Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.21

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 36

Καὶ λέξις τούτου ἐμφανεστάτη ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ, ἐν ᾗ φησιν· πάλιν δὲ αὖ τολμᾶτε λέγειν ὡς αἰσχρὸν καὶ θεομισὲς ἡ κακία· πῶς οὖν δή τις τὸ τοιοῦτον κακὸν αἱροῖτʼ ἂν; ἥττων ὃς ἂν ᾖ, φατέ, τῶν ἡδονῶν. οὐκοῦν καὶ τοῦτο ἀκούσιον, εἴπερ τὸ νικᾶν ἑκούσιον; ὥστε ἐκ παντὸς λόγου τό γε ἀδικεῖν ἀκούσιον ὁ λόγος αἱρεῖ.

English · Claude translation

And his clearest statement of this is in the Republic, where he says: "Again, you dare to say that vice is shameful and hateful to God; how then would anyone choose such an evil? Whoever is weaker, you say, than pleasures. Is not this too involuntary, if conquering is voluntary? So that on every account the argument proves that doing wrong is involuntary."

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 36 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Topics

Ethics

Notes

Translation notes

Hippolytus attributes the quotation to the Republic; the words are not found there in this form, and the source is uncertain.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.21 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/21/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.21 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/21/).