[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.”