[39] πολυούσιον. Galen uses it as equivalent to “very wealthy.”
[40] ὁποῖον. As in Aristotle, Cate., c. 5.
[41] This with Hippolytus’ interpolated remark emphasizes the great difference between Basilides’ doctrine with its assertion of the creation e nihilo and the emanation theory of all other Gnostics. It does away with the necessity for a pre-existent matter.
[42] Gen. 1. 3.
[43] John 1. 9. This and “Mine hour is not yet come” are the only undoubted references to the Fourth Gospel made by Basilides.
[44] ἀρχάς.
[45] ὁμοούσιος. The first occurrence, so far as it can be traced, of this too-famous word. If I am right, the interpretation of οὐσία by “substance” came later. The nature of the Sonhood (Υἱότης, Lat., filietas, which I translate “Sonhood” by analogy with paternitas = Fatherhood) is peculiar to Basilides, the idea being apparently that within the Panspermia was concealed a germ which was more closely related to its Divine Parent than the rest. The same idea mutatis mutandis reappears in Weissmann’s theory of the germ-plasm.
[46] Homer, Odyssey, VII, 36.
[47] δι’ ὑπερβολὴν κάλλους καὶ ὡραιότητος. The longing of all nature for something higher is also mentioned in the Book on the Ophites (See Book V, Vol. I, pp. [123], [140] supra). The phrase was evidently a favourite one with Hippolytus, and he therefore uses it in regard to several heresies, as he has done with the magnet simile.
[48] μιμητική τις οὖσα, “being an imitative thing.”