Book X, II, p. 481 infra.

- Probably " Great Father."
A This is entirely contradictory of Ilippolytus' own statement later ot their doctrine that the universe consists of Father, Son, and Matter. AvToyev-fjs, for which avToyevvyros is substituted a page later, is the last epithet to be applied to a sou. Is it a mistake for ^ovoyiw^Tos, "only begotten." For the three worlds, see the Naassene author also, p. 121 supra.
4 The cause assigned a little later is the salvation of the three worlds.
5 rptivvaixos probably means with powers from all three worlds. The phrase is frequent in the Fist is Sophia.
0 (TvynpiiAara, concrctioncs, Cr. and Macmahon. It might mean " decrees" and is used in the Septuagint version of Daniel for " inter- pretations " of dreams.
7 Coloss. i. 19, and ii. 9. 8 From the starry influences?
148 PHILOSOPHUMENA
that through His descent all the threefold divisions should be saved. For the things, he says, brought down below shall ascend through Him ; but those which take counsel together against those brought down from above shall be banished and after they have been punished shall be rooted out. This, he says, is the saying : " The Son of Man came not into the world to destroy the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." l He calls " the world," he says, the two overlying portions, (to wit) the unbegotten and the self-begotten. When the Scripture says : " Lest ye be judged with the world," 2 he says, it means the third part of the cosmos (to wit) that of form. For the third part p. 188. which he calls the world must be destroyed, but the two overlying ones preserved from destruction.3
13. Let us first learn, then, how they who have taken this teaching from the astrologers insult Christ, working destruction for those who follow them in such error. For the astrologers, having declared the cosmos to be one, divided it 4 into the twelve fixed parts of the Zodiacal signs, and call the cosmos of the fixed Zodiacal signs one un- wandering world. But the other, they say, is the world of the planets alike in power and in position and in number which exists as far as the Moon.5 And that one world receives from the other a certain power and communion, and that things below partake of things above. But so that what is said shall be made plain, I will use in part the very words of the astrologers,6 recalling to the readers what was said before in the place where we set forth the whole art of astrology. Their doctrines then are these : From the emanation of the stars the genitures of things
1 John iii. 17. * I. Cor. xi- 32.
3 But see n. 4 on last page and text three sentences earlier.
4 It was not the world, but the Zodiac that the astrologers divided into dodecatemories. See Bouche-Leclercq, VAstrologie Gr., passim.
6 There must be some mistake here. The planetary world, according to the astronomy of the time, only began at the Moon.
6 The words which follow, down to the end of this paragraph, with the exception of one sentence, are taken, not from the astrologers, but from their opponent Sextus Empiricus. They correspond to pp. 339 ff. of the Leipzig edition of Sextus and the restorations from this are shown by round brackets. The whole passage doubtless once formed the beginning of Book IV of our text, the opening words of which they repeat. For the probable cause of this needless repetition see the Introduction, p. 20 supra.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 149
below are influenced. For the Chaldeans, scrutinizing the heavens with great care, said that (the seven stars) p. 189. account for the active causes of everything which happens to us j but that the degrees of the Zodiacal circle work with them. (Then they divide the Zodiacal circle into) 12 parts, and each Zodiacal sign into 30 degrees and each degree into 60 minutes ; for these they call the least and the undivided. And they call some of the Zodiacal signs male and others female, some bicorporal and others not, some tropical and others firm. Then there are male or female according as they have a nature co-operating in the begetting of males (or females). Moved by which, I think 1 the Pythagoricians 2 call the monad male, the dyad female, and the triad again .male and in like manner the rest of the odd and even numbers. And some dividing each sign into dodecatemories employ nearly the same plan. For example, in Aries they call the p. 190 first dodecatemory Aries and masculine, its second Taurus and feminine, and its third Gemini and masculine, and so on with the other parts. And they say that Gemini and Sagittarius which stands opposite to it and Virgo and Pisces are bicorporal signs, but the others not. And in like manner, those signs are tropical in which the Sun turns about and makes the turnings of the ambient, as, for example, the sign Aries and its opposite Libra, Capricorn and Cancer. For in Aries, the spring turning occurs, in Capricorn the winter, in Cancer the summer and in Libra the autumn. These things also and the system concerning them we have briefly set forth in the book before this, whence the lover of learning can learn how Euphrates the Peratic and Celbes the Carystian, the founders of the heresy, altering only the names, have really set down like things, having also paid immoderate attention to the art. For the astrologers also say that there are "terms " of the p. 191, stars in which they deem the ruling stars to have greater power. For example in some (they do evil), but in others good, of which they call these malefic and those benefic. And they say that (the Planets) behold one another and are in harmony with one another as they appear in trine (or
1 Sextus' comment, not Hippolytus'.
2 The personal followers of Pythagoras were called Pythagorics, those who later gave a general assent to his doctrines Pythagoreans.
1 5o PHILOSOPHUMEN A
square). Now the stars beholding one another are figured in trine when they have a space of three signs between them, but in square if they have two. And as in the man the lower parts suffer with the head and the head suffers with the lower parts, thus do the things on earth p. 192. with those above the Moon. But (yet) there is a certain difference and want of sympathy between them since they have not one and the same unity.
This alliance and difference of the stars, although a Chaldrean (doctrine), those of whom we have spoken before have taken as their own and have falsified the name of truth. (For they) announce as the utterance of Christ a strife of aeons and a falling-away of good powers to the bad, and proclaim reconciliations of good and wicked.1 Then they invoke Toparchs and Proastii,2 making for themselves also very many other names which are not obvious but systematize unsystematically the whole idea of the astrologers about the stars. As they have thus laid the foundation of an enormous 'error they shall be completely refuted by our appropriate arrangement. For I shall set side by side with the aforesaid Chaldaic art of the astrologers some of the doctrines of the Peratics, from which comparison it will be p. 193. understood how the words of the Peratics are avowedly those of the astrologers, but not of Christ.
14. It seems well then to use for comparison a certain one of the books 3 magnified by them wherein it is said : " I am a voice of awaking from sleep in the aeon of the
1 An echo of a tradition which seems widespread in Asia. In the Pistis Sophia it is said that half the signs of the Zodiac rebelled against the order to give up "the purity of their light" and joined the wicked Adamas, while the other half remained faithful under the rule of Jabraoth. Cf. Rev. xii. 7, and the Babylonian legend of the assault of the seven evil spirits on the Moon.
2 "Toparch" = ruler of a place. Proastius, "suburban," or a dweller in the environs of a town. It here probably means the ruler of a part of the heavens near or under the influence of a planet.
3 The bombastic phrases which follow seem to have been much corrupted and to have been translated from some language other than Greek. Nvuroxpoos and vSaToxpoos are not, I think, met with elsewhere, and the genders are much confused throughout the whole quotation, Poseidon being made a female deity and Isis a male one. The more outlandish names have some likeness to the " Munichuaphor," "Chre- maor," etc., of the Pistis Sophia. There seems some logical connection between the name of the powers and those born under them, the lovers being assigned to Eros, and so on.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 151
night, (and) now I begin to lay bare the power from Chaos. The power is the mud of the. abyss, which raises the mire of the imperishable watery void, the whole power of the convulsion, pale as water, ever-moving, bearing with it the stationary, holding back those that tremble, setting free those that approach, relieving those that sigh, bringing down those that increase, a faithful steward of the traces of the winds, taking advantage of the things thrown up by the twelve eyes of the Law,1 showing a seal to the power which p. 194 arranges by itself the onrushing unseen water which is called Thalassa.2 Ignorance has called this power Kronos guarded with chains since he bound together the maze of the dense and cloudy and unknown and dark Tartarus. There are born after the image of this (power) Cepheus, Prometheus, Iapetus.3 (The) power to whom Thalassa is entrusted is masculo-feminine, who traces back the hissing (water) from the twelve mouths of the twelve pipes and after preparing distributes it. (This power) is small and reduces the bois- terous restraining rising (of the sea) and seals up the ways of her paths, so that nothing should declare war or suffer change. The Typhonic daughter of this (power) is the faithful guard of all sorts of waters. Her name is Chorzar. Ignorance calls her Poseidon, after whose likeness came Glaucus, Melicertes, Io,4 Nebroe. He that is encircled with the 12- angled pyramid5 and darkens the gate into the pyramid with divers colours and perfects the whole blackness (i — this p. 195. one is called Core7 whose 5 ministers are: first Ou, 2nd
1 Cruice points out that "eyes" are here probably written for "wells," tbe Hebrew for both being the same, and refers us to the twelve wells of Elim in Exod. xv. 27.
2 Schneidewin here quotes from Berossos the well-known passage about the woman Omoroca, Thalalth, or Thalassa, who presided over the chaos of waters and its monstrous inhabitants. See Cory's Ancient Fragments) p. 25. The name has been generally taken to cover that of Tiamat whom Bel-Merodach defeated. See Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 107.
3 All Titans, like Kronos himself.
4 Macmahon reads here Ino, but this name appears later.
5 There is some confusion here. The Platonists, following Philolaos, attributed singular properties to the twelve-angled figure made out of pentagons and declared it to have been the model after which the Zodiac was made.
G vvKToxpoos. It seems to be a translation of the Latin nocticolor. 7 So the Codex. Schneidewin and Cruice would read Kpuvos, but that name has already occurred.
152 PHILOSOPHUMENA
Aoai, 3rd Ouo, 4th Ouoab, 5th . . . Other faithful stewards there are of his toparchy of day and night who rest in their authority. Ignorance has called them the wandering stars on which hangs perishable birth. StewarJ of the rising of the wind 1 is Carphasemocheir (and second) Eccabaccara, but ignorance calls these Curetes. (The) third ruler of the winds is Ariel 2 after whose image came ^Kolus (and) Briares. And ruler of the 12-houred night (is) Soclas3 whom ignor- ance has called Osiris. After his likeness there were born Admetus, Medea, Hellen, Aethusa. Ruler of the 12-houred day-time is Euno. He is steward of the rising of the first- blessed 4 and aatherial (goddess) whom ignorance calls Isis. The sign of this (ruler) -is the Dogstar 5 after whose image were born Ptolemy son of Arsinoe, Didyme, Cleopatra, Olympias. (The) right hand power of God is she whom 96- ignorance calls Rhea, after whose image were born Attis, Mygdon,6Oenone. The left-hand power has authority over nurture whom ignorance calls Demeter. Her name is Bena. After the likeness of this (god) were born Celeus, Tripto- lemus, Misyr,7 Praxidice. (The) right-hand power has authority over seasons. Ignorance calls this (god) Mena after whose image were born, Bumegas,8 Ostanes, Hermes Trismegistus, Curites, Zodarion, Petosiris, Berosos, Astram- psychos, Zoroaster. (The) left-hand power of fire. Ignor- ance calls him Hephaestus after whose image were born Erichthonius, Achilleus, Capaneus, Phaethon, Meleager,
1 Here again Schneidewin would read cmttcjos, "star " ; but the next sentence makes it plain that it is the wind which is meant.
2 Ariel is in one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia made one of the torturers in hell.
3 Probably Saclan or Asaqlan whom the Manichoeans made the Son of the King of Darkness and the husband of the Nebrod or Nebroe mentioned above.
4 TrpcoroKafxapov. Macmahon translates it the "star Protocamarus," for which I can see no authority. It seems to me to be an inversion of TrpwTOfiaKdpos, " first-blest," very likely to happen in turning a Semitic language into Greek and back again.
6 The dogstar, Sothis, or Sirius, was identified with Isis.
6 Mvyhoov. In a magic spell, Pluto, who has many analogies with Attis, is saluted as " Huesemigadon," perhaps " Hye, Cye, Mygdon." Has this Mygdon any analogy with amygdalon the almond ?
7 Qy. Mise, the hermaphrodite Dionysos?
8 Bov/Atyas, "great ox"? All the other names which follow are those of magicians or diviners.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 153
Tydeus, Enceladus, Raphael, Suriel,1 Omphale. Three middle powers suspended in air (are) causes of birth. Ignorance calls them Fates, after whose image were born (the) house of Priam, (the) house of Laius, Ino, Autonoe, Agave, Athamas, Procne (the) Danaids, the Peliades. A masculo-feminine power there is ever childlike, who grows not old, (the) cause of beauty, of pleasure, of prime, of yearning, of desire, whom ignorance calls Eros, after whose image were born Paris, Narcissus, Ganymede, Endymion, p. 197. Tithonus, Icarius, Leda, Amymone, Thetis, (the) Hesperides, Jason, Leander, Hero." These are the Proastii up to Aether. For thus he inscribes the book.
15. The heresy of the Peratre, it has been made easily apparent to all, has been adapted from the (art) of the astrologers with a change of names alone. And their other books include the same method, if any one cared to go through them. For, as I have said, they think the un- begotten and overlying things to be the causes of .birth of the begotten, and that our world, which they call that of form, came into being by emanation, and that all those stars together which are beheld in the heaven become the causes of birth in this world, they changing their names as is to be seen from a comparison of the Proastii. And secondly after the same fashion indeed, as they say that the world came into being from the emanation of her 2 on high, thus they say that things here have their birth and death and are governed by the emanation from the stars. Since then the astrologers p. 198. know the Ascendant and Midheaven and the Descendant and the Anti-meridian, and as the stars sometimes move differently from the perpetual turning of the universe, and at other times there are other succeedents to the cardinal point and (other) cadents from the cardinal points, (the Perat?e) treating the ordinance of the astrologers as an allegory, picture the cardinal points as it were God and monad and lord of all generation, and the succeedent as the left hand and the cadent the right. When therefore any one reading their writings finds a power spoken of by them as right or left, let him refer to the centre, the succeedent
1 Two of the seven "angels of the presence." Their appearance in a list mainly of Greek heroes is inexplicable.
2 rrjs &vw. Perhaps we should insert 8uud/x€ws, "the Power on High."
154 PHILOSOPHUMENA
and the cadent, and he will clearly perceive that their whole system of practice has been established on astrological teaching.
1 6. But they call themselves Peratas, thinking that nothing which has its foundations in generation can escape the fate determined from birth for the begotten. For if anything, he says, is begotten it also perishes wholly, as it seemed also p. 199. to the Sibyl.1 But, he says, we alone who know the com- pulsion of birth and the paths whereby man enters into the world and have been carefully instructed — we alone can pass through2 and escape destruction. But water, he says, is destruction, and never, he says, did the world perish quicker than by water. But the water which rolls -around the Proastii is, they say, Kronos. For such a power, he says, is of the colour of water and this power, that is Kronos, none of those who have been founded in generation can escape. For Kronos is set as a cause over every birth so that it shall be subject to destruction 3 and no birth could occur in which Kronos is not an impediment. This, he says is what the poets say and the gods (themselves) also fear : —
Let earth be witness thereto and wide heaven above And the water of Styx that flows below.
The greatest of oaths and most terrible to the blessed gods. —
(Homer, Odyssey, vv. iS4ff.)
But not only do the poets say this, he says, but also the wisest of the Greeks, whereof Heraclitus is one, who says, p. 200. " For water becomes death to souls."4
This death (the Peratic) says seizes the Egyptians in the Red Sea with their chariots. And all the ignorant, he says, are Egyptians and this he says is the going out from Egypt (that is) from the body. For they think the body little Egypt (and) that it crosses over the Red Sea, that is, the water of destruction which is Kronos, and that it is beyond the Red Sea, that is birth, and comes into the desert, that is,
1 See Sibyll. Orac, III. But the Sibyl says the exact opposite. Cf. Charles, Apocrypha and Psttedepigrapha of the 0.7'., II, 377.
2 -rrtpao-ai. The derivation is too much even for Theodoret, who says that the name of the sect is taken from "Euphrates the Peratic" (or Mede).
3 So modern astrologers make him the "greater malefic."
4 A fragment from Heraclitus according to Schleienr.acher.
THE OPHITE HERESIES i$g
outside generation where are together the gc h o destruction and the god of salvation. But the gods c. le^ ction, h«. says, are the stars which bring upon thos co ng into being the necessity of mutable generation. 1 'e, 3 said, Moses called the serpents of the desert which bi ^d use to perish those who think they have crossed thi Therefore, he says, to those sons of Israel who were bitten in the desert, Moses displayed the true and perfect serpent, those who believed on which were not bitten in the desert, that is, by the Powers. None then, he says, can save and p. 201. set free those brought forth from the land of Egypt, that is, from the body and from this world, save only £he perfect serpent, the full of the full.1 He who hopes on this, he says, is not destroyed by the serpents of the desert, that is, by the gods of generation. It is written, he says, in a book of Moses.2 This serpent, he says, is the Power which followed Moses, the rod which was turned into a serpent. And the serpents of the magicians who withstood the power of Moses in Egypt were the gods of destruction ; but the rod of Moses overthrew them all and caused them to perish.
This universal serpent, he says, is the wise word of Eve. This, he says, is the mystery of Edem, this the river flowing out of Edem, this the mark which was set on Cain so that all that found him should not kill him. This, he says, is (that) Cain whose sacrifice was not accepted by the god of this world ; but he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel, for the lord of this world delights in blood.3 He it is, he says, who in the last days appeared in man's shape in the time of Herod, born after the image of Joseph who was p. 202. sold from the hand of his brethren and to whom alone belonged the coat of many colours. This, he says, is he after the image of Esau whose garment was blessed when he was not present, who did not receive, he says, the blind man's blessing, but became rich elsewhere taking nothing from the blind one, whose face Jacob saw as a man might
1 So the Pistis Sophia speaks repeatedly of "the Pleroma of all Plcromas."
2 Many magical books bore the name of Moses. See Forerunners, II, 46, and n.
3 Is this why one Ophite sect was called the Cainites ? The hostility here shown to the God of the Jews is common to many other sects such as that of Saturninus, of Marcion and later of Manes. Cf. forerunners, II, under these names.
VOL. I. L
156 PHILOSOPHUMENA
see the face of God. Concerning whom he says, it is written that : " Nebrod was a giant hunting before the Lord." 1 There are, he says, as many counterparts of him as there were serpents seen in the desert biting the sons of Israel, from which that perfect one that Moses set up delivered those that were bitten. This, he says, is the saying : " And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." 2 After his likeness was the brazen serpent in the desert which Moses set up. The similitude of this alone is always seen in the heaven in light. This he says is the mighty beginning about which it is written. About this he says is the saying : " In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and p. 203. the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him nothing was. That which was in Him was life."3 And in Him, he says, Eve came into being (and) Eve is life. She, he says is Eve, mother of all living4 (the) nature common (to all), that is, to gods, angels, immortals, mortals, irrational beings, and rational ones; for, he says, "to all" speaking collect- ively. And if the eyes of any are blessed, he says, he will see when he looks upward to heaven the fair image of the serpent in the great summit 5 of heaven turning about and becoming the source of all movement of all present things. And (the beholder) will know that without Him there is nothing framed of heavenly or of earthly things or of things below the earth— neither night, nor moon, nor fruits, nor generation, nor wealth, nor wayfaring, nor generally is there anything of things which are that He does not point out. In this, he says, is the great wonder beheld in the heavens by those who can see.
For against this summit (that is) the head which is the most difficult of all things to be believed by those who know it not,
p. 204. "The setting and rising mingle with one another." —
(Aratus, P/iain., v. 62.)
1 Gen. x. 9. Nimrod, who is sometimes identified with the hero' Gilgames, plays a large part in all this Eastern tradition.
2 John iii. 13, 14. 3 Ibid., i. 1-4.
4 For this identification of Eve with the Mother of Life or Great Goddess of Asia, see Forerunners, II, 300, and 11.
5 &icpav. Cruice and Macmahon hoth read a^X-^ "beginning," but see ravrrfv tV &Kpav later.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 157
This it is concerning which ignorance speaks.: —
"The Dragon winds, great wonder of dread portent." —
{Ibid., v. 46.)
and on either side of him Corona and Lyra are ranged and above, by the very top of his head, a piteous man, the Kneeler, is seen
" Holding the sole of the right foot of winding Draco." —
(/»«/., v. 70.)
And in the rear of the Kneeler is the imperfect serpent grasped with both hands by Ophiuchus and prevented from touching the Crown lying by the Perfect Serpent.1
1 7 . This is the variegated wisdom of the Peratic heresy, which is difficult to describe completely, it being so tangled through having been framed from the art of astrology. So far as it was possible, therefore, we have set forth all its force in few words. But in order to expound their whole mind in epitome we think it right to add this : According to them the universe is Father, Son and Matter.2 Of these three every one contains within himself boundless p. 205. powers. Now midway between Matter and the Father sits the Son, the Word, the Serpent, ever moving himself towards the immoveable Father and towards Matter (which itself) is moved. And sometimes he turns himself towards the Father and receives the powers in his own person,3 and when he has thus received them he turns towards Matter ; and Matter being without quality and formless takes pattern from the forms 4 which the Son has taken as patterns from the Father. But the Son takes pattern from the Father unspeakably and silently and unchangeably, that is, as Moses says the colours of the (sheep) that longed,5 flowed from the rods set up in the drinking-places. In such a way
1 All this is, of course, quite different to the meaning assigned to these stars by the unnamed heretics of Book IV.
2 If we could be sure that Hippolytus was here summarizing fairly Ophite doctrines, it would appear that the Ophites rejected the Platonic theory that matter was essentially evil. What is here said presents a curious likeness to Stoic doctrines of the universe, as of man's being. Hippolytus, however, never quotes a Stoic author and seems throughout to ignore Stoicism save in Book I.
3 irp6 . The word used to denote the "character" or part or a person on the stage.
4 iSe'cu. So throughout this passage. 5 Gen. xxx. 37 ff.
158 PHILOSOPHUMENA
also did the powers flow from the Son to Matter according to the yearning of the power which (flowed) from the rods upon the things conceived. But the difference and unlike- ness of the colours which flowed from the rods through the waters into the sheep is, he says, the difference of corruptible and incorruptible birth. Or rather, as a painter while taking nothing from the animals (he paints), yet transfers with his pencil to the drawing-tablet all their forms, thus the Son by his own power transfers to Matter the
p. 206. types x of the Father. All things that are here are therefore the Father's types and nothing else. For if any one, he says has strength enough to comprehend from the things here that he is a type from the Father on high transferred hither and made into a body, as in the conception from the rod, he becomes white,2 (and) wholly of one substance3 with the Father who is in the heavens, and returns thither. But if he does not light upon this doctrine, nor discover the necessity of birth, like an abortion brought forth in a night he perishes in a night. Therefore, says he, when the Saviour speaks of " Your Father who is in heaven " 4 He means him from whom the Son takes the types and transfers them hither. And when He says " Your father is a manslayer from the beginning " 5 he means the Ruler and Fashioner of Matter who receiving the types distributed by the Son has produced children here. Who is a manslayer from the beginning because his work makes for corruption and death.6 None therefore, he says, can be saved nor
p. 207. return (on high) save by the Son who is the Serpent. For as he brought from on high the Father's types, so he again carries up from here those of them who have been awakened and have become types of the Father, transferring them thither from here as hypostatized from the Unhypostatized 7 One. This, he says, is the saying "I am the Door." But he transfers them, he says (as the light of vision)8 to those
1 xaPaKTVPes- See n. on p. 143 supra.
2 Not " ring-straked" like Jacob's sheep. z bjxoovaios.
4 Matt. vii. n. Note the change of "Your " for " Our."
5 John viii. 44.
6 Here agaiti he dwells upon the supposed evil nature of the Demiurge.
7 Or as Macmahon translates, " the substantial from the Unsub- stantial one."
s A lacuna in the text is thus filled by Cruice.
THE OPHITE HERESIES 159
whose eyelids are closed, as the naphtha draws everywhere the fire to itself — or rather as the magnet the iron but nothing else, or as the sea-hawk's spine the gold but nothing else, or as again (as) the chaff is drawn by the amber.1 Thus, he says, the perfect and consubstantial race which has been made the image *J (of the Father) but nought else is again led from the world by the Serpent, just as it was sent down here by him.
For the proof of this they bring forward the anatomy of the brain, likening the cerebrum to the Father from its immobility, and the cerebellum to the Son from its being moved and existing in serpent form. Which (last) they imagine ineffably and without giving any sign to attract p. 208. through the pineal gland the spiritual and life-giving substance emanating from the Blessed One.3 Receiving which the cerebellum, as the Son silently transfers the forms to Matter, spreads abroad the seeds and genera of things born after the flesh, to the spinal marrow. By the use of this simile, they seem to introduce cleverly their ineffable mysteries handed down in silence which it is not lawful for us to utter. Nevertheless they will easily be comprehended from what I have said.
18. But since I think I have set forth clearly the Peratic heresy and by many words have made plain what bad escaped (notice), and since it has mixed up everything with everything concealing its own peculiar poison, it seems right to proceed no further with the charge, the opinions laid down by them being sufficient accusation against them.4
1 Again this simile is not necessarily by the Peratic author, but seems to be introduced by Hippolytus. For the supposed conduct of naphtha in the presence of fire, see Plutarch, vit Alex.
2 i^eiKovKTixevov. A different metaphor from the "type." We shall meet with this one frequently in the work attributed to Simon Magus.
3 The text has 4k Kafxaplov. Here Schneidewin agrees that the proper reading is (xaKapiov, there being no reason why any " life-giving substance" should exist in the brain-pan. He thus confirms the reading in n. on p. 152 supra.
4 This chapter on the Peratre is evidently drawn from more sources than one. The author's first statement of their doctrines, which occupies pp. 146-149 sztpra, represents probably his first impression of them and contains at least one glaring contradiction, duly noted in its place. Then comes a long extract from Sextus Empiricus which is to all appearance a repetition of the earliest part of Book IV, only pardonable
160 PHILOSOPHUMENA
3. The Sethiani. p 209. 19. Let us see then what the Sethians say.1 They are
if it be allowed that the present Book was delivered in lecture form. There follows a quotation longer and more sustained than any other in the whole work from a Peratic book which he says was called Proastii, with a bombastic prelude much resembling the language of Simon Magus' Great Announcement in Book VI, followed by a catalogue of starry " influences " which reads much as if it were taken from some astrological manual. There follows in its turn a dissertation on the Ophite Serpent showing how this object of their adoration, identified with the Brazen Serpent of Exodus, was made to prefigure or typify in the most incongruous manner many personages in the Old and New Testaments, including Christ Himself. After this he announces an "epitome" of the Peratic doctrine which turns out to be perfectly different from anything before said, divides the universe, which he has previously said the Peratics divided into unbegotten, self-begotten and begotten, into a new triad of Father, Son {i.e. Serpent), and Matter, and gives a fairly consistent statement of the Peratic scheme of salvation based on this hypothesis. One can only suppose here that this last is an afterthought added when revising the book and inspired by some fresh evidence of Peratic beliefs probably coloured by Stoic or Marcionite doctrine. In those parts of the chapter which appear to have been taken from genuinely Peratic sources, the reference to some Western Asiatic tradition concerning cosmogony and the proto- plasts and differing considerably from the narrative of Genesis, is plainly apparent.
1 This chapter is the most difficult of the whole book to account for, with the doubtful exception of the much later one on the Doceta;. A sect of Sethians is mentioned by Irenrcus, who does not attempt to separate their doctrines from those of the Ophites. Pseudo-Tertullian in his tractate Against All Heresies also connects with the Ophites a sect called Sethites or Sethoites, the main dogma he attributes to them ( being an attempt to identify Christ with the Seth of Genesis. Epiph- anius follows this last author in this identification and calls them Sethians, but does not expressly connect them with the Ophites, makes them an Egyptian sect, and does not attribute to them serpent-worship. The sectaries of this chapter are called in the rubric Sithiani, altered to Sethiani in the Summary of Book X, and the name is not necessarily connected with that of the Patriarch. In the Bruce Papyrus, a Power, good but subordinate to the Supreme God, is mentioned, called "the Sitheus," which may possibly, by analogy with the late- Egyptian Si- Osiris and Si-Ammon, be construed " Son of God." Of their doctrines ^ little can be made from Hippolytus' brief but confused description. Their division of the cosmos into three parts does not seem to differ much from that of the Peratre, although they make a sharper distinction than this last between the world of light and that of darkness, which has led Salmon (D.C.B. s.v., Ophites) to conjecture for them a Zoro- astrian origin. This is unlikely, and more attention is due to Hippo- lytus' own statement that they derived their doctrines from Musseus,
THE OPHITE HERESIES 161
of opinion * that there are three definite principles of the universals, and that each of the principles contains bound- less powers. But what they mean by powers let him judge who hears them speak thus : Everything which you under- stand by your mind or which you pass by unthought of, is formed by nature to become each of these principles, as in the soul of man every art which is taught. For example, he says, that a boy will become a piper if he spend some time with a piper, or a geometrician if he does so with a geome- trician, or a grammarian with a grammarian, or a carpenter with a carpenter, and to one in close contact with other trades it will happen in the same way. But the substance of the principles, he says, are light and darkness; and between them there is uncontaminated spirit. But the spirit which is set between the darkness below and the light on high, is not breath like a gust of wind or some little breeze which can be perceived, but resembles some faint p. perfume of balsam or of incense artificially compounded, as a power penetrating by force of a fragrance inconceivable and better than can be said in speech. But since the light is above and the darkness below and the spirit as has been said between them, the light naturally shines like a ray of the sun on high on the underlying darkness, and again the
Linus, and Orpheus. In Forerunners it is sought to show that the Orphic teaching was one of the foundations on which the fabric of Gnosticism was reared, and the image of the earth as a matrix was certainly familiar to the Greeks, who made Delphi its bfx navel. Hence the imagery of the text, offensive as it is to our ideas, would not have been so to them, and Epiphanius (Nar.t XXXVIII, p. 510, Oehl.) knew of several writings, /coxa ttjs 'To-repas, or the Womb, which he says the sister sect of Cainites called the maker of heaven and earth. In this case, we need not take the story in the text about the generation by the bad or good serpent as necessarily referring to the In- carnation. One of the scenes in the Mysteries of Attis-Sabazius, and perhaps of those of Eleusis also, seems to have shown the seduction by Zeus in serpent-form of his virgin daughter Persephone and the birth therefrom of the Saviour Dionysos who was but his father re-born. This story of the fecundation of the earth-goddess by a higher power in serpent shape seems to have been present in all the religions of Western Asia, and was therefore extremely likely to be caught hold of by an early form of Gnosticism. In no other respect does this so-called " Sethian " heresy seem to have anything in common with Christianity, and it may therefore represent a pre-Christian form of Ophitism. The serpent in it is, iperhaps, neither bad nor good. 1 Tovrots 5o/ce?, " it seems to them,"
162 PHILOSOPHUMENA
fragrance of the spirit having the middle place spreads abroad and is borne in all directions, as we observe the fragrance of the incense burnt in the fire carried everywhere. And such being the power of the triply divided, the power of the spirit and of the light together is in the darkness which is ranged below them. But the darkness is a fearful water, into which the light with the spirit is drawn down and transformed into such a nature (as the water).1 And the darkness is not witless, but prudent completely, and knows that if the light be taken from the darkness, the darkness remains desolate, viewless, without light,
p. 211. powerless, idle, and strengthless. Wherefore with all its sense and wit it is forced to detain within itself the brilliance and spark of the light with the fragrance of the spirit. And an image of their nature is to be seen in the face of man, (to wit) the pupil of the eye dark from the underlying fluids, (and) lighted up by (the) spirit. As then the darkness seeks after the brilliance, that it may hold the spark as a slave and may see, so do the light and the spirit seek after their own power, and make haste to raise up and take back to themselves their powers which have been mingled with the underlying dark and fearful water.2 But all the powers of the three principles being everywhere boundless in number are each of them wise and understanding as regards its own substance, and the countless multitude of them being wise and understanding, whenever they remain by themselves are all at rest. But if one power draws near to another, the unlikeness of (the things in) juxtaposition effects a certain movement and activity formed from the movement, by the coming together and juxtaposition of the meeting
p. 212. powers. For the coming together of the powers comes to pass like some impression of a seal struck by close conjunction for the sealing of the substances brought up (to it).3 Since then the powers of the three principles are boundless in number and the conjunctions of the boundless powers (also) boundless, there must needs be produced
1 Cruice and Macmahon both translate this "into the same nature with the spirit."
2 This anxiety of the higher powers to redeem from matter darkness or chaos, the scintilla of their own being which has slipped into it, is the theme of all Gnosticism from the Ophites to the Pistis Sophia and the Manichaean writings. See Forentnners, II, passim.
3 Or " the substances brought up to the sealer."
THE OPHITE HERESIES 163
images of boundless seals. Now these images are the forms * of the different animals.
From the first great conjunction then of the three principles came into being a certain great form of a seal, (to wit) heaven and earth. And heaven and earth are planned very like a matrix having the navel 2 in the midst. And if, he says, one wishes to have this design under his eyes, let him examine with skill the pregnant womb of any animal he pleases, and he will discover the type of heaven and earth and of all those things between which lie un- changeably below. And the appearance of heaven and earth became by the first conjunction such as to be like a womb. But again between heaven and earth boundless conjunctions of powers have occurred. And each con- junction wrought and stamped 3 nothing else than a seal of heaven and earth like a womb. But within this (the earth) p. 213 there grew from the boundless seals boundless multitudes of different animals. And into all this infinity which is under heaven there was scattered and distributed among the different animals, together with the light, the fragrance of the spirit from on high.
Then there came into being from the water the first-born 4 principle (to wit) a wind violent and turbulent and the cause of all generation. For making some agitation in the waters it raises waves in them. But the motion of the waves as if it were some impregnating impulse is a be- ginning of generation of man or beast when it is driven onward swollen by the impulse of the spirit. But when this wave has been raised from the water and made preg- nant in the natural way, and has received within itself the feminine power of reproduction, it retains the light scattered from on high together with the fragrance of the spirit — that is mind given shape in the different species.5 Which p. 214. (mind) is a perfect God, who is brought down from the unbegotten light on high and from the spirit into man's nature as into a temple, by the force of nature and the
1 ibecu. And so throughout.
2 Schneidewin, Cruice, and Macmahon would here and elsewhere rend 6
3 ^ervTTODffev, "struck off."
4 7rpa>T oyovos. The others were " unbegotten " like the highest world of the Peratae and Naassenes.
5 uSeaiy.
164 PHILOSOPHUMENA
movement of the wind. It has been engendered from the water (and) commingled and mixed with the bodies as if it were (the) salt of the things which are and a light of the dark- ness struggling to be freed from the bodies and not able to find deliverance and its way out. For some smallest spark from the light (has been mingled) with the fragrance from above (i. e. from the spirit), like a ray (making composition of things dissolved and) solution of things compounded as, he says, is said in a psalm.1 Therefore every thought and care of the light on high is how and in what way the mind may be set free from the death of the wicked and dark body (and) from the Father of that which is below, who is the wind which raised the waves in agitation and disorder
p. 215. and has begotten Nous his own perfect son, not being his own (son) as to substance.2 For he was a ray from on high from that perfect light overpowered in the dark and fearful bitter and polluted water, which (ray) is the shining spirit borne above the water. When then the waves (raised from the) waters [have received within themselves the feminine power of reproduction, they detain in3] the different species, like some womb, (the light) scattered (from on high), (with the fragrance of the spirit) as is seen in all animals.
But the wind at once violent and turbulent is borne along like the hissing of a serpent. First then from the wind, that is from the serpent, came the principle of generation in the way aforesaid,4 all things having received the principle of generation at the same time. When then the light and the spirit were received into the unpurined
p. 216. and much suffering disordered womb, the serpent, the wind of the darkness, the first-born of the waters entering in, begets man, and the unpurified womb neither loves nor recognizes any other form (but the serpent's).5 Then the
1 Is this Ps. xxix. 3, 10 already quoted by the Naassene author? Cf. p. 133 supra.
2 This idea of a divine son superior to his father is common to the whole Orphic cosmogony and leads to the dethroning of Uranus by Kronos, Kronos by Zeus and finally of Zeus by Dionysos. It is met with again in Basilides (see Book VII infra).
3 A lacuna here which Cruice thus fills.
4 This has not been previously described. Is the narrative of the Fall alluded to?
6 Cruice and Macmahou would translate "any other than man's."
THE OPHITE HERESIES 165
perfect Word of the light on high, having been made like the beast, the serpent, entered into the unpurified womb, beguiling it by its likeness to the beast, so that it might loose the bands which encircle the Perfect Mind which was begotten in the impurity of the womb by the first-born of the water, (to wit) the serpent, the beast. This, he says, is the form of the slave l and this the need for the descent of the Word of God into the womb of a Virgin. But it is not enough, he says, that the Perfect Man, the Word, has entered into the womb of a virgin and has loosed the pangs which were in that darkness. But in truth after entering into the foul mysteries of the womb, He was washed 2 and drank of the cup of living bubbling water, which he must needs drink who was about to do off the slave-like form and do on a heavenly garment.
20. This is what the champions of the Sethianian doctrines p. 217. say, to put it shortly. But their system is made up of sayings by physicists and of words spoken in respect of other matters, which they transfer to their own system and explain as we have said. And they say that Moses also supported their theory when he said " Darkness, gloom and whirlwind." These, he says, are the three words. Or when he says that there were three born in Paradise, Adam, Eve (and the) Serpent ; or when he says three (others), Cain, Abel (and) Seth ; and yet again three, Shem, Ham (and) Japhet; or when he speaks of three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, (and) Jacob ; or when he says that there existed three days before the Sun and Moon ; or when he says that there are three laws (the) prohibitive, (the) per- missive and the punitive. And a prohibitive law is; " From every tree in Paradise thou mayest eat the fruit, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, eat not." But in this saying: "Go forth from thine own land, and from thy kindred and (thou shalt come) hither into a land which I shall show thee." This law he says is permissive for he who chooses may go forth and he who chooses may remain. But the law is punitive which says " Thou shalt not commit
1 Phil. ii. 7. The only quotation from the N.T. other than that from Matt, used by the Sethians, if it be not, as I believe it is, the inter- polation of Hippolytus.
2 aire\ov(raTo. Yet it may refer to baptism which preceded initiation in nearly all the secret rites of the Pagan gods. Cf. Forerunners, I, c. 2.
1 66 PHILOSOPHUMENA
adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder " — for to each of these sins there is a penalty.1
p. 218. But the whole teaching of their system is taken from the ancient theologists Musaeus, Linus and he who most especially makes known the initiations and mysteries (to wit), Orpheus. For their discourse about the womb is also that of Orpheus j and the phallus, which is virility, is thus explicitly mentioned in the Bacchica of Orpheus.2 And these things were made the subject of initiation and were handed down to men, before the initiatory rite of Celeus, Triptolemus, Demeter, Core and Dionysos in Eleusis, at Phlium in Attica. For earlier than the Eleusinian Mysteries are the secret rites of the so-called Great (Mother) in Phlium. For there is in that (town) a porch, and on the porch to this day is en- graved the representation of all the words spoken (in them).
p. 219. Many things are engraved on that porch concerning which Plutarch also makes discourse in his ten books against Empedocles. And on the doors is engraved a certain old man grey-haired, winged, having his pudendum stretched forth, pursuing a fleeing woman of a blue colour. And there is written over the Old man " Phaos ruentes " and over the woman " Pereephicola." But "phaos ruentes" seems to be the light according to the theory of the Sethians and the "phicola" the dark water, while between them is at an interval the harmony of the spirit. And the name of " Phaos ruentes " denotes the rushing below of the light as they say from on high. So that we may reasonably say that the Sethians celebrate among themselves (rites) in some degree akin to the Phliasian Mysteries of the Great (Mother).3 And to the triple division of things the poet seems to bear witness when he says : —
1 The whole of this paragraph reads like an interpolation, or rather as something which had got out of its place. The statement about the physicists is directly at variance with the opening of the next which attributes the Sethian teaching to the Orphics. The triads he quotes are all of three '-.'good" powers and therefore would belong much more appropriately to the system of the Perata?. The quotation from Deut. iv. n, he attributes to several other heresiarchs.
2 The codex has 6fx^a\6s for 6 tion. No book attributed to Orpheus called "Bacchica" has come down to us, but the Rape of Persephone was a favourite theme with Orphic poets. Cf. Abel's Orphica, pp. 209-219.
3 This is not improbable ; but Hippolytus gives us no evidence that this is the case, as Plutarch, from whom he quotes, certainly did not
THE OPHITE HERESIES 167
"And in three lots were all things divided And each drew his own domain.'' —
(Homer, //., XV, 189.1)
that is each of the threefold divisions has taken power. And, as for the underlying dark water below, that the light p. 220. has plunged into it and that the spark borne down (into it) ought to be restored and taken on high from it, the all-wise Sethians seem to have here borrowed from Homer when he says : —
" Let earth be witness and wide heaven above And the water of Styx that flows below The greatest oath and most terrible to the blessed gods." 2 —
(//. XV, 36-3S.)
That is, the gods, according to Homer, think water some- thing ill-omened and frightful, wherefore the theory of the Sethians says it is frightful to the Nous.
21. This is what they say and other things like it in endless writings. And they persuade those who are their disciples to read the theory of Composition and Mixture ;: which is studied by many others and by Andronicus the Peripatetic. The Sethians then say that the theory about Composition and Mixture is to be framed after this fashion : The light ray from on high has been compounded and the very small spark has been lightly mingled4 in the dark p. 221. waters below, and (these two) have united and exist in one mass as one odour (results) from the many kinds of incense on the fire. And the expert who has as his test an acute sense of smell ought to delicately distinguish from the sole smell of the incense the different kinds of it set on the fire ; as (for example) if it be storax and myrrh and frankincense or if anything else be mixed with it. And they make use of other comparisons, as when they say that if brass has been mixed with gold, a certain process 5 has been discovered which separates the gold from the brass. And in like
connect the frescoes of Phlium in the Peloponnesus (not Attica as he says) with the Sethians, nor does the light in their story desire the water.
1 This too is a stock quotation which has already done duty for the Naassene author. Cf. p. 131 supra.
So has this with the " Peratic." Cf. p. 154 supra.
i68 PHILOSOPHUMENA
manner if tin or brass or anything of the same kind be found mixed with silver, these by some better process of alloy are also separated. But even now any one distinguishes water mixed with wine. Thus, he says, if all things are mingled together they are distinguished. And truly, he says, learn from the animals. For when the animal is dead each (of its parts) is separated (from the rest) and thus when dissolved, the animal disappears. This he says is the saying : "I come not to bring peace upon the earth but a sword"1 — that is to cut in twain and separate the things
p. 222. which have been compounded together. For each of the compounds is cut in twain and separated when it lights on its proper place. For as there is one place of composition for all the animals, so there has been set up one place of dissolution, which no man knoweth, he says, save only we who are born again, spiritual not fleshly, whose citizenship is in the heavens above.
With these insinuations they corrupt their hearers, both when they misuse words, turning good sayings into bad as they wish, and when they conceal their own iniquity by what comparisons they choose. All things then, he says, which are compounds have their own peculiar place and run towards their own kindred things as the iron to the magnet, the straw to the amber, and the gold to the sea-hawk's spine.2 And thus the (ray) of light which was mingled with the water having received from teaching and learning (the knowledge of) its own proper place hastens to the Word come from on high in slave-like form and becomes with the Word a Word where the Word is, more (quickly) than the iron (flies) to the magnet.
p. 223. And that these things are so, he says, and that all com- pounded things are separated at their proper places, learn (thus) : — There is among the Persians in the city Ampa near the Tigris a well, and near this well and above it has been built a cistern having three outlets. From which well if one draws, and takes up in a jar what is drawn from the well whatever it is and pours it into the cistern hard by ;
1 Matt. x. 34.
2 This again seems to be Hippolytus' own repetition of a simile which he met with in the Naassene author and which so pleased him that he made use of it in his account of the Peratic heresy as well as here. Cf. pp. 144 and 159 supra.
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when it comes to the outlets and is received from each outlet in one vessel, it separates itself. And in the first outlet is exhibited an incrustation * of salt, and in the second bitumen, and in the third oil. But the oil is black, as he says Herodotus also recounts,2 has a heavy odour and the Persians call it rhadinace. This simile of the well, say the Sethians, suffices for the truth of their proposition better than all that has been said above.
22. The opinion of the Sethians seems to us to have been made tolerably plain. But if any one wishes to learn the whole of their system let him read the book inscribed Paraphrase (of) Seth ; for all their secrets he will find there enshrined.3 But since we have set forth the things of the Sethians 4 let us see also what Justinus thinks. P- 224
4. Justinus.5
23. Justinus, being utterly opposed to every teaching of
1 a\as irr)yvv/.ievov.
2 Herodotus VI, 20, mentions the City of Ampe, but says nothing there about the well which is described in c. 119 as at Ardericca in Cissia.
3 The title of the book is given in the text as Uapdcppavts 2t)0, which is a well-nigh impossible phrase.
4 On the whole it may be said that this is the most suspect of all the chapters in the Philosophumena, and that, if ever Hippolytus was deceived into purchasing forged documents according to Salmon and Stahelin's theory, one of them appears here. Much of it is mere verbiage as when, after having identified Mind or Nous with the fragrance of the spirit, he again explains that it is a ray of light sent from the perfect light, or when he explains the difference between the three different kinds of law. The quotations too are seldom new, nearly all of them appearing in other chapters and are, if it were possible, more than usually inapposite, while almost the only new one is inaccurate. The sentence about the Paraphrase (of) Seth, if" that is the actual title of the book, does not suggest that Hippolytus is quoting from that work, nor does the phrase, "he says," occur with anything like the frequency of its use in e.g., the Naassene chapter. On the whole, then, it seems probable that in this Hippolytus was not copying or extracting from any written document, but was writing down, to the best of his recollec- tion the statements of some convert who professed to be able to reveal its teaching. It is significant in this respect that when the summary in