For which cause, indeed, those of his association ventured on every kind of licentiousness, and practised every kind of magic, fabricating love philtres and spells, and all the other arts of sorcery, as though in pursuit of divine mysteries. And having prepared his (Simon's) statue in the form of Zeus, and Helen's in the likeness of Athena, they burn incense and pour out libations before them, and worship them as gods, calling themselves Simonians.
III.—The Simon of the Legends.
The so-called Clementine Literature:
A. Recognitiones. Text: Rufino Aquilei Presb. Interprete (curante E.G. Gersdorf); Lipsiæ, 1838.
Homiliæ. Text: Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta, Vol. I. (edidit Albertus Schwegler); Tubingensis, Stuttgartiæ, 1847.
B. Constitutiones. Text: SS. Patrum qui Temporibus Apostolicis Floruerunt Opera (edidit J.B. Cotelerius); Amsteladami, 1724.
A. The priority of the two varying accounts, in the Homilies and Recognitiones, of the same story is in much dispute, but this is a question of no importance in the present enquiry. The latest scholarship is of the opinion that "the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites."[[61]] The Ebionites are described as:
A sect of heretics developed from among the Judaizing Christians of apostolic times late in the first or early in the second century. They accepted Christianity only as a reformed Judaism, and believed in our Blessed Lord only as a mere natural man spiritually perfected by exact observance of the Mosaic law.[[62]]
Summary.[[63]] Clement, the hero of the legendary narrative, arrives at Cæsarea Stratonis in Judæa, on the eve of a great controversy between Simon and the apostle Peter, and attaches himself to the latter as his disciple (H. II. xv; R.I. lxxvii). The history of Simon is told to Clement, in the presence of Peter, by Aquila and Nicetas—the adopted sons of a convert—who had associated with Simon.
Simon was the son of Antonius and Rachael, a Samaritan of Gittha, a village six schoeni[[64]] from the city of Cæsarea (H.I. xxii), called a village of the Gettones (R. II. vii). It was at Alexandria that Simon perfected his studies in magic, being an adherent of John, a Hemero-baptist,[[65]] through whom he came to deal with religious doctrines.