Refutation of All Heresies 1.7.8

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.

Summary: Anaximenes explained hail, snow, lightning, rainbows, and earthquakes; he flourished about 548 BC.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 20

Χάλαζαν δὲ γίνεσθαι, ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν νεφῶν τὸ ὕδωρ καταφερόμενον παγῇ· χιόνα δὲ, ὅταν αὐτὰ ταῦτα ἐνυγρότερα ὄντα πῆξιν λάβῃ· ἀστραπὴν δʼ, ὅταν τὰ νέφη διϊστῆται βίᾳ πνευμάτων· τούτων γὰρ διϊσταμένων λαμπρὰν καὶ πυρώδη γίνεσθαι τὴν αὐγήν. Ἶριν δὲ γεννᾶσθαι τῶν ἡλιακῶν αὐγῶν εἰς ἀέρα συνεστῶτα πιπτουσῶν· σεισμὸν δὲ, τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἀλλοιουμένης ὑπὸ θερμασίας καὶ ψύξεως. Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Ἀναξιμένης. Οὗτος ἤκμασε περὶ ἔτος πρῶτον τῆς πεντηκοστῆς ὀγδόης ὀλυμπιάδος.

English · Claude translation

Hail comes about when water falling from the clouds freezes; snow, when these same things, being moister, are frozen; lightning, when the clouds are parted by the force of winds, for when they are parted the flash becomes bright and fiery. A rainbow is produced when the sun's rays fall on compacted air; an earthquake, when the earth is greatly altered by heat and cold. These, then, are the views of Anaximenes. He flourished about the first year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 20 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/7/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.7.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/7/8/).