Chapter XII

, p. 251 _supra_. Here, again, the traditional and monstrous figure of Satan may have been copied from the sculptured representations of the composite demons of Babylonia (_e.g._ Rogers, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, Frontispiece and Figs. 1 and 13). Yet if we take the Mithraic lion, as M. Cumont would have us do, as the symbol of fire and the serpent as that of the earth, we have in the five sorts of animals the five στοιχεῖα or elements of Aristotle. Cf. Aetius, _de Placitis Philosophorum_, ed. Didot, Bk I. c. iii. § 38 (Plutarch, _Moralia_, II.), p. 1069. Yet the nearest source from which Manes could have borrowed the idea is certainly Bardesanes, who, according to Bar Khôni and another Syriac author, taught that the world was made from five substances, _i.e._ fire, air, water, light and darkness. See Pognon, _op. cit._ p. 178; Cumont, _La Cosmogonie Manichéenne d’après Théodore bar Khôni_, Bruxelles, 1908, p. 13, n. 2.

Footnote 1047:

En Nadîm in Kessler, _op. cit._ p. 388; Flügel, _op. cit._ p. 87. As the ancients were unacquainted with the properties of gases, it is singular that they should have formed such a conception as that of the compressibility and expansibility of spirits. Yet the idea is a very old one, and the Arabian Nights story of the Genius imprisoned in a brass bottle has its parallel in the bowls with magical inscriptions left by the Jews on the site of Babylon (Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, 1853, pp. 509 _sqq._), between pairs of which demons were thought to be imprisoned. Cf. Pognon, _op. cit._ p. 3. Something of the kind seems indicated in the “Little Point,” from which all material powers spring, referred to by Hippolytus and the Bruce Papyrus.

Footnote 1048:

So in the _Pistis Sophia_, it is the “last Parastates” or assistant world who breathes light into the Kerasmos, and thus sets on foot the scheme of redemption. Cf.