Kronos came,

The sternest of her sons; and he abhorred

The sire that gave him life

“Then brought she forth

The Cyclops haughty of spirit.”

And he enumerates all the other Giants descended from Kronos. But last

he tells how Zeus was born from Rhea.

All these men, then, declared, as we have set forth, their opinions

about the nature and birth of the universe. But they all, departing

from the Divine for lower things, busied themselves about the substance

of the things that are. So that when struck with the grandeurs of

creation and thinking that these were the Divine, each of them

preferred before the rest a different part of what was created. But

they discovered not the God and fashioner of them.

The opinions therefore of those among the Greeks who [Sidenote: p. 52.]

have undertaken to philosophize, I think I have sufficiently set forth.

Starting from which opinions the heretics have made the attempts we

shall shortly narrate. It seems fitting, however, that we, first making

public the mystic rites,[159] should also declare whatever things

certain men have superfluously fancied about stars or magnitudes; for

truly those who have taken their starting-points from these notions are

deemed by the many to speak prodigies. Thereafter, we shall make plain

consecutively the vain opinions[160] invented by them.[161]

END OF BOOK I

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: As has been said in the Introduction (p. 1 _supra_) four

early codices of the First Book exist, the texts being known from the

libraries where they are to be found as the Medicean, the Turin, the

Ottobonian and the Barberine respectively. That published by Miller

was a copy of the Medicean codex already put into print by Fabricius,

but was carefully worked over by Roeper, Scott and others who like

Gronovius, Wolf and Delarue, collated it with the other three codices.

The different readings are, I think, all noted by Cruice in his edition

of 1860, but are not of great importance, and I have only noticed them

here when they make any serious change in the meaning of the passage.

Hermann Diels has again revised the text in his _Doxographi Græci_,

Berlin, 1879, with a result that Salmon (_D.C.B._ s. v. “Hippolytus

Romanus”) declares to be “thoroughly satisfactory,” and the reading

of this part of our text may now, perhaps, be regarded as settled.

Only the opening and concluding paragraphs are of much value for our

present purpose, the account of philosophic opinions which lies between

being, as has been already said, a compilation of compilations, and

not distinguished by any special insight into the ideas of the authors

summarized, with the works of most of whom Hippolytus had probably but

slight acquaintance. An exception should perhaps be made in the case

of Aristotle, as it is probable that Hippolytus, like other students

of his time, was trained in Aristotle’s dialectic and analytic system

for the purpose of disputation. But this will be better discussed in

connection with Book VII.]

[Footnote 2: τάδε ἔνεστιν ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τοῦ κατὰ πασῶν αἰρέσεων ἐλέγχου.

This formula is repeated at the head of Books V-X with the alteration

of the number only.]

[Footnote 3: The word missing after πρώτῃ was probably μερίδι, the

only likely word which would agree with the feminine adjective. It

would be appropriate enough if the theory of the division of the work

into spoken lectures be correct. The French and German editors alike

translate _in libro primo_.]

[Footnote 4: There seems no reason for numbering Pyrrho of Elis among

the members of the Academy, Old or New. Diogenes Laertius, from whose

account of his doctrines Hippolytus seems to have derived the dogma of

incomprehensibility which he here attributes to Pyrrho, makes him the

founder of the Sceptics. He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great,

and probably died before Arcesilaus founded the New Academy in 280 B.C.]

[Footnote 5: Mr. Macmahon here reads “Brahmins.” Their habits appear

more like those of Yogis or Sanyasis.]

[Footnote 6: ἁδρομερῶς: in contradistinction to κατὰ λεπτὸν just above.]

[Footnote 7: ἀλογίστου γνώμης καὶ ἀθεμίτου ἐπιχειρήσεως. The Turin MS.

transposes the adjectives.]

[Footnote 8: πρὸς το͂ν ὄντως Θεὸν. The phrase is used frequently

hereafter, particularly in Book X.]

[Footnote 9: Cf. the “bond of iniquity” in St. Peter’s speech to Simon

Magus, Acts viii. 23.]

[Footnote 10: τὸ τέλειον τῶν κακῶν. τέλειον being a mystic word for

final or complete initiation.]

[Footnote 11: ἃ καὶ τὰ ἄλογα κ. τ. λ. Schneidewin and Cruice both read

εἰ καὶ, Roeper εἰ simply, others εἰ ὅτι. The first seems the best

reading; but none of the suggestions is quite satisfactory. The promise

to say what it was that even the dumb animals would not have done is

unfulfilled. It cannot have involved any theological question, but

probably refers to the obscene sacrament of the _Pistis Sophia_, the

Bruce Papyrus and Huysmans’ _Là-Bas_. Yet Hippolytus does not again

refer to it, and of all the heretics in our text, the Simonians are the

only ones accused of celebrating it, even by Epiphanius.]

[Footnote 12: Ἀρχιερατεία. A neologism. This is the passage relied upon

to show that our author was a bishop].

[Footnote 13: ἀλλότρια = foreign. Cruice has _aliena_. But it is

here evidently contrasted with the “things of the truth” in the next

sentence.]

[Footnote 14: κηρύσσομεν.]

[Footnote 15: τὰ δοξαζόμενα, lit., “matters of opinion.”]

[Footnote 16: ἐκ δογμάτων φιλοσοφουμένων. The context shows that here,

and probably elsewhere in the book, the phrase is used contemptuously.]

[Footnote 17: τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν. As in Polybius, the word can be

translated in this sense throughout. Yet as meaning “those who fall in

with this” it is as applicable to spoken as to written words.]

[Footnote 18: τὸ θεῖον. Both here and in Book X our author shows a

preference for this phrase instead of the more usual ὁ Θεός.]

[Footnote 19: συμβάλλω.]

[Footnote 20: δόγμα.]

[Footnote 21: τὰ λαληθέντα ἀποβαίνοντα. Note the piling up of similes

natural in a _spoken_ peroration.]

[Footnote 22: γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀσχήμονας, _nudos et turpes_, Cr. Stripped of

originality seems to be the threat intended.]

[Footnote 23: φιλοσοφίαν φυσικήν. What we should now call Physics.]

[Footnote 24: τὸ πᾶν is the phrase here and elsewhere used for the

universe or “whole” of Nature, and includes Chaos or unformed Matter.

The κόσμος or ordered world is only part of the universe. Diog. Laert.,

I, _vit. Thales_, c. 6, says merely that Thales thought water to be

the ἀρχή or beginning of all things. As this is confirmed by all other

Greek writers who have quoted him, we may take the further statement

here attributed to him as the mistake of Hippolytus or of the compiler

he is copying.]

[Footnote 25: ἀέρων in text. Roeper suggests ἄστρων, “stars.”]

[Footnote 26: So Clement of Alexandria, _Stromateis_, V, c. 14, and

Diog. Laert., I. _vit. cit._, c. 9.]

[Footnote 27: Diog. Laert., I, _vit. cit._, c. 8, makes his derider an

old woman. Θρᾶττα is not a proper name, but means a Thracian woman, as

Hippolytus should have known.]

[Footnote 28: Roeper adds καὶ ἀριθμετικήν, apparently in view of the

speculations about the monad.]

[Footnote 29: Aristotle in his _Metaphysica_, Bk. I, c. 5, attributes

the first use of this dogma to Xenophanes.]

[Footnote 30: By these are meant the planets, including therein the Sun

and Moon. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, _Adversus Astrologos_, p. 343 (Cod.)

_passim_.]

[Footnote 31: τὰ ὅλα = entities which must needs differ from one

another in kind. The phrase is thus used by Plato, Aristotle and all

the neo-Platonic writers.]

[Footnote 32: ἐφήψατο, _attigit_, Cr. Frequent in Pindar.]

[Footnote 33: So Timon in the _Silli_, as quoted by Diog. Laert., VIII,

_vit. Pyth._, c. 20.]

[Footnote 34: φυσιογονικὴν. The Barberine MS. has φυσιογνωμονικὴν,

evidently inserted by some scribe who connected it with the absurd

system of metoposcopy described in Book IV.]

[Footnote 35: κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος, _multitudine_, Cr.]

[Footnote 36: For definitions and examples of this term see Aristot.,

_Metaphys._, IV. c. 28.]

[Footnote 37: I cannot trace Hippolytus’ authority for attributing

these neo-Pythagorean puerilities to Pythagoras himself. Diog. Laert.,

Aristotle and the rest represent him as saying only that the monad

was the beginning of everything, and that from this and the undefined

dyad numbers proceed. The general reader may be recommended to Mr.

Alfred Williams Benn’s statement in _The Philosophy of Greece_ (Lond.,

1898), pp. 78 ff. that “the Greeks did not think of numbers as pure

abstractions, but in the most literal sense as figures, that is to say,

limited portions of space.”]

[Footnote 38: Macmahon thinks “number” and “monad” should here be

transposed, as Pythagoras considered according to him the monad as “the

highest generalization of number and a conception in abstraction.”

Yet the monad was not the highest abstraction of current (Greek)

philosophy. See Edwin Hatch, _Influence of Greek Ideas upon the

Christian Church_ (Hibbert Lectures), Lond., 1890, p. 255.]

[Footnote 39: δύναμις is here used like our own mathematical expression

“power.” Why Hippolytus should associate it especially with the power

of 2 does not appear. By Greek mathematicians it seems rather to be

applied to the square root.]

[Footnote 40: κυβισθῇ, _involvit_, Cr. It cannot here mean “cubed.”

Another mistake occurs in the same sentence, where it is said that the

square multiplied by the cube is a cube. The sentence is fortunately

repeated with the needful correction in Book IV, p. 116 _infra_.

Macmahon gives the proper notation as (a²)² = a⁴, (a²)³ = a⁶,

(a³)³ = a⁹.]

[Footnote 41: μετενσωμάτωσις. The phrase which is here correctly

used throughout, but which has somehow slipped into English as

metempsychosis.]

[Footnote 42: So Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit. Pyth._, c. 4.]

[Footnote 43: Diodorus of Eretria is not otherwise known, Aristoxenus

is mentioned by Cicero, _Quæst. Tusculan._, I, 18, as a writer on music.]

[Footnote 44: That is, of course, Zoroaster. The account here given

of his doctrines does not agree with what we know of them from other

sources. The minimum date for his activity (700 B.C.) makes it

impossible for him to have been a contemporary of Pythagoras. See the

translator’s _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_, I, p. 126; II,

p. 232.]

[Footnote 45: Reading with Roeper τὴν κόσμου φύσιν καὶ. Cruice has τὸν

κόσμον φύσιν κατὰ, “that the cosmos is a nature according to,” etc.]

[Footnote 46: δαίμονες, spirits or dæmons in the Greek sense, not

necessarily evil. But Aetius, _de Placit. Philosoph. ap._ Diels

_Doxogr._ 306, makes Pythagoras use the word as equivalent to τὸ κακόν.

Cf. pp. 52, 92 _infra_.]

[Footnote 47: Hippolytus like nearly every other writer of his time

here confuses the Egyptians with the Alexandrian Greeks. It was these

last and not the subjects of the Pharaohs who were given to mathematics

and geometry, of which sciences they laid the foundations on which

we have since built. Certain devotees of the Alexandrian god Serapis

also shut themselves up in cells of the Serapeum, which they could

hardly have done in any temple in Pharaonic times. See _Forerunners_,

I, 79. Hippolytus gives a much more elaborate and detailed account of

Pythagorean teaching in Book VI, II, pp. 20 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 48: Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit. Heraclit._, c. 6, attributes

this opinion to Heraclitus.]

[Footnote 49: This verse appears in Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit.

Empedocles_, c. 6.]

[Footnote 50: So Diog. Laert., _ubi. cit._]

[Footnote 51: This sentence seems to have got out of place. It should

probably follow that on Lysis and Archippus, etc., on the last page.

The story of the shield is told by Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit. Pyth._, c.

4, and by Ovid, _Metamorph._, XV, 162 ff. For more about Empedocles see

Book VII, II, pp. 82 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 52: Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit. Heraclit._, from whom

Hippolytus is probably quoting, says that in his boyhood, Heraclitus

used to say, he knew nothing, in his manhood everything. Has Hippolytus

garbled this?]

[Footnote 53: There is nothing of this in what Hippolytus, Diogenes

Laertius or any other author extant gives as Empedocles’ opinions. τὰ

κακά seems to be equivalent to δαίμονες, as suggested in n. on p. 39

_supra_. Hippolytus returns to Heraclitus’ opinions in Book IX, II, pp.

119 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 54: So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Anaximander_, c. 1,

_verbatim_.]

[Footnote 55: κόσμοι. He therefore believed in a plurality of worlds.]

[Footnote 56: οὐσία. It may here mean essence or being. A good

discussion of the changes in the meaning of the word and its

successors, ὑπόστασις and πρόσωπον, is to be found in Hatch, _op.

cit._, pp. 275-278.]

[Footnote 57: μετέωρον, a phenomenon in the heavens, but also something

hung up or suspended.]

[Footnote 58: στρογγύλον, used by Theophrastus for logs of timber.]

[Footnote 59: Lit., “from the separation of the finest atoms of the air

and from their movement when crowded together.”]

[Footnote 60: So Roeper. Cruice agrees.]

[Footnote 61: A. W. Benn, _op. cit._, p. 51, gives a readable account

of Anaximander’s speculations in physics. Diels, _op. cit._, pp. 132,

133 shows in an excellently clear conspectus of parallel passages the

different authors from whom Hippolytus took the statements in our text

regarding the Ionians. The majority are to be found in Simplicius’

commentaries on Aristotle, Simplicius’ source being, according to

Diels, the fragments of Theophrastus’ book on physics. Next in order

come Plutarch’s _Stromata_ and Aetius’ _De Placitis Philosophorum_,

many passages being common to both.]

[Footnote 62: ὁμαλώτατος, _aequabilis_, Cr., “homogeneous.”]

[Footnote 63: Lit., “whatever changes.”]

[Footnote 64: Planets. See n. on p. 36 _supra_.]

[Footnote 65: διὰ πλάτος. Cruice translates _ob latitudinem_, Macmahon

“through expanse of space.”]

[Footnote 66: μετεωριζόμενου. See n. on p. 42 _supra_.]

[Footnote 67: So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Anaxim._, c. 1. This is the

feature of Anaximenes’ teaching which seems to have most impressed the

Greeks.]

[Footnote 68: παχυθέντα.]

[Footnote 69: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, puts Anaximander in the 58th

Olympiad (548 B.C.) and Anaximenes in the 63rd. This is more probable

than the dates in our text. For Anaximenes’ sources, mostly Aetius and

Theophrastus, see Diels’ conspectus mentioned in n. on p. 43 _supra_.]

[Footnote 70: τὴν δὲ ὕλην γινομένην, _fieri materiam_, Cr.]

[Footnote 71: τῆς ἐγκυκλίου κινήσεως. Macmahon says “orbicular,” but

it means if anything centripetal and centrifugal, as appears in next

sentence.]

[Footnote 72: ὑποστῆναι. Hippolytus seems most frequently to use the

word in this sense.]

[Footnote 73: μετέωρον. See n. on p. 42 _supra_.]

[Footnote 74: τά τε ἐν αὐτῇ ὕδατα ἐξατμισθέντα ... ὑποστάντα οὕτως

γεγονέναι. I propose to fill the lacuna with καὶ πυκνωθέντα ἐν κοίλῳ.

For a description of this cavity see the _Phædo_ of Plato, c. 138. I do

not understand Roeper’s suggested emendation as given by Cruice.]

[Footnote 75: There must be some mistake here. He has just said that

the sun and moon are below the stars.]

[Footnote 76: φωτισμοί, _illuminationes_, Cr. So Macmahon. It clearly

means here “shinings forth again,” or “lightings up.”]

[Footnote 77: Diog. Laert. quotes from Apollodorus’ _Chronica_ that

Anaxagoras died in the 1st year of the 78th Olympiad, or ten years

before Plato’s birth. For Hippolytus’ sources for his teaching, mainly

Diog. Laert., Aetius and Theophrastus, see Diels, _ubi cit._]

[Footnote 78: μῖγμα, not μῖξις. But of what could the creative mind be

compounded before anything else had come into being?]

[Footnote 79: ἐκ τῆς πυρῶσεως. Does he mean the heated air, and why

should the earth form no part of the universe? Something is probably

omitted here.]

[Footnote 80: Ἐπικλιθῆναι, _de super incumbere_, Cr., “inclined at an

angle,” Macmahon. Evidently Archelaus imagined a concave heaven fitting

over the earth like a dish cover or an upturned boat or coracle. This

was the Babylonian theory. Cf. Maspero, _Hist. anc^{nne} de l’Orient

classique_, Paris, 1895, I, p. 543, and illustration. Many of the

Ionian ideas about physics doubtless come from the same source.]

[Footnote 81: Reading, as Cruice suggests, καὶ ἀνθρώπους for καὶ

ἀνόμοια. So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Archel._, c. 17.]

[Footnote 82: χρήσασθαι, _uti_, Cr., “employed,” Macmahon.]

[Footnote 83: A fair specimen of Hippolytus’ verbose and inflated

style.]

[Footnote 84: No other philosopher has yet been quoted as saying that

the earth was spherical.]

[Footnote 85: This sentence is said to have been interpolated.]

[Footnote 86: ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος, “from the surrounding (æther).” An

expression much used by writers on astrology and generally translated

“ambient.”]

[Footnote 87: Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Dem._, c. 1, says either

Damasippus or Hegesistratus or Athenocritus.]

[Footnote 88: It is doubtful whether astrology was known in Egypt

before the Alexandrian age. Diog. Laert., _vit. cit._, quotes from

Antisthenes that Democritus studied mathematics there, and astrology

was looked on by the Romans as a branch of mathematics. Cf. Sextus

Empiricus, _ubi cit., supra_.]

[Footnote 89: καὶ τῇ μὲν γένεσθαι, τῇ δὲ ἐκλείπειν.]

[Footnote 90: So Apollodorus. Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Xenophan._, c. 1,

says of Dexius.]

[Footnote 91: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, says Sotion of Alexandria is

the authority for this, but that he was mistaken. Hippolytus says later

in Book I (p. 59 _infra_) that Pyrrho was the first to assert the

incomprehensibility of everything. If, as Sotion asserted, Xenophanes

was a contemporary of Anaximander, he must have died two centuries

before Pyrrho was born.]

[Footnote 92: δόκος δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται, _sed in omnibus opinio est_,

Cr. Yet δόκος is surely a “guess.”]

[Footnote 93: αἰσθητικός.]

[Footnote 94: ἐν τῷ βάθει τοῦ λίθου, “deep down in the stone.” Perhaps

the earliest mention of fossils.]

[Footnote 95: Is this a survival of the Babylonian legends of the

Flood?]

[Footnote 96: παραλλαγγάς, _differentias_, Cr. Perhaps “alternations.”]

[Footnote 97: The whole of this section on Ecphantus is corrupt. He is

not alluded to again in the book.]

[Footnote 98: Hippo is mentioned by Iamblichus in his life of

Pythagoras.]

[Footnote 99: ἀπομαξάμενος, “been sealed with,” or “copied.” Cf. Diog.

Laert., II, _vit._ _Socrates_, c. 12.]

[Footnote 100: προνοούμενον αὐτοῦ. The τόδε τὸ πᾶν of the line above

shows that Plato did not mean that the forethought extended to other

worlds than this.]

[Footnote 101: This expression, like many others in this epitome of

Plato’s doctrines, is found in the Εἰς τὰ τοῦ Πλάτωνος Εἰσαγωγή of

Alcinous, who flourished in Roman times. The best edition still seems

to be Bishop Fell’s, Oxford, 1667. Alcinous’ work was, as will appear,

the main source from which Hippolytus drew his account of Plato’s

doctrines.]

[Footnote 102: Alcinous, _op. cit._, c. 12.]

[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, cc. 9, 12.]

[Footnote 104: ἐδημιούργει. Not created _ex nihilo_, but made out of

existing material as an architect makes a house.]

[Footnote 105: Alcinous, _op. cit._, cc. 8, 10.]

[Footnote 106: ἐξ αὐτοῦ συνεστάναι αὐτόν. So Cruice. Macmahon reads

with Roeper αὐτῆς for αὐτοῦ, “the world was made out of it” (_i. e._

matter).]

[Footnote 107: The body of the cosmos is evidently meant. Cf. Alcinous,

c. 12.]

[Footnote 108: _de Legg._, IV, 7.]

[Footnote 109: ἀορίστως.]

[Footnote 110: _Timæus_, c. 16.]

[Footnote 111: _Phædrus_, c. 166.]

[Footnote 112: γενεαλογῇ.]

[Footnote 113: Alcinous, c. 25.]

[Footnote 114: _Phædrus_, cc. 51, 52.]

[Footnote 115: For this see the _Timæus_, c. 17.]

[Footnote 116: This sentence is corrupt throughout, and there are at

least three readings which can be given to it. I have taken that which

makes the smallest alteration in Cruice’s text.]

[Footnote 117: _Phædo_, c. 43.]

[Footnote 118: I do not think this can be found in any writings of

Plato that have come down to us. Hippolytus probably took it from

Aristotle, to whom he also attributes it; but I cannot find it in this

writer either. A passage in Arist., _Nicomachean Ethics_, Book II, c.

6, is the nearest to it.]

[Footnote 119: So Alcinous, c. 29. The other statements in this

sentence seem to be Aristotle’s rather than Plato’s. Cf. Diog. Laert.,

V, _vit. Arist._, c. 13, where he describes the good things of the

soul, the body and of external things respectively.]

[Footnote 120: Alcinous, cc. 28, 29.]

[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, c. 27.]

[Footnote 122: _Ibid._, c. 29.]

[Footnote 123: _Ibid._, c. 26. The passage about the choice [of virtue]

is in the _Republic_, X, 617 C. Hippolytus had evidently not read the

original, which says that according as a man does or does not choose

virtue, so he will have more or less of it.]

[Footnote 124: Alcinous, c. 30.]

[Footnote 125: This passage is not in the _Republic_, but in the

_Clitopho_, as to Plato’s authorship of which there are doubts. Cruice

quotes the Greek text from Roeper in a note on p. 38 of his text.]

[Footnote 126: Alcinous, c. 30.]

[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, c. 29.]

[Footnote 128: “Substance” (οὐσία) and “accident” (συμβεβηκός)

are defined by Aristotle in the _Metaphysica_, Bk. IV, cc. 8, 9

respectively. The definitions in no way bear the interpretation that

Hippolytus here puts on them. In the _Categories_, which, whether by

Aristotle or not, are not referred to by him in any of his extant

works, it is said (c. 4) that “of things in complex enunciated, each

signifies _either_ Substance or Quantity, or Quality or Relation, or

Where or When, or Position, or Possession, or Action, or Passion.” It

is from this that Hippolytus probably took the statement in our text.

The illustrations are in part found in _Metaphysica_, c. 4.]

[Footnote 129: The famous “Quintessence.” So Aetius, _De Plac. Phil._,

Bk. I, c. 1, § 38. But see Diog. Laert. in next note.]

[Footnote 130: This is practically _verbatim_ from Diog. Laert., V,

_vit. Arist._, c. 13.]