Refutation of All Heresies 4.17.1

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: The appearance of those born under Gemini.

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Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 82

Ἐν Διδύμοις τύπος· προσώπῳ κοκκίνῳ, μεγέθει οὐ λίαν μεγάλῳ, μέλεσιν ἴσοις, ὀφθαλμοῖς μέλασιν ὡς ἠλειμμένοις, μήλοις κάτω τεταμένοις, στόματι παχεῖ, ὀφρύσι συντεθειμέναις· συγκροτοῦσι πάντα, ἔχουσιν, ἔσχατα πλούσιοι, σκνιφοί, φειδωλοὶ ἐκ τοῦ ἰδίου, δαψιλεῖς πρὸς τὰ ἀφροδισιακά, ἐπιεικεῖς, μουσικοί, ψεῦσται· οἱ αὐτοὶ δὲ φύσεως·

English · Claude translation

Type in the Twins: red face, size not very large, even limbs, black eyes as if anointed, cheeks drawn down, thick mouth, eyebrows joined; they gather everything together, they possess, rich in the end, stingy, sparing of their own, lavish in matters of love, reasonable, musical, liars. The same by nature:

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 82 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

  • The run of short phrases is loose in the Greek; the rendering follows it closely.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.17.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/17/1/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 4.17.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/17/1/).

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