[108] For the composition of this see Plutarch, op. cit., c. 81.

[109] ὁ μυχός. Often used for the women’s chamber or gynaeceum.

[110] Clearly the Egyptian sun-god Ra or Rê, the Phi in front being the Coptic definite article. It is a curious instance of the undying nature of any superstition that in the magical ceremonies of the extant Parisian sect of Vintrasists, Ammon-Ra, the Theban form of this god, is invoked apparently with some idea that he is a devil. See Jules Bois’ Le Satanisme et la Magie, Paris, 1895.

[111] χαλκάνθον, sulphate of iron, which, mixed with tincture or decoction of nut-galls, makes writing ink. Our own word copperas is an exact translation.

[112] φιάλη. A broad flat pan used for sacrificial purposes.

[113] There is some muddle here, probably due to Hippolytus not having any practical acquaintance with the tricks described. The smoke of nut-galls would hardly make the writing visible. On the other hand, letters written in milk will turn brown if exposed to the fire without the application of any ash.

[114] A sauce made of brine and small fish.

[115] See the roughly-drawn vignettes usual in magic papyri, e. g. Parthey, Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri, Berlin, 1866, p. 155; Karl Wessely, Griechische Zauberpapyri von Paris und London, Vienna, 1888, p. 118.

[116] τὰς φρένας. One of Hippolytus’ puns.

[117] Hebrew was used in these ceremonies, because they were largely in the hands of the Jews. See Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, II, pp. 33, 34, for references.

[118] ἠχεῖ. Particularly appropriate to the striking of a metal disc.

[119] The book of course was a long roll of parchment, the inner coils of which could be drawn out as described.

[120] ὀρυκτῶν ἁλῶν. Cruice translates fossil salts. Does he mean rock-salt?

[121] τὸ ἰνδικὸν μέλαν. Either indigo dye or pepper. Cayenne pepper put in the flame might have a startling effect on the audience.

[122] Where?

[123] Said to be an astringent earth made from rock-alum, and containing both alum and vitriol. Known to Hippocrates.

[124] Red lead or vermilion? The idea seems to be to frighten the dupe by the supposed prodigy of a hen laying eggs which have red or black inside them instead of white.

[125] Pliny, Nat. Hist., VIII, c. 75, says the sheep is compelled when it feeds to turn away from the sun by reason of the weakness of its head. This is probably the story which Hippolytus or the author has exaggerated. Something is omitted from the text.

[126] Seal or porpoise oil?

[127] Hymns like these are to be found in the two collections of magic papyri quoted in n. on p. 93 supra.

[128] He tells us how this trick is performed on p. 100 infra. Lecanomancy or divination by the bowl was generally performed by means of a hypnotized boy, as described in Lane’s Modern Egyptians. This, however, is a more elaborate process dependent on fraud.

[129] Reading νάτρον for νίτρον. It was common in Egypt, and saltpetre would not have the same effect, which seems to depend on the expulsion of carbonic acid.

[130] μυρσίνη. Cruice suggests μάλφη, a mixture of wax and pitch, which hardly seems indicated. Storax is the ointment recommended by eighteenth-century conjurers. Water is all that is needful.

[131] ἰχθυοκόλλα. Presumably fish-glue. Macmahon suggests isinglass. The salamander, the use of which is to be sought in sympathetic magic, was no doubt calcined and used in powder. σκολοπένδριον, “millipede” and σκολόπενδρον, “hart’s tongue fern” are the alternative readings suggested. Fern-oil is said to be good for burns.

[132] Probably chalk or gypsum.

[133] αὐτορρύτων κηκίδων τε κενῶν. Κήκις here evidently means any sort of nut-shell. But how can it be “self-flowing”? Miller’s suggested φορυτὸν makes no better sense.

[134] The lion-headed figure of the Mithraic worship is shown thus setting light to an altar in Cumont’s Textes et Monuments de Mithra, II, p. 196, fig. 22. A similar figure with an opening at the back of the head to admit the “wind-pipe” described in the text shows how this was effected. See the same author’s Les Mystères de Mithra, Brussels, 1913, p. 235, figs. 26, 27.

[135] The solution of alum would be effective without any other ingredients.

[136] That is, not by guesswork. Another pun.

[137] The letter was of course in the form of a writing-tablet bound about with silk or cord, to which the seal was attached.

[138] This would make something like plaster of Paris.

[139] This book or the former one. Lucian describes the same process in his Alexander, which he dedicates to Celsus; v. n. on p. 92 supra.

[140] ἀφορμὰς λαβών, “taking them as starting-points.”

[141] Cruice suggests that this sentence has either got out of place or is an addition by an annotator. Probably an afterthought of Hippolytus’.

[142] See n. on p. 97 supra.

[143] κύανος. A dark-blue substance which some think steel, others lapis lazuli.

[144] συμπαῖκται, “playfellows.” Here, as elsewhere in the text, accomplices or confederates.

[145] Several words missing here, perhaps by intention. It would be interesting to know if the “drug” was any preparation of phosphorus.

[146] Should be Baubo, a synonym of Hecate in the hymn to that goddess published by Miller, Mélanges de Litt. Grecque, Paris, 1868, pp. 442 ff.

[147] Most of the epithets and names here used are to be found in the hymn quoted in the last note. The goddess is there identified not only with Artemis and Persephone, but with the Sumerian Eris-ki-gal, lady of hell.

[148] A sort of magic lantern? κάτοπτρον, which I have translated mirror, might be a lens. One is said to have been found in Assyria.

[149] πόρρωθεν. Better, perhaps, πόρροτεθεν.

[150] Full moon, or half, or quarter, as the case may be.

[151] Schneidewin seems to be right in suggesting a lacuna here.

[152] ἐν ὑαλώδεσι τύποις. Schneidewin suggests τόποις unreasonably. Many alabaster jars are nearly transparent.

[153] Cf. Aristotle, De Hist. Animal., V, 10, 2. Said to be Coryphæna hippurus.

[154] The hiatus leaves us in doubt how this operated. Perhaps it liberated free ammonia.

[155] Reading ἐπίπλοον βοείου instead of, with Cruice, ἐπίπλεον βώλου, “filled with clay.”

[156] ἀφανὲς, “unapparent.”

[157] ἀπηνέχθημεν. An admission that this chapter was an afterthought.

[158] ὡς εἰκάσαι, ἐστι, ut patet, Cr.

[159] θεολόγοι. It does not mean “theologians” in our sense, but narrator of stories about the gods. Orpheus is always considered a θεολόγος.

[160] ποδαπός. Not, as Cruice translates, quale, which would be better expressed by the ποίον of Aristotle.

[161] τὸ σύμπαν αὐτὸ.

[162] It is fairly certain that Hippolytus in this “Recapitulation” must here be summarizing the missing Books II and III. He has said nothing in any part of the work that has come down to us about the Persian theology, and in Book I he calls Zaratas or Zoroaster a Chaldæan and not a Persian.

[163] ψήφοις ὑπέβαλον καὶ are supplied by Schneidewin in the place of three words rubbed out.

[164] Reading with Schneidewin μοιρῶν for μυρῶν and ἐπιπνοίας for ἐπίνοιας.

[165] By indivisible comparison (σύγκρισις) he seems to imply that these numbers cannot be divided except by 1. Hence Cruice would omit 9 as being divisible by 3. Perhaps he means “like indivisibility.”

[166] Cruice suggests that this was an astronomical instrument and quotes Cl. Ptolemy, Harmon., I, 2, in support.

[167] Why should the cosmos be masculo-feminine? The Valentinians said the same thing about their Sophia, who was, as I have said elsewhere (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oct. 1917), a personification of the Earth. The idea seems to go back to Sumerian times. Cf. Forerunners, II, 45, n. 1, and Mr. S. Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, Oxford, 1914, pp. 7, 43 and 115.

[168] The worshippers of the Greek Isis declared Isis to be the earth and Osiris water. See Forerunners, I, 73, for references. If Hippolytus is here recapitulating Books II and III, it is probable that the lacuna was occupied with some reference to the Alexandrian deities and their connection with the arithmetical speculations of the Neo-Pythagoreans. Could this be substantiated, we should not need to look further for the origin of the Simonian and Valentinian heresies.

[169] ψηφιζόμενα κὰι ἀναλυόμενα, supputata et diversa, Cr. The process seems to be that called earlier (p. 85 supra) the rule of 9.

[170] 361 ÷ 9 = 40 + 1; 605 ÷ 9 = 67 + 2.

[171] ἀπερίζυγον, lit., “unyoked.”

[172] εἰς ἐννάδα here appears in the text apparently as an alternative reading. Cruice suggests “with an ennead deducted.”

[173] Meaning that some reckon the numerical value of all the letters in a name, others that of the vowels only.

[174] What follows has nothing to do with divination, but treats of the celestial map as a symbolical representation of the Christian scheme of salvation. Hippolytus condemns the notion as a “heresy,” but if so, its place ought to be in Book V. It is doubtful from what author or teacher he derived his account of it; but all the quotations from Aratus’ Phænomena which he gives are to be found in Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 41, where they make, as they do not here, a connected story.

[175] One of the passages favouring the conjecture that the book was originally in the form of lectures.

[176] οἱ ἐντυγχάνοντες, legentibus, Cr. It may just as easily mean “those who come across this.”

[177] “Catasterisms” was the technical term for these transfers, of which the Coma Berenices is the best-known example. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, op. cit., p. 23.

[178] The long-eared owl (strix otus). According to Ælian it had a reputation for stupidity, and was therefore a type of the easy dupe, Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, IX, 44, 45, tells a similar story to that in the text about the bustard.

[179] Reading μετανάσσεται for μετανίσσεται or μετανείσεται.

[180] στρεπτούς, volventes, Cr. An attempt to pun on πόλος, the Pole.

[181] Job i. 7. The Book of Job according to some writers comes from an Essene school, which may give us some clue to the origin of these ideas. The Enochian literature to which the same tendency is assigned is full of speculations about the heavenly bodies. See Forerunners, I, p. 159, for references.

[182] ὁ ἐν γόνασιν. Aratus calls this constellation ὁ ἐν γόνασι καθήμενος, Cicero Engonasis, Ovid Genunixus, Vitruvius, Manilius and J. Firmicus Maternus, Ingeniculus.

[183] A perversion of the “it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel,” of Genesis iii. 15.

[184] From his attitude the Kneeler resembles the figure of Atlas supporting the world, who as Omophorus plays a great part in Manichæan mythology. Cumont derives this from a Babylonian original, for which and his connection with Mithraic cosmogony see his Recherches sur le Manichéisme, Brussels, 1908, I, p. 70, figs. 1 and 2. The constellation is now known as Hercules.

[185] Hippolytus here evidently quotes not from Aratus, but from some unnamed Gnostic or heretic writer, whom Cruice thinks must have been a Jew. Yet he was plainly a Christian, as appears from his remarks about the “Second Creation.” An Ebionite writer might have preserved many Essene superstitions.

[186] Cruice, following Roeper, says these words have slipped in from an earlier page.

[187] ὀφιοῦχος. The “Ophiuchus huge” of Milton or Anguitenens.

[188] Ἑλίκη. So Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius. Said to be so called from its perpetually revolving. Cruice remarks on this sentence that it does not seem to have been written by a Greek, and quotes Epiphanius as to the addiction of the Pharisees to astrology. But see last note but one.

[189] ἑλίκη. A pun quite in Hippolytus’ manner.

[190] πρὸς ἣν ... ναυτίλλονται. Cruice and Macmahon alike translate this “towards which,” but Aratus clearly means “steer by” both here and earlier.

[191] Herodotus I, 1. He does not say, however, that the Greeks were Phœnicians.

[192] Rather the conceiver, from κύω, to conceive. γεννάω is used of the mother by Aristotle, De Gen. Animal., 3, 5, 6.

[193] λογικῆς.

[194] Reading Ιάσαδος for Cruice’s Ἰασίδαο. The text is said to have εἰς ἀΐδαο.

[195] γράμματα, elementa, Cr. But I think the allusion is to the story they contain for those who can read them.

[196] The Swan.

[197] τὰς ἰδέας.

[198] If Hippolytus’ words are here correctly transcribed, the “heretic” quoted seems to have two inconsistent ideas about the stars. One is that the constellations are types or allegories of what takes place in man’s soul; the other, that they are the patterns after which the creatures of this world were made. This last is Mithraic rather than Christian.

[199] τῆς τούτων ὑπολήψεως, ab horum cogitationibus, Cr.

[200] ἀγαπητοί. The word generally used in a sermon.

[201] This also reads like a peroration.

[202] In this chapter Hippolytus for the first time sets himself seriously to prove the thesis which he has before asserted, i. e., that all the Gnostic systems are derived from the teachings of the Greek philosophers. His mode of doing so is to compare the elaborate systems of Aeons or emanations of deity imagined by heresiarchs like Simon Magus and Valentinus to the views attributed by him to Pythagoras which make all nature to spring from one indivisible point. Whether Pythagoras ever held such views may be doubted and we have no means of checking Hippolytus’ always loose statements on this point; but something like them appears in the Theaetetus of Plato where arithmetic and geometry seem to be connected by talk about oblong as well as square numbers and the construction of solids from them. If we imagine with the Greeks (see n. on p. 37 supra) that numbers are not abstract things, but actual portions of space, there is indeed a strong likeness between the ideas of the later Platonists as to the construction of the world by means of numbers and those attributed to the Gnostic teachers as to its emanation from God. Whether these last really held the views thus attributed to them is another matter. Cf. Forerunners, II, pp. 99, 100.

[203] ἀπὸ τοῦ σημείου seems to be repeated needlessly.

[204] ῥυὲν, “flowing out.”

[205] πέρος ἔχουσα σημεῖον. Surely it has two limits—a point at each end.

[206] σῶμα. In the next sentence he uses the proper word στερεόν.

[207] This is, I suppose, quoted from the Ἀποφάσις μεγαλή attributed to Simon, as he speaks afterwards (II, p. 9 infra) of the small becoming great, “as it is written in the Apophasis, if it ... come into being from the indivisible point. But the great will be in the boundless æon,” etc.

[208] What follows from this point down to the end of the paragraph is an almost verbatim transcript of the passage in Book I (pp. 37 ff. supra), where it is given as the teaching of Pythagoras. The only substantial differences are: that hypostasis is written for hypothesis in the second sentence of the passage; the Tetractys is no longer said to be the “source” of eternal nature; and the 11, 12, etc., are now said to take, and not “share” their beginning from the 10.

[209] ὑπόθεσιν ἑαυτοῖς ἐντεῦθεν σχεδιάσαντες, suis dogmatibus fundamentum posuerunt, Cr.

[210] τὸ πνεῦμα. Cruice translates this by spiritum, and is followed by Macmahon. I think, however, he means the breath, it being the idea of the ancients that the arteries were air-vessels.

[211] παρεγκεφαλίς.

[212] κωνάριον.

[213] νωτιαῖον μοελόν.

[214] It is at any rate plain from this that the missing Books II and III at one time existed.

[215] These words appear in the MS. at the foot of this Book.