FOOTNOTES
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[5] Mr. Macmahon here reads “Brahmins.” Their habits appear more like those of Yogis or Sanyasis.
[6] ἁδρομερῶς: in contradistinction to κατὰ λεπτὸν just above.
[7] ἀλογίστου γνώμης καὶ ἀθεμίτου ἐπιχειρήσεως. The Turin MS. transposes the adjectives.
[8] πρὸς το͂ν ὄντως Θεὸν. The phrase is used frequently hereafter, particularly in Book X.
[9] Cf. the “bond of iniquity” in St. Peter’s speech to Simon Magus, Acts viii. 23.
[10] τὸ τέλειον τῶν κακῶν. τέλειον being a mystic word for final or complete initiation.
[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.
[12] Ἀρχιερατεία. A neologism. This is the passage relied upon to show that our author was a bishop.
[13] ἀλλότρια = foreign. Cruice has aliena. But it is here evidently contrasted with the “things of the truth” in the next sentence.
[14] κηρύσσομεν.
[15] τὰ δοξαζόμενα, lit., “matters of opinion.”
[16] ἐκ δογμάτων φιλοσοφουμένων. The context shows that here, and probably elsewhere in the book, the phrase is used contemptuously.
[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.
[18] τὸ θεῖον. Both here and in Book X our author shows a preference for this phrase instead of the more usual ὁ Θεός.
[19] συμβάλλω.
[20] δόγμα.
[21] τὰ λαληθέντα ἀποβαίνοντα. Note the piling up of similes natural in a spoken peroration.
[22] γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀσχήμονας, nudos et turpes, Cr. Stripped of originality seems to be the threat intended.
[23] φιλοσοφίαν φυσικήν. What we should now call Physics.
[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.
[25] ἀέρων in text. Roeper suggests ἄστρων, “stars.”
[26] So Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, V, c. 14, and Diog. Laert., I. vit. cit., c. 9.
[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.
[28] Roeper adds καὶ ἀριθμετικήν, apparently in view of the speculations about the monad.
[29] Aristotle in his Metaphysica, Bk. I, c. 5, attributes the first use of this dogma to Xenophanes.
[30] By these are meant the planets, including therein the Sun and Moon. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Astrologos, p. 343 (Cod.) passim.
[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.
[32] ἐφήψατο, attigit, Cr. Frequent in Pindar.
[33] So Timon in the Silli, as quoted by Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Pyth., c. 20.
[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.
[35] κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος, multitudine, Cr.
[36] For definitions and examples of this term see Aristot., Metaphys., IV. c. 28.
[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.”
[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.
[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.
[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.
[41] μετενσωμάτωσις. The phrase which is here correctly used throughout, but which has somehow slipped into English as metempsychosis.
[42] So Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Pyth., c. 4.
[43] Diodorus of Eretria is not otherwise known, Aristoxenus is mentioned by Cicero, Quæst. Tusculan., I, 18, as a writer on music.
[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.
[45] Reading with Roeper τὴν κόσμου φύσιν καὶ. Cruice has τὸν κόσμον φύσιν κατὰ, “that the cosmos is a nature according to,” etc.
[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.
[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.
[48] Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Heraclit., c. 6, attributes this opinion to Heraclitus.
[49] This verse appears in Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Empedocles, c. 6.
[50] So Diog. Laert., ubi. cit.
[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.
[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?
[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.
[54] So Diog. Laert., II, vit. Anaximander, c. 1, verbatim.
[55] κόσμοι. He therefore believed in a plurality of worlds.
[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.
[57] μετέωρον, a phenomenon in the heavens, but also something hung up or suspended.
[58] στρογγύλον, used by Theophrastus for logs of timber.
[59] Lit., “from the separation of the finest atoms of the air and from their movement when crowded together.”
[60] So Roeper. Cruice agrees.
[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.
[62] ὁμαλώτατος, aequabilis, Cr., “homogeneous.”
[63] Lit., “whatever changes.”
[64] Planets. See n. on p. [36] supra.
[65] διὰ πλάτος. Cruice translates ob latitudinem, Macmahon “through expanse of space.”
[66] μετεωριζόμενου. See n. on p. [42] supra.
[67] So Diog. Laert., II, vit. Anaxim., c. 1. This is the feature of Anaximenes’ teaching which seems to have most impressed the Greeks.
[68] παχυθέντα.
[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.
[70] τὴν δὲ ὕλην γινομένην, fieri materiam, Cr.
[71] τῆς ἐγκυκλίου κινήσεως. Macmahon says “orbicular,” but it means if anything centripetal and centrifugal, as appears in next sentence.
[72] ὑποστῆναι. Hippolytus seems most frequently to use the word in this sense.
[73] μετέωρον. See n. on p. [42] supra.
[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.
[75] There must be some mistake here. He has just said that the sun and moon are below the stars.
[76] φωτισμοί, illuminationes, Cr. So Macmahon. It clearly means here “shinings forth again,” or “lightings up.”
[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.
[78] μῖγμα, not μῖξις. But of what could the creative mind be compounded before anything else had come into being?
[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.
[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. ancnne de l’Orient classique, Paris, 1895, I, p. 543, and illustration. Many of the Ionian ideas about physics doubtless come from the same source.
[81] Reading, as Cruice suggests, καὶ ἀνθρώπους for καὶ ἀνόμοια. So Diog. Laert., II, vit. Archel., c. 17.
[82] χρήσασθαι, uti, Cr., “employed,” Macmahon.
[83] A fair specimen of Hippolytus’ verbose and inflated style.
[84] No other philosopher has yet been quoted as saying that the earth was spherical.
[85] This sentence is said to have been interpolated.
[86] ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος, “from the surrounding (æther).” An expression much used by writers on astrology and generally translated “ambient.”
[87] Diog. Laert., IX, vit. Dem., c. 1, says either Damasippus or Hegesistratus or Athenocritus.
[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.
[89] καὶ τῇ μὲν γένεσθαι, τῇ δὲ ἐκλείπειν.
[90] So Apollodorus. Diog. Laert., IX, vit. Xenophan., c. 1, says of Dexius.
[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.
[92] δόκος δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται, sed in omnibus opinio est, Cr. Yet δόκος is surely a “guess.”
[93] αἰσθητικός.
[94] ἐν τῷ βάθει τοῦ λίθου, “deep down in the stone.” Perhaps the earliest mention of fossils.
[95] Is this a survival of the Babylonian legends of the Flood?
[96] παραλλαγγάς, differentias, Cr. Perhaps “alternations.”
[97] The whole of this section on Ecphantus is corrupt. He is not alluded to again in the book.
[98] Hippo is mentioned by Iamblichus in his life of Pythagoras.
[99] ἀπομαξάμενος, “been sealed with,” or “copied.” Cf. Diog. Laert., II, vit. Socrates, c. 12.
[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.
[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.
[102] Alcinous, op. cit., c. 12.
[103] Ibid., cc. 9, 12.
[104] ἐδημιούργει. Not created ex nihilo, but made out of existing material as an architect makes a house.
[105] Alcinous, op. cit., cc. 8, 10.
[106] ἐξ αὐτοῦ συνεστάναι αὐτόν. So Cruice. Macmahon reads with Roeper αὐτῆς for αὐτοῦ, “the world was made out of it” (i. e. matter).
[107] The body of the cosmos is evidently meant. Cf. Alcinous, c. 12.
[108] de Legg., IV, 7.
[109] ἀορίστως.
[110] Timæus, c. 16.
[111] Phædrus, c. 166.
[112] γενεαλογῇ.
[113] Alcinous, c. 25.
[114] Phædrus, cc. 51, 52.
[115] For this see the Timæus, c. 17.
[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.
[117] Phædo, c. 43.
[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.
[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.
[120] Alcinous, cc. 28, 29.
[121] Ibid., c. 27.
[122] Ibid., c. 29.
[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.
[124] Alcinous, c. 30.
[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.
[126] Alcinous, c. 30.
[127] Ibid., c. 29.
[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.
[129] The famous “Quintessence.” So Aetius, De Plac. Phil., Bk. I, c. 1, § 38. But see Diog. Laert. in next note.
[130] This is practically verbatim from Diog. Laert., V, vit. Arist., c. 13.
[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).
[132] ἐπὶ τὸ συλλογιστικώτερον τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ηὔξησαν. Syllogisticæ artis expolitione philosophiam locupletarunt.
[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.
[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.
[135] Diog. Laert., ubi cit., c. 84.
[136] From ψῦξις, “cooling”—a bad pun.
[137] It is extremely doubtful whether the metempsychosis ever formed part of Stoic doctrine.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[142] οὐ μᾶλλον, “not rather.”
[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.
[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.
[145] ἀκροδρύοι, hard-shelled fruit such as acorns or chestnuts.
[146] Roeper suggests the Ganges.
[147] Megasthenes, for whom see Strabo V, 712, differs from Hippolytus in making the abstinence of the Gymnosophists endure for thirty-seven years only.
[148] Nothing has yet been said about any bank.
[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.”
[150] ἐγείρας τρόπαιον, lit., “raised a trophy.”
[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.
[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?
[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.
[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.
[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.
[156] ὡς στέφανον δάσσαντο.
[157] Αἰθήρ τε καὶ Ἡμέρη. One would prefer to keep the word “Aether,” which is hardly “sunshine.”
[158] ἶσον ἑαυτῇ.
[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.
[160] ἀδρανῆ, infirmas, Cr.
[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.