Refutation of All Heresies 1.20.5

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, 38

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων μόνα ἀγαθὰ ὄντως τὰ περὶ ψυχὴν εἶναί φησιν, καὶ ἀρκεῖν πρὸς τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν. Ὁ δὲ Ἀριστοτέλης τριγένειαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν εἰσάγει, καὶ λέγει μὴ εἶναι τέλειον τὸν σοφόν, ἐὰν μὴ παρῇ αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ τοῦ σώματος ἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ ἐκτός, ἄ ἐστι κάλλος, ἰσχύς, εὐαισθησία, ἀρτιότης· τὰ δὲ ἐκτός, πλοῦτος, εὐγένεια, δόξα, δύναμις, εἰρήνη, φιλία. Τὰ δὲ ἐντὸς περὶ ψυχὴν καθὼς καὶ Πλάτωνι ἔδοξε, φρόνησιν, σωφροσύνην, δικαιοσύνην, ἀνδρείαν.

English · Claude translation

Plato says that only the things of the soul are truly good, and that they suffice for happiness. Aristotle introduces three kinds of goods, and says that the wise man is not perfect unless he also has the goods of the body and external goods: those of the body are beauty, strength, keenness of the senses, soundness; external ones are wealth, good birth, reputation, power, peace, friendship; and the inner goods of the soul, as Plato also held, are prudence, temperance, justice, courage.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 38 · 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

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Ὁ μὲν οὗν Πλάτων → Ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων; εἷναί φησιν → εἶναί φησιν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.20.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/5/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.20.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/20/5/).