20. Therefore the disciples of this (man) practise magic arts and incantations, and send out love-philtres and charms and the demons called dream-bringers for the troubling of whom they will. But they also do reverence to the so-called Paredri.[72] And they have an image of Simon in the form of Zeus, and (another) of Helen in the form of Athena, and they bow down to them calling the one “Lord” and the other “Lady.”[73] But if any one among them seeing these images should call them by the name of Simon or Helen, he is cast out as being ignorant of their mysteries. This Simon when he had led astray many in Samaria by magic arts was refuted by the Apostles, and p. 267. having been laid under a curse as it is written in the Acts, afterwards in desperation designed these things[74] until having come to Rome, he withstood the Apostles. Whom Peter opposed when he was deceiving many by sorceries. He at length coming into t......te,[75] taught sitting under a plane-tree. And finally his refutation being very near[76] through effluxion of time, he said that if buried alive he would rise again the third day. And having given orders that a grave should be dug by his disciples, he bade them bury him. And they having done what he commanded, he remains there to this day; for he was not the Christ. This then is Simon’s story, taking hints from which Valentinus calls (the same things) by other names. For Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia are Simon’s six roots, Nous-Epinoia, Phone-Onoma, Logismos-Enthymesis. But since we have sufficiently set forth Simon’s fable making, let us see what Valentinus says.[77]
2. Concerning Valentinus.
p. 268. 21. The heresy of Valentinus,[78] then, exists, having a Pythagorean and Platonic foundation. For Plato in the Timæus modelled himself entirely on Pythagoras, as is seen also by his “Pythagorean stranger” being Timæus himself. Wherefore it seems fitting that we should begin by recalling to mind a few (points) of the theory of Pythagoras and Plato, and should then describe the (teaching) of Valentinus. For if the opinions of Pythagoras and Plato are also included in the (books) painfully written by us earlier, yet I shall not be unreasonable in recalling[79] in epitome their most leading tenets[80] in order that by their closer comparison and likeness of composition, the doctrines of Valentinus may be more intelligible. For as (the Pythagoreans and Platonists) took their opinions of old from the Egyptians and taught them anew to the Greeks, so (Valentinus) while fraudulently attempting to establish his own teaching by them, carved p. 269. their system into names and numbers, calling them [by names] and defining them by measures of his own. Whence he has constructed a heresy Greek indeed, but not referable to Christ.
22. The wisdom of the Egyptians is, then, the beginning of Plato’s theory in the Timæus. For from this, Solon[81] taught the Greeks the whole position regarding the birth and destruction of the cosmos by means of a certain prophetic statement, as Plato says, the Greeks being then children and knowing no older theologic learning. In order then that we may follow closely the words which Valentinus let fall, I will now set out as preface what it was that Pythagoras of Samos taught as philosophy after that silence praised by the Greeks. And then [I will point out] those things which Valentinus takes from Pythagoras and Plato and with solemn words attributes to Christ, and before Christ to the Father of the universals and to that Sige who is given as a spouse to the Father.
23. Now Pythagoras declared that the unbegotten monad was the principle of the universals[82] and the parent of the dyad and of all the other numbers. And he says that the p. 270. monad is the father of the dyad and the dyad the mother of all engendered things (and) a bearer of things begotten. And Zaratas,[83] also, the teacher of Pythagoras, calls the one father, but the two, mother. For the dyad has come into being from a monad according to Pythagoras, and the monad is masculine and first, but the dyad female and second. From the dyad, again, as Pythagoras says, (come) the triad and the other numbers one after the other up to 10. For Pythagoras knew that this 10 is the only perfect number.[84] For (he saw that) the 11 and 12 were an addition to and re-equipment of the decad, and not the generation of some other number. All solid bodies beget what is given to them from the bodiless.[85] For, he says, the Point which is indivisible is at once a point and a beginning of the bodies and the bodiless together. And, he says, from the point comes a line, and a superficies extended in depth makes, he says, a solid figure. Whence the Pythagoreans have a certain oath as to the harmony of the four elements. And they make oath thus:—
p. 271.“Yea by the Tetractys handed down to our head
A source of eternal nature containing within itself roots.”[86]
For the beginning of natural and solid bodies is the Tetractys as the monad is of the intelligible ones.[87] But that the Tetractys gives birth to the perfect number as among the intelligibles the (monad) does to the 10, they teach thus. If one beginning to count, says 1, and adds 2, and then 3 in like manner, these will make 6. (Add) yet another (i. e.) 4 and there in the same way will be the total 10. For the 1, 2, 3 and 4 become 10, the perfect number. Thus, he says, the Tetractys will in all things imitate the intelligible monad having been thus able to bring forth a perfect number.
24. There are, therefore, according to Pythagoras, two worlds, one intelligible which has the monad as its beginning, but the other the perceptible. This last is the Tetractys containing Iota,[88] the one tittle, a perfect number. p. 272. Thus the Iota, the one tittle, is received by the Pythagoreans as the first and chiefest, and as the substance of the Intelligible both intelligibly and perceptibly. Belonging to which are the nine bodiless accidents which cannot exist apart from substance, (viz.) Quantity, Quality, Wherefore, Where, and When, and also Being, Having, Doing and Suffering.[89] There are therefore nine accidents to substance reckoned in with which they comprise[90] the perfect number, the 10. Wherefore the universe being divided, as we have said, into an intelligible and a perceptible world, we have also reason from the intelligible in order that by it we may behold the substance of the intelligible, the bodiless and the divine. But we have, he says, five senses, smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch. By these we arrive at a knowledge of perceptible things, and so, he says, the perceptible world is separated from the intelligible; and that we have an organ of knowledge for each of them, we learn from this. None of the intelligibles, he says, can become known to us through sense: for, he says, eye has not seen that, nor ear heard, nor has it become known, he says, by any other of the senses whatever. Nor again by reason can one come to a knowledge of the perceptible; p. 273. but one must see that a thing is white, and taste that it is sweet, and know by hearing that it is just or unjust; and if any smell is fragrant or nauseous, that is the work of the sense of smell and not of the reason. And it is the same with the things relating to touch. For that a thing is hard or soft or hot or cold cannot be known through the hearing, but the test of these things is the touch. This being granted, the setting in order of the things that have been and are is seen to come about arithmetically. For, just as we, beginning by addition of monads (or dyads) or triads and of the other numbers strung together, make one very large compound number, and on the other hand work by subtracting from the total strung together and by analysing by a fresh calculation what has been brought together arithmetically;—so, he says, the cosmos is bound together by a certain arithmetical and musical bond, and by its tightening and slackening, its addition and subtraction, is ever and everywhere preserved uncorrupted.
25. For instance in some such fashion as this also do the Pythagoreans describe the duration of the world:—