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.]

[Footnote 131: Hippolytus gives as is usual with him a more detailed account of Aristotle’s doctrines on these points later. (See Book VII, II, pp. 62 ff. _infra_.) He there admits that he cannot say exactly what was Aristotle’s doctrine about the soul. He also refers to books of Aristotle on Providence and the like which, _teste_ Cruice, no longer exist. Cf. Macmahon’s note on same page (p. 272 of Clark’s edition).]

[Footnote 132: ἐπὶ τὸ συλλογιστικώτερον τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ηὔξησαν. _Syllogisticæ artis expolitione philosophiam locupletarunt._]

[Footnote 133: Prof. Arnold in his lucid book on _Roman Stoicism_ (Cambridge, 1911, p. 219, n. 4) quotes this as a genuine Stoic doctrine. But Diog. Laert., VII, _vit. Zeno_, c. 68, represents Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Posidonius as agreeing that principles and elements differ from one another in being respectively indestructible and destroyed, and because elements are bodies while principles have none. For the Stoic idea of God, see _op. cit._, c. 70. So Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_, Bk. I, cc. 8, 18, makes Zeno say that the cosmos is God, but in the _Academics_, II, 41 that Aether is the Supreme God, with which doctrine, he says, nearly all Stoics agree. Perhaps Hippolytus is here quoting Clement of Alexandria, _Stromateis_, VI, 71, who says that the Stoics dare to make the God of all things “a corporeal spirit.” For the Stoic doctrine of Providence, see Diog. Laert., _vit. Zeno_, c. 70.]

[Footnote 134: ποιῶν καὶ τὸ αὐτεξούσιον μετὰ τῆς ἀνάγκης οἷον τῆς εἱμαρμένης. Τὸ αὐτεξούσιον is the recognized expression for free will. Note the difference between ἀνάγκη, “compulsion,” and εἱμαρμένη, “destiny.” For the Stoic doctrine of Fate, see Diog. Laert., _vit. cit._, c. 74.]

[Footnote 135: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, c. 84.]

[Footnote 136: From ψῦξις, “cooling”--a bad pun.]

[Footnote 137: It is extremely doubtful whether the metempsychosis ever formed part of Stoic doctrine.]

[Footnote 138: Zeno and Cleanthes both accepted the ecpyrosis. See Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, c. 70. The same author says that Panætius said that the cosmos was imperishable.]

[Footnote 139: σῶμα διὰ σώματος μὲν χωρεῖν, _corpusque per corpus migrare_, Cr. Macmahon inserts a “not” in the sentence, but without authority. The Stoic resurrection assumed that in the new world created out of the ashes of the old, individuals would take the same place as in this last. See Arnold, _op. cit._, p. 193 for authorities.]

[Footnote 140: ἀτόμοι, “that cannot be cut.” The rest of this sentence is taken from Diog. Laert., X, _vit. Epicur._, c. 24, and is quoted there from Epicurus’ treatise on Nature.]

[Footnote 141: With the exception of the Deity’s seat in the intercosmic spaces and the idea that the souls of men consist of blood, all the above opinions of Epicurus are to be found in Diog. Laert., X, _vit. Epic._]

[Footnote 142: οὐ μᾶλλον, “not rather.”]

[Footnote 143: See n. on p. 49 _supra_. The doctrines here given are those of the Sceptics, and are to be found in Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Pyrrho_, c. 79 ff. and in Sextus Empiricus, _Hyp. Pyrrho_, I, 209 ff. Diog. Laert. quotes from Ascanius of Abdera that Pyrrho introduced the dogma of incomprehensibility, and Hippolytus seems to have copied this without noticing that he has said the same thing about Xenophanes.]

[Footnote 144: Diog. Laert., I, _Prooem._, c. 1, mentions both Gymnosophists and Druids, but if he ever gave any account of their teaching it must be in the part of the book which is lost. Clem. Alex., _Stromateis_, I, c. 15, describes the two classes of Gymnosophists as Sarmanæ and Brachmans. The Sarmanæ or Samanæi (Shamans?) seem the nearer of the two to the Brachmans of our text.]

[Footnote 145: ἀκροδρύοι, hard-shelled fruit such as acorns or chestnuts.]

[Footnote 146: Roeper suggests the Ganges.]

[Footnote 147: Megasthenes, for whom see Strabo V, 712, differs from Hippolytus in making the abstinence of the Gymnosophists endure for thirty-seven years only.]

[Footnote 148: Nothing has yet been said about any bank.]

[Footnote 149: The whole of this sentence is corrupt. Macmahon following Roeper would read: “This discourse whom they name God they affirm to be incorporeal, but enveloped in a body outside himself, just as if one carried a covering of sheepskin to have it seen; but having stripped off the body in which he is enveloped, he no longer appears visibly to the naked eye.”]

[Footnote 150: ἐγείρας τρόπαιον, lit., “raised a trophy.”]

[Footnote 151: θεολογοῦσι. Eusebius, _Præp. Ev._, uses the word in this sense. For the Dandamis and Calanus stories, see Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk. VII, cc. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 152: This is quite unintelligible as it stands. It probably means that the Brachmans worship the light of which the Sun is the garment, and that they think they are united with it when temporarily freed from the body. Is he confusing them on the one hand with the Yogis, whose burial trick is referred to later in connection with Simon Magus, and on the other with some Zoroastrian or fire-worshipping sect of Central Asia?]

[Footnote 153: ὃς ... ἐκεῖ χωρήσας αἴτιος τούτοις ταύτης τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἐγένετο. Does the ἐκεῖ mean Galatia, whose inhabitants were Celts by origin? Hippolytus has probably copied the sentence without understanding it.]

[Footnote 154: Hesiod is treated by Aristotle, _Metaphysica_, Bk. II, c. 15, as one who philosophizes, which perhaps accounts for the introduction of his name here.]

[Footnote 155: διδαχθῆναι, _ut se edocerent_, Cr. So Macmahon. The context, however, plainly requires that it is Hesiod and not the Muse who is to be taught. The rendering of poetry into prose is seldom satisfactory, so I have ventured to give here the version of Elton, which is as close to the original as it is poetic in form.]

[Footnote 156: ὡς στέφανον δάσσαντο.]

[Footnote 157: Αἰθήρ τε καὶ Ἡμέρη. One would prefer to keep the word “Aether,” which is hardly “sunshine.”]

[Footnote 158: ἶσον ἑαυτῇ.]

[Footnote 159: τὰ μυστικὰ. The expression generally used for Mysteries such as those of Eleusis. Either he employs it here to include the tricks of the magicians described in Book IV, or he did not mean to describe these last when the sentence was written, but to go instead straight from the astrologers to the heresies. The last alternative seems the more probable.]

[Footnote 160: ἀδρανῆ, _infirmas_, Cr.]

[Footnote 161: The main question which arises on this First Book of our text is, What were the sources from which Hippolytus drew the opinions he here summarizes? Diels, who has taken much pains over the matter, thinks that his chief source was the epitome that Sotion of Alexandria made from Heraclides. As we have seen, however, Diogenes Laertius is responsible for a fair number of Hippolytus’ statements, especially concerning the opinions of those to whom he gives little space. Certain phrases seem taken directly from Theophrastus or from whatever author it was that Simplicius used in his commentaries on Aristotle, and the likeness between Alcinous’ summary of Plato’s doctrines and those of our author is too close to be accidental. It therefore seems most probable that Hippolytus did not confine himself to any one source, but borrowed from several. This would, after all, be the natural course for a lecturer as distinguished from a writer to adopt, and goes some way therefore towards confirming the theory as to the origin of the book stated in the Introduction.]

BOOKS II AND III

(These are entirely missing, no trace of them having been found attached to any of the four codices of Book I or to the present text of Books IV to X. We know that such books must have once existed, as at the end of Book IV (p. 117 _infra_) the author tells us that all the famous opinions of earthly philosophy have been included by him in the preceding _four_ books, of which as has been said only Books I and IV have come down to us.

Our only ground for conjecture as to the contents of Books II and III is to be found in Hippolytus’ statement at the end of Book I, that he will _first_ make public the mystic rites[1] and then the fancies of certain philosophers as to stars and magnitudes. As the promise in the last words of the sentence seems to be fulfilled in Book IV, where he gives not only the method of the astrologers of his time, but also the calculations of the Greek astronomers as to the relative distances of the heavenly bodies, it may be presumed that this was preceded and not followed by a description of the Mysteries more elaborate and fuller than the casual allusions to them which appear in Book V. So, too, in Chap. 5 of the same Book IV, which he himself describes in the heading as a “Recapitulation” of what has gone before, he refers to certain dogmas of the Persians and the Babylonians as to the nature of God, which have certainly not been mentioned in any other part of the book which has come down to us. So, again, at the beginning of Book X, which purports to be a summary of the whole work, he tells us that having now gone through the “labyrinth of heresies,” it will be shown that the Truth is not derived from “the wisdom (philosophy) of the Greeks, the secret mysteries of the Egyptians,[2] the fallacies of the astrologers, or the demon-inspired ravings of the Babylonians.” The Greek philosophy and astrological fallacies are dealt with at sufficient length in Books I and IV respectively, but nothing of importance is said in these or elsewhere in the work as to the mysteries of the “Egyptians,” by whom he probably means the worshippers of the Alexandrian divinities, and nothing at all as to Babylonian demonolatry or magic. It is quite true that he follows this up immediately by the statement that he has included the tenets of all the wise men among the _Greeks_ in four books, and the doctrines of the heretics in five; but it has been explained in the Introduction (pp. 18 ff. _supra_) that there are reasons why the summarizer’s recollection of the earlier books may not be verbally accurate, nor does he say that the description of the philosophic and heretical teachings exhausted the contents of the first four books. On the whole, therefore, Cruice appears to be justified in his conclusion that the missing books contained an account of the “Egyptian” Mysteries and of “the sacred sciences of the Babylonians.”)[3]

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: τὰ μυστικά.]

[Footnote 2: Αἰγυπτίων δόγματα ... ὡς ἄρρητα διδαχθείς.]

[Footnote 3: M. Adhémar d’Alès in his work _La Théologie de St. Hippolyte_, Paris, 1906, argues that the existing text of Book IV contains large fragments of the missing Books II and III. His argument is chiefly founded on the supposed excessive length of Book IV, although as a fact Book V is in Cruice’s pagination some 20 pages longer than this and Book VI, 10. Apart from this, it seems very doubtful if any author would describe the arithmomantic and arithmetical nonsense in Book IV as either μυστικά or δόγματα ἄρρητα, and it is certain that he cannot be alluding, when he speaks of the Βαβυλωνίων ἀλογίστῳ μανίᾳ δι’ ἐν(εργί)ας δαιμόνων καταπλαγείς, to the jugglery in the same book, which he there attributes not to the agency of demons but to the tricks of charlatans.]