Refutation of All Heresies 4.35.2

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, 102

Ἔχει δὲ καὶ στόμιόν τι τὸ ἔδαφος λεληθός, ᾧ ἐπικειμένη ἡ λεκάνη τὸν μὲν πυθμένα ἔχει ὑάλου, αὐτὴ δὲ ἐστὶ πετρίνη, ὕπεστι δὲ οἶκος λεληθώς, εἰς ὃν συμπορευόμενοι οἱ συμπαῖκται σχήματα ὧν ἂν βούληται δεικνύναι ὁ μάγος θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων ἐνδυσάμενοι ἐμφαίνουσιν, οὓς καθορῶν ὁ πλανώμενος τὸ πανούργημα καταπέπληγε τῶν μάγων, καὶ λοιπὸν πάντα πιστεύει τὰ ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ ῥηθησόμενα.

English · Claude translation

The floor also has a hidden opening, over which the basin is placed; the basin has a bottom of glass, though it is itself of stone; and beneath is a hidden room, into which the accomplices go, and dressed in the forms of whatever gods and demons the magician wishes to show, they make them appear. Seeing them, the deceived man is astonished at the knavery of the magi, and thereafter believes everything that will be said by him.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 102 · 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

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): οὕς καθορῶν → οὓς καθορῶν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.35.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/35/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.35.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/35/2/).