Refutation of All Heresies

The following are the contents of the first book of the Refutation of All Heresies.

What the natural philosophers held, and who they are; what the moral philosophers held, and who they are; and what the dialecticians held, and who the dialecticians are.

The natural philosophers, then, are Thales, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Xenophanes, Ecphantus, Hippo.

The moral philosophers: Socrates, pupil of Archelaus the natural philosopher; Plato, pupil of Socrates. He blended the three kinds of philosophy.

The dialecticians: Aristotle, pupil of Plato; he established dialectic. And the Stoics: Chrysippus, Zeno.

Epicurus attempted a view contrary to almost all of them. Pyrrho the Academic: he says that nothing at all can be grasped. The Brahmins among the Indians, the Druids among the Celts, and Hesiod.

No myth named among the Greeks is to be passed over. For even their incoherent doctrines are to be taken as worth credence, because of the surpassing madness of the heretics, who, by keeping silent and hiding their unspeakable mysteries, have been thought by many to worship God. Their doctrines we set out moderately some time ago as well, not displaying them in detail but refuting them in broad outline, since we thought it not worthwhile to bring their unspeakable things to light; so that, when we had set out their opinions in riddles, they might be ashamed, lest by telling their unspeakable things too we should show them to be godless, and might cease somewhat from their irrational opinion and unlawful undertaking.

But since I see that they are not put to shame by our forbearance, and do not consider how God is long-suffering though blasphemed by them, so that either, feeling shame, they may repent, or, persisting, they may be justly judged, I am compelled to go forward to show their secret mysteries, which they hand on to the initiated with great show of trustworthiness. They do not confess them first, until they have enslaved such a person, keeping him in suspense for a long time, and have made him blasphemous toward the true God, and see him eager with curiosity for what is promised.

And then, when they have tested him and found him a prisoner of sin, they initiate him, handing on the consummation of evils, binding him with oaths neither to tell nor to share it with just anyone, unless he were enslaved in the same way; once this alone has been handed on, an oath would no longer be necessary. For whoever has submitted to undergo and receive their perfect mysteries will be sufficiently bound by the deed itself, both in his own conscience and against telling others.

For if he should tell any man of such a lawless deed, he would neither be counted among men nor be thought worthy to see the light, since not even irrational animals attempt such a lawless deed, as we shall say when we come to the places concerned.

But since the argument compels us to venture into a great depth of narrative, we do not think we should be silent; rather, setting out the doctrines of all of them in detail, we will keep nothing back. It seems best not to grow weary, even if the account turns out rather long. For we shall leave no small help to the life of men, so that they no longer go astray, when all can plainly see their hidden and unspeakable rites, which they store up and hand on to the initiated alone.

No one else will refute these things than the Holy Spirit handed down in the church, which the apostles first received and imparted to those who rightly believed. We, being their successors and sharing in the same grace of high priesthood and of teaching, and counted guardians of the church, do not slumber with our eye nor keep silent the right word; nor do we grow weary working with all our soul and body, trying to render fitting return to God our benefactor, and even so not repaying him as he deserves, except that we do not slacken in the things entrusted to us, but fulfil the measures of our own time, and share without grudging with all whatever the Holy Spirit gives;

not only bringing into the open, by refutation, what is foreign, but also what the truth received by the grace of the Father and ministered to men: these things too we proclaim without shame, marking them out by word and making them attested by writing.

In order, then, as we said before, to show them godless in opinion, in manner, and in deed, and whence their arguments came to them, and that they undertook these things taking nothing from the holy Scriptures, nor keeping the succession of any holy man did they rush into them, but that what they hold took its beginning from the wisdom of the Greeks, from philosophical doctrines, from mysteries they have tried their hand at, and from wandering astrologers: it seems best, therefore, first to set out the opinions of the Greek philosophers and show the readers that these are older than the heresies and more reverent toward the divine;

then to compare each heresy with each philosopher, showing how the founder of the heresy, seizing on these arguments, took unfair advantage, laying hold of their principles, and, driven from them to worse things, constructed his doctrine.

The undertaking, then, is full of toil and requires much research; but we shall not fall short, for afterward it will bring gladness, as to an athlete who wins the crown after much toil, or a merchant who makes a profit after a great heaving of the sea, or a farmer who enjoys his crops after the sweat of his face, or a prophet who after reproaches and insults sees what he spoke come to pass.

Beginning, then, we shall say who among the Greeks first set forth natural philosophy. For it is from these above all that the founders of the heresies have become plagiarists, as we shall show afterward when we compare them with one another. And by giving back to each of those who began first what is his own, we shall present the heresiarchs naked and disgraced.

It is said that Thales of Miletus, one of the seven wise men, first attempted natural philosophy. He said that the beginning and end of the universe is water.

For all things are composed from it as it solidifies and again dissolves, and all things are borne upon it; and from it come earthquakes, whirlwinds, and the movements of the stars; and all things are carried and flow in agreement with the

nature of the first author of their coming into being. And this is divine, which has neither beginning nor end.

He, busying himself with the study and investigation of the stars, became for the Greeks the first cause of this branch of learning. Looking up at the sky and saying that he was carefully observing the things above, he fell into a well; and a certain maidservant named Thratta laughed at him and said: "Eager to know the things in the sky, he does not know what is at his feet." He lived in the time of Croesus.

There is also another philosophy, not far from the same times, which Pythagoras began, who some say was a Samian. They called it Italian, because Pythagoras, fleeing Polycrates the tyrant of Samos, settled in a city of Italy and there ended his life. Those who succeeded to his school did not differ much from the same way of thinking.

He too, inquiring into natural things, combined astronomy, geometry, and music [and arithmetic]. And so he declared that God is a monad; and having studied the nature of number with great care, he said that the world sings and is composed in harmony, and he was the first to bring the motion of the seven stars into rhythm and melody.

Marveling at the ordering of the universe, he required his disciples at first to keep silent, as initiates of the universe who had come into the world; then, when they seemed to have had enough share in the training of discourse and could philosophize ably about the stars and nature, he judged them pure and then bade them speak.

He divided his disciples, and called some esoteric and others exoteric. To the former he entrusted the more perfect teachings, to the latter the more moderate.

He also dealt in magic, as they say, and himself invented physiognomy, laying down certain numbers and measures, saying that the beginning of arithmetic contains philosophy by composition in this way.

Number came into being as the first principle, which is indefinite, incomprehensible, containing in itself all the numbers that can go on to infinity in multitude. The principle of numbers in substance came to be the first monad, which is a male monad, begetting all the other numbers after the manner of a father. Second is the dyad, a female number, which is also called even by the arithmeticians.

Third is the triad, a male number; this too has been ordained by the arithmeticians to be called odd. After all these is the tetrad, a female number; the same is also called even because it is female.

All the numbers, then, taken by kind, are four (number as a kind being indefinite), from which their perfect number, the decad, is composed. For one, two, three, four make ten, if to each of the numbers its own name is kept according to its substance.

This Pythagoras called the sacred tetractys, "source of ever-flowing nature, having roots within itself," and from this number all numbers have their beginning. For eleven and twelve and the rest take the beginning of their being from ten. Of this decad, the perfect number, the four parts are called number, monad, power, cube.

Of these there come interweavings and mixtures for the generation of increase, completing the fruitful number according to nature. For when a power is cubed upon itself, it becomes a power-power; when a power is multiplied by a cube, a power-cube; when a cube by a cube, a cube-cube; so that all the numbers from which the generation of things that come to be arises are seven: number, monad, power, cube, power-power, power-cube, cube-cube.

He also said that the soul is immortal and taught transmigration into bodies; wherefore he used to say that before the Trojan War he had been Aethalides, in the Trojan War Euphorbus, after that Hermotimus of Samos, after him Pyrrhus of Delos, and fifth Pythagoras.

Diodorus of Eretria and Aristoxenus the musician say that Pythagoras went to Zaratas the Chaldean; and that he explained to him that there are from the beginning two causes of the things that exist, father and mother; the father is light and the mother darkness; the parts of light are hot, dry, light, swift; of darkness, cold, moist, heavy, slow; and from these the whole world is composed, from female and male.

And the world is a nature according to musical harmony, which is why the sun also makes its circuit harmoniously. Concerning the things that come from the earth and the world, they say Zaratas speaks thus: there are two daemons, one heavenly and the other earthly; the earthly one sends up generation from the earth, and it is water; the heavenly one is fire sharing in air, hot with cold. Wherefore, he says, none of these destroys or defiles the soul, for these are the substance of all things.

He is said to have commanded not to eat beans, because Zaratas said that at the beginning and compounding of all things, while the earth was still being formed and putrefying together, the bean came into being. Of this he says there is proof: if one chews a bean smooth and lays it out in the sun for some time (for it will take effect at once), it gives off the smell of human seed.

And he says there is another, clearer example: if, when the bean is in flower, we take the bean and its flower and put them in a pot, and seal it and bury it in the earth, and after a few days uncover it, we would see that it has at first the form of a woman's private parts, and afterward, on closer view, a child's head grown with it.

He perished at Croton in Italy, burned together with his disciples. This was his custom: when anyone came to him to become a disciple, he would sell his possessions and deposit the money, sealed, with Pythagoras, and he would remain silent, sometimes for three years and sometimes for five, and learn. Then, released again, he associated with the others and remained a disciple and ate with them; if not, he took back his own and was sent away.

Those within were called Pythagoreans, the others Pythagorists. Of his disciples, those who escaped the fire were Lysis and Archippus and Pythagoras's servant Zamolxis, who is also said to have taught the Druids among the Celts to practice the Pythagorean philosophy.

They say that Pythagoras learned numbers and measures from the Egyptians; astonished by the priests' wisdom, so credible, so full of visions, and so hard to disclose, he imitated it and likewise commanded silence, and made those who were learning live in solitude in underground sanctuaries.

Empedocles, who came after these, said much about the nature of daemons, how they go about, being very many, managing the things on earth. He said that the principle of the universe is strife and love; and that God is the intelligent fire of the monad, and that all things are composed of fire and will be dissolved into fire; with this doctrine the Stoics too almost agree, expecting a conflagration.

Above all he agrees with transmigration, speaking thus: "For already I have been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird, and a fish that journeys from the sea." He said that all souls change into all living things. For their teacher Pythagoras said that he had been Euphorbus, who fought at Ilium, claiming that he recognized his shield. So much for Empedocles.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, a natural philosopher, wept over everything, condemning the ignorance of all life and of all men, and pitying the life of mortals. For he claimed that he himself knew all things, but other men nothing.

He too spoke almost in agreement with Empedocles, saying that strife and love are the principle of all things, and that God is intelligent fire, and that all things are borne along together with one another and do not

stand still. And like Empedocles he said that the whole region where we live is full of evils, and that evils reach as far as the moon, stretched out from the region around the earth, but go no further, since the whole region above the moon is purer. So too it seemed to Heraclitus.

After these there were other natural philosophers too, whose opinions we have not thought it necessary to state, since they do not differ from those already mentioned. But since, on the whole, the school has become no small one, and many later natural philosophers have come from them, each describing the nature of the universe in a different way, it seems good to us, having set out the philosophy descended from Pythagoras, to go back in order of succession to the opinions of those after Thales, and having stated these, to come to ethical and logical philosophy, of which Socrates began the ethical, and Aristotle the dialectical.

Anaximander, then, becomes a hearer of Thales. Anaximander, son of Praxiades, of Miletus. He said that the principle of existing things is a certain nature of the boundless, from which come the heavens and the worlds in them. This is everlasting and ageless, and it also encompasses all the worlds. He speaks of time, since generation, being, and destruction are determined.

He said that the principle and element of existing things is the boundless, being the first to call the principle by this name. In addition, there is an everlasting motion, in which it happens that the heavens come into being.

The earth is suspended aloft, held up by nothing, remaining in place because of its equal distance from all things. Its shape is curved, round, like a stone column. Of its flat surfaces, we walk on one, and the other is opposite.

The stars come into being as a circle of fire, separated off from the fire in the world and enclosed by air. There are certain airy vents, at the places where the stars appear; therefore, when the vents are blocked, eclipses occur.

The moon appears now full and now waning according to the blocking or opening of its passages. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times that of the moon; the sun's is highest, and the circles of the fixed stars lowest.

Living things come into being evaporated out by the sun. And man was at the beginning like another living thing, that is, a fish.

Winds arise when the finest vapors of the air are separated off and, when gathered, are set in motion; rain arises from the earth's exhalation under the sun; and lightning when wind falls upon the clouds and splits them. He lived in the third year of the forty-second Olympiad.

Anaximenes, himself also of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, said that the principle is boundless air, from which come the things that are coming to be, that have come to be, and that will be, and gods and divine things, and the rest from their offspring.

The form of the air is this: when it is most even, it is invisible to sight, but it is made evident by cold and heat and moisture and motion, and it is always in motion; for the things that change would not change unless it moved.

For as it is condensed and rarefied it appears different: when it is dispersed into a thinner state, it becomes fire; when, on the other hand, it is moderately condensed into air, cloud is produced from air by felting; still more condensed, water; condensed further, earth; and at its very densest, stones. So the most decisive factors of generation are opposites, hot and cold.

The earth is flat, riding upon air; and likewise the sun and moon and the other stars; for, being all fiery, they ride upon the air because of their flatness.

The stars came into being from the earth, because moisture rises from it; when this is rarefied, fire comes to be, and from the fire rising aloft the stars are composed. There are also earthy bodies in the region of the stars, carried round along with them.

He says that the stars do not move under the earth, as others have supposed, but around the earth, just as a felt cap turns around our head; and that the sun is hidden not by going under the earth but by being covered by the higher parts of the earth, and because of its greater distance from us.

The stars do not give warmth because of the length of their distance. Winds are produced when air that has been condensed is rarefied and set in motion; and when it comes together and is thickened further, clouds are produced, and so it changes into water.

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.

After him comes Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae. He said that the principle of the universe is mind and matter: mind the maker, matter what comes to be. For when all things were together, mind came upon them and set them in order. The material principles are boundless, and he says that even the smaller of them are boundless.

All things share in motion, being moved by mind, and like things came together. The things in the heaven were ordered by the circular motion. The dense and moist and dark and cold and all heavy things came together to the middle, and from their solidifying the earth took shape; the things opposed to these, the hot and bright and dry and light, rushed out to the far reaches of the ether.

The earth is flat in shape and stays suspended because of its size, because there is no void, and because the air, being very strong, carries the earth riding upon it.

Of the moist things on earth, the sea came to be, from the waters in it evaporating … settling, and so it came about; and also from the rivers that flowed down into it.

The rivers take their substance both from the rains and from waters in the earth. For the earth is hollow and has water in its cavities. The Nile rises in summer because waters are carried down into it from the snows in the regions opposite.

The sun and moon and all the stars are fiery stones carried round together by the revolution of the ether.

Beneath the stars are the sun and moon and certain bodies carried round with us that are invisible. We do not feel the heat of the stars because of their being far off, [and because of] their distance from the earth; and further, they are not as hot as the sun because they occupy a colder region. The moon is below the sun, nearer to us. The sun exceeds the Peloponnese in size.

The moon does not have its own light, but from the sun. The revolution of the stars takes place under the earth.

The moon is eclipsed when the earth blocks it, and sometimes also the bodies beneath the moon; the sun, when the moon blocks it at the new moons. Both sun and moon make their turnings because they are pushed back by the air. The moon turns often because it cannot master the cold.

He was the first to define the facts about eclipses and illuminations. He said the moon is earthy and has plains and ravines in it. The Milky Way is a reflection of the light of the stars that are not lit up by the sun. Shooting stars are like sparks leaping off, produced by the motion of the celestial pole.

Winds arise when the air is thinned by the sun and the parts that are burned withdraw toward the pole and are carried away. Thunder and lightning come from heat falling upon the clouds.

Earthquakes occur when the air above falls into the air beneath the earth; for when this is moved, the earth riding on it is shaken by it. Living things came into being at first in moisture, and afterward from one another; males are produced when the seed separated from the right-hand parts sticks to the right-hand parts of the womb, and females the opposite way.

He flourished in the first year of the eighty-eighth Olympiad, at which time they say Plato too was born. They say he also had foreknowledge.

Archelaus was an Athenian by birth, the son of Apollodorus.

He spoke of the mixture of matter like Anaxagoras, and of the principles in the same way; but he held that a certain mixture is inherent in mind from the start. The principle of motion is the separation of hot and cold from one another; the hot moves, and the cold is at rest. Water, as it melts, flows to the middle, and there, being burned up, it becomes air and earth, of which the one is carried upward and the other settles below.

The earth, then, is at rest and came to be for these reasons, and lies in the middle, being, so to speak, no part of the universe, given off from the burning; from this, as it was first burned off, came the nature of the stars, of which the largest is the sun, the second the moon, and of the others some smaller and some larger.

He says that the heaven was tilted, and so the sun made light upon the earth, made the air transparent and the earth dry. For at first it was a lake, being high around its circle and hollow in the middle. As a sign of the hollowness he offers the fact that the sun does not rise and set for all at the same time, which would have to happen if it were level.

Concerning living things he says that when the earth was first warmed in its lower part, where the hot and the cold were mixed, many other living things appeared, all unlike one another but having the same way of life, nourished from the mud; and they were short-lived. Later, generation from one another also arose among them,

and men were separated from the others, and set up leaders and laws and arts and cities and the rest. He says that mind is implanted in all living things alike; for each one uses it, as it uses its body, some more slowly and some more quickly.

Natural philosophy, then, lasted from Thales to Archelaus; Socrates became his hearer. There are also very many others who put forward different opinions about the divine and the nature of the universe. If we wished to set out all their opinions, we would have to produce a great mass of books. But having recalled those whom we most needed to, men of name and, so to speak, the leaders of all who philosophized afterward, who gave the starting points for their undertakings, we shall press on to what follows.

For Parmenides too supposes that the universe is one, everlasting, unbegotten, and spherical. Yet not even he escapes the opinion of the many, saying that fire and earth are the principles of the universe, earth as matter and fire as cause and maker; he said that the world is destroyed, but in what way he did not say. The same man said that the universe is everlasting and not generated, spherical and uniform, having no place within itself, unmoved, and limited.

Leucippus, a companion of Zeno, did not keep the same opinion, but says that things are boundless and always moving, and that generation and change are continuous. He says the elements are the full and the void. He says worlds come into being thus: when many bodies are gathered and flow together from the surrounding space into a great void, colliding with one another, those of like shape and similar forms become entangled, and when they are intertwined, others come into being; and they grow and perish by a certain necessity. What the necessity might be, he did not define.

Democritus becomes a disciple of Leucippus. Democritus, son of Damasippus, of Abdera, conversed with many gymnosophists among the Indians, with priests in Egypt, with astrologers, and with magi in Babylon.

He speaks like Leucippus about the elements, the full and the void, calling the full being and the void non-being; and he said that the things that exist are always moving in the void; and that there are boundless worlds differing in size, in some of which there is neither sun nor moon, in some they are larger than ours, and in some more numerous.

The distances between the worlds are unequal, more here and fewer there; some grow, some are at their peak, some decline; in one place they come into being, in another they fail. They are destroyed by colliding with one another. Some worlds are bare of living things and plants and all moisture.

In our world the earth came into being before the stars; the moon is lowest, then the sun, then the fixed stars; and the planets themselves are not all at the same height. A world is at its peak until it can no longer take in anything from outside. He laughed at everything, as though all human affairs were worth laughter.

Xenophanes of Colophon, son of Orthomenes. He lived until the time of Cyrus. He was the first to say that nothing at all can be grasped, speaking thus: "For even if one should chance to say the most perfectly accomplished thing, he himself nevertheless does not know it; seeming is wrought over all things."

He says that nothing comes to be, or perishes, or moves, and that the universe is one, beyond change. He also says that God is everlasting, and one, and alike in every way, and limited, and spherical, and perceptive in all his parts.

The sun comes into being each day from small bits of fire gathered together; the earth is boundless and is surrounded neither by air nor by the heaven. There are boundless suns and moons, and all things are from earth.

He said the sea is salty because many mixtures flow together into it; but Metrodorus said it becomes salty because it is filtered through the earth;

while Xenophanes thinks that a mixing of earth with the sea took place, and that in time it is dissolved by moisture, claiming to have such proofs as these: that shells are found inland and in mountains; and in Syracuse, he says, in the quarries, the imprint of a fish and of seals was found, and in Paros the imprint of an anchovy deep in the stone, and in Malta slabs of all kinds of sea creatures.

He says these came about when everything was covered with mud long ago, and the imprint dried in the mud; and that all men are destroyed whenever the earth is carried down into the sea and becomes mud, and then generation begins again, and this is the foundation for all the worlds.

A certain Ecphantus of Syracuse said that it is not possible to obtain true knowledge of the things that exist. He defines, as he thinks, that the first things are indivisible bodies, and that there are three variations of them, size, shape, and power, from which perceptible things come to be. Their number is limited, and this is boundless. The bodies are moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by a divine power, which he calls mind and soul. Of this the world is the form, and therefore it has come to be spherical by divine power. The earth, in the middle of the world, moves around its own center toward the east.

Hippo of Rhegium said the principles are cold, that is water, and hot, that is fire. Fire, produced by water, overcame the power of what begot it and formed the world. He said the soul is sometimes the brain and sometimes water; for the seed, which appears to us to come from moisture, is that from which, he says, the soul comes to be.

We think we have set these things out sufficiently. So it seems best, having run adequately through the opinions of the natural philosophers, to go on to Socrates and Plato, who especially valued ethics.

Socrates, then, became a hearer of Archelaus the natural philosopher. He, valuing above all "Know yourself" and founding a great school, had Plato as the most able of all his disciples; he himself left no writing.

Plato, taking the impress of all his wisdom, founded his school, mixing together natural, ethical, and dialectical philosophy. What Plato defines is as follows.

Plato says that the principles of the universe are God, matter, and pattern: God, the maker who ordered this universe and exercises providence over it; matter, which underlies all things, which he calls also receptacle and nurse, from which, when it was ordered, came the four elements of which the world is composed, fire, air, earth, water, from which also all the other things called compounds, animals and plants, are composed.

The pattern is the thought of God, which he also calls ideas, attending to which, like an image in his soul, God fashioned all things.

He says that God is incorporeal and formless and comprehensible only to wise men; and that matter is body in potency but not yet in actuality; for being without shape and without quality, it became body by taking on shapes and qualities.

Matter, then, is a principle and coeval with God, and in this respect the world too is unbegotten; for he says it was composed from matter. And imperishability entirely follows upon being unbegotten. But insofar as he supposes it to be a body composed of many qualities and ideas, in that respect it is begotten and perishable.

Some of the Platonists have combined both, using an example like this: just as a wagon can remain forever imperishable by being repaired part by part, even if the parts perish each time, yet it remains whole; in this way the world too, even if it perishes in its parts, remains everlasting as what is taken away is repaired and replaced in equal measure.

As for God, some say that he spoke of him as one, unbegotten and imperishable, as he says in the Laws: "God, as the ancient saying too has it, holds the beginning and end and middle of all things that are." Thus he declares him one, who has passed through all things.

Others say he spoke of many gods, indefinitely, when he says: "Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father."

Others say a definite number, when he says, "Great Zeus in heaven, driving his winged chariot," and when he gives the genealogy of the children of Heaven and Earth. Others say he made the gods generated, and because they were generated they must necessarily perish, but by the will of God they are immortal, in the passage where he adds: "Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father, indissoluble so long as I will it"; so that if he wished them dissolved, they would easily be dissolved.

He accepts the existence of daemons, and says that some of them are good and others bad.

And as for the soul, some say he calls it unbegotten and imperishable, when he says: "Every soul is immortal, for what is ever-moving is immortal," and when he shows that it is self-moving and the principle of motion. Others say he calls it generated but imperishable by the will of God. Others say composite, generated, and perishable; for he supposes a mixing bowl for it, and that it has a body like light, and everything that has come to be must perish.

Those who say it is immortal rely especially on the passages in which he says there are judgments after death and tribunals in Hades, and that good souls receive a good reward and wicked ones fitting punishments.

Some say that he also accepts transmigration, and that souls, being fixed in number, pass into different bodies, each according to its desert, and at certain fixed periods are sent back into this world again to give proof of their own choice.

Others say no, but that each soul obtains a place according to its desert; and they use as evidence that he says some are with Zeus, and others go round with other gods, those of good men, while others are in eternal punishments, as many as have done wicked and unjust things in this life.

They say he speaks of some things as without a mean, others as with a mean, and others as the means between things: waking and sleep are without a mean, and the like; with a mean, such as good and bad; and means, such as grey between white and black, or some other color.

They say that he calls only the things of the soul good in the strict sense, while the things of the body and external things are no longer good in the strict sense but called good, and that he has often named them intermediate too;

for it is possible to use them both well and badly. The virtues, he says, are extremes in value but means in substance; for nothing is more valuable than virtue. What exceeds or falls short of them ends in vice. For example, he says there are four virtues, prudence, temperance, justice, courage. Each of these is attended by two vices, by excess and by deficiency: prudence by folly through deficiency and cunning through excess; temperance by licentiousness through deficiency and boorishness through excess; justice by getting too little through deficiency and greed through excess; courage by cowardice through deficiency and rashness through excess. These virtues, when they are present in a man, make him perfect and give him happiness.

Happiness, he says, is likeness to God as far as possible; and likeness to God is when one becomes holy and just with prudence. For he supposes this to be the goal of the highest wisdom and virtue.

He says that the virtues follow upon one another and are uniform and never oppose one another; but the vices are manifold, and sometimes follow upon one another and sometimes oppose one another.

He says there is fate, yet not all things happen by fate, but something is also in our power, in the passages where he says: "The blame is the chooser's; God is blameless," and: "And this is the ordinance of Adrasteia."

Some take him thus on what is by fate, others on what is in our power. He says that sins are involuntary; for no one would admit evil, that is injustice, into the finest thing in us, which is the soul; but through ignorance and missing the good, thinking they are doing something fine, people come to evil.

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."

Someone objects to him on this point: why, then, are they punished, if they sin involuntarily? He says: so that the man himself may be rid of vice as quickly as possible, and undergo punishment. For undergoing punishment is not an evil but a good, if it is to become a purification from evils; and so that the rest of mankind, hearing of it, may not sin, but guard against such error.

The nature of evil was neither made by God nor has subsistence of its own, but comes about by opposition to and as a consequence of the good, either by excess or by deficiency, as we said above about the virtues. So Plato, as we said before, bringing together the three parts of philosophy in every respect, philosophized in this way.

Aristotle, who became his hearer, turned philosophy into a technical discipline and became more given to logic, supposing the elements of all things to be substance and accident: substance one, underlying all things, and the accidents nine: quantity, quality, relation, where, when, having, position, acting, being acted upon.

Substance, then, is such as God, man, and each of the things that can fall under the same definition. Among the accidents are observed quality, such as white, black; quantity, such as two cubits, three cubits; relation, such as father, son; where, such as at Athens, at Megara; when, such as in the tenth Olympiad; having, such as possessing; acting, such as writing and in general doing something; position, such as lying down; being acted upon, such as being struck.

He too supposes that some things have a mean and others are without a mean, as we said also concerning Plato. And he agrees with Plato on almost everything except the doctrine of the soul.

For Plato calls it immortal, while Aristotle says it survives for a time and after this it too vanishes into the fifth body, which he supposes to exist along with the other four, fire, earth, water, and air, being finer than they, like breath.

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.

He too says that evils arise by opposition to goods, and that they exist below the region of the moon, but no longer above the moon. The soul of the whole world is immortal, and the world itself everlasting; but the individual soul, as we said, vanishes.

He, then, taught philosophy holding his discussions in the Lyceum, and Zeno in the Painted Porch. Zeno's followers took their name from the place, being called Stoics from the stoa, the porch; Aristotle's from their practice: since they carried on their inquiries walking about in the Lyceum, they were called Peripatetics. These, then, are the views of Aristotle.

The Stoics themselves developed philosophy in a more syllogistic direction and bound it almost entirely by definitions, Chrysippus and Zeno being of the same opinion. They too supposed that God is the principle of all things, being the purest body, and that his providence pervades all things.

They too firmly maintained that everything is entirely by fate, using an example like this: just as, if a dog is tied to a cart, if it wishes to follow, it is both pulled and follows willingly, exercising its free will together with necessity, that is, fate; but if it does not wish to follow, it will be compelled in any case; so it is, surely, with men too; for even if they do not wish to follow, they will in any case be compelled to enter upon what is destined.

They say that the soul remains after death, but that it is body and came into being from the cooling of the surrounding air, which is why it is called psyche. They also admit that transmigration occurs, the souls being fixed in number.

They expect that there will be a conflagration and purification of this world, some of the whole, others of a part, and they say it is purified part by part; and they almost call its destruction and the generation of another from it a purification.

They supposed that all things are bodies, and that body passes through body, but that there is a rebounding, and all things are full and there is no void. These, then, are the views of the Stoics.

Epicurus put forward an opinion contrary to almost all. He supposed that the principles of all things are atoms and void: the void as the place of things to be, and the atoms as the matter from which all things come.

From the atoms coming together, God came to be, and all the elements, and all things in them, both animals and the rest, so that nothing comes to be or is composed except from the atoms. He said that the atoms are the finest of all things, in which there could be no center, no point, no division; which is why he named them atoms.

While admitting that God is everlasting and imperishable, he says that God exercises providence over nothing, and that there is no providence or fate at all, but all things happen by chance. For God sits in the intermundia, as he calls them; for he supposed that there is a dwelling of God outside the world, called the intermundia, and that God takes pleasure and rests in the highest delight, and neither has troubles himself nor causes them for others.

Consistently with this he gave his account of wise men, saying that the goal of wisdom is pleasure. But different people took the word pleasure in different ways: some understood the desires, others the pleasure that comes with virtue.

He holds that the souls of men are dissolved together with their bodies, just as they are born together with them; for they are blood, and when it goes out or is altered the whole man perishes. From this it follows that there are no judgments in Hades nor tribunals, so that whatever anyone does in this life, if he escapes notice, he is entirely unaccountable. So, then, Epicurus.

Another school of philosophers was called the Academic, because they held their discussions in the Academy. Pyrrho began it, from whom the philosophers were called Pyrrhonians; he was the first to introduce the incomprehensibility of all things, so as to argue on both sides but declare nothing.

For nothing, either of the intelligible or of the perceptible, is true, but it seems to men to be so. All substance is fluid and changeable and never remains in the same state.

Some of the Academics say that one should not declare anything about anything from the start, but simply argue and let it be. Others added the "no more," saying that fire is no more fire than anything else. They did not, however, declare what it is, but that it is of such a kind.

There is also among the Indians a school of those who philosophize among the Brahmins. They profess a self-sufficient life and abstain from living things and from all food cooked by fire, content with fruits; nor do they even gather these, but live by picking up what falls to the ground, drinking the water of the river Tagabena.

They live naked, saying that the body has been made by God as a garment for the soul. They say that God is light, not such as one sees, nor like the sun and fire; but for them God is Word, not the articulated word but that of knowledge, through which the hidden mysteries of nature are seen by the wise. This light, which they say is God the Word, they say only the Brahmins know, because they alone have cast off vainglory, which is the soul's last tunic.

They despise death; and they always name God in their own language, as we said before, and send up hymns. They have no wives, nor do they beget children.

Those who desire a life like theirs cross over from the country on the other side of the river and remain there, never returning; they too are called Brahmins. But they do not live in the same way; for there are also women in the country, from whom those who live there are born and whom they beget.

This Word, which they name God, is bodily, and has a body wrapped around it outside itself, as if one wore a garment of sheepskin; and when it has stripped off the body that it wears, it appears visible to the eye. The Brahmins say there is war in the body that surrounds them [and they have held that their body is full of enemies], and against it they fight as though drawn up against enemies, as we have shown above.

They say that all men are captives of their own kindred enemies: belly and genitals, gullet, anger, joy, grief, desire, and the like. Only he goes to God who has raised a trophy against these.

Therefore the Brahmins deify Dandamis, whom Alexander of Macedon visited, as one who conquered the war in the body; but they denounce Calanus as having impiously apostatized from their philosophy. When they lay aside the body, the Brahmins, like fish leaping out of the water into pure air, see the sun.

The Druids among the Celts delved deeply into the Pythagorean philosophy, the author of this discipline for them being Zamolxis, the slave of Pythagoras, a Thracian by race, who went there after the death of Pythagoras and became the cause of this philosophy for them.

The Celts regard them as prophets and foreseers, because they foretell things from pebbles and numbers by the Pythagorean art; the methods of this art too we shall not pass over in silence, since some have dared to bring in heresies from these as well. The Druids also practice magic.

Hesiod the poet also says that he heard about nature thus from the Muses; and the Muses are daughters of Zeus. For Zeus, through excess of desire, lay with Mnemosyne nine nights and days together without pause, and Mnemosyne conceived these nine in one womb, receiving one each night.

So, calling the nine Muses from Pieria, that is, from Olympus, he asked to be taught … "how at first gods and earth came to be, and rivers and the boundless sea with its swelling surge, and the gleaming stars and the wide heaven above, how they divided the wealth and how they shared out the honors, and also how at first they held Olympus of many folds." … "These things tell me, Muses," he says, "from the beginning, and say which of them first came to be. First of all Chaos came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, the ever-sure seat of all the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and misty Tartarus in the depth of the wide-wayed earth, and Eros, who is fairest among the immortal gods, the limb-loosener, who in the breasts of all gods and all men subdues the mind and prudent counsel. From Chaos came Erebus and black Night; and from Night in turn came Ether and Day. And Earth first bore, equal to herself, starry Heaven, to cover her all round, that it might be an ever-sure seat for the blessed gods. And she bore the long mountains, pleasant haunts of the gods, of the Nymphs who dwell in the wooded mountains. And she bore also the unharvested deep, raging with its swell, the Sea, without delightful love; and then, lying with Heaven, she bore deep-eddying Ocean, and Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, and Theia and Rhea and Themis and Mnemosyne, and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them youngest was born Cronus of crooked counsel, most terrible of children, and he hated his lusty father. And she bore also the Cyclopes, with overbearing heart." And he enumerates all the other Giants from Cronus. And later, somewhere, Zeus was born of Rhea.

All these, then, declared these things about the nature and origin of the universe according to their own opinion, as we have set them out. But all of them, falling short of the divine, busied themselves with the substance of created things; struck with amazement at the greatness of creation, they thought these things were the divine itself, each preferring a different part of creation, and did not recognize the God and Creator of these things.

I think, then, that the opinions of those who have attempted to philosophize among the Greeks have been sufficiently set out; taking their starting points from them, the heretics attempted what will be told shortly. But it seems best first to set out the mystic rites and whatever some have curiously imagined about the stars or magnitudes, and to speak of them; for it is from these too that they are thought by the many to take their starting points for telling marvels. Then, in due order, we shall bring to light their feeble doctrines.

… [degrees, has most power up to a certain degree. Concerning these there is no small] disagreement among them in [the tables. They say that] stars [are attended by guards] when [they stand in the middle of other stars in a continuous run] of signs of the zodiac; for example, if in the same [sign one star occupies the first degrees,] another [the last, and another those in the middle, the one in the] middle [is said to be guarded] by those that occupy the degrees at the ends.

[They are said to look upon one another and to agree with one another] when they appear in trine or in square. Those form a trine and look upon one another that have an interval of three signs between them, and those in square an interval of two. As the parts below sympathize with the head, [and the head with the parts] below, so earthly things sympathize with those above the moon. Yet there is a certain difference and lack of sympathy among these, as they do not have one and the same unity.

Using these ideas, Euphrates the Peratic and Acembes the Carystian and the rest of their chorus, giving them the name of the word of truth, speak of a revolt of Aeons, an apostasy of [good] powers to evil, and agreements of good powers with wicked ones, calling them toparchs and suburbans and very many other names. I shall set out and refute the whole heresy they have attempted when we come to the account of these people.

For now, so that no one may think that the doctrines held by the Chaldeans about astrological learning are trustworthy and secure, we shall not hesitate to set out briefly the refutation of them, showing that the art is vain and able rather to deceive and destroy a soul that hopes in vain things than to help it. We engage them not from experience of the art but from knowledge of practical reasoning.

Those who practiced this learning, having become disciples of the Chaldeans, passing on to men mysteries as though strange and marvelous, changing the names, put together a heresy from there. But since, thinking the art of the astrologers valid and using their testimonies, they want their undertakings to be believed on that basis, we shall now, as we decided, show astrology to be incoherent, intending afterward also to invalidate the Peratic heresy as a branch grown from an incoherent root.

The beginning, then, and as it were the foundation, is to fix the horoscope. For from this the rest of the cardinal points are taken, and the declinations and the succeeding places, and the trines and squares and the configurations of the stars according to them; and from all these come the predictions.

So if the horoscope is removed, necessarily neither the midheaven [nor the setting nor the anti-midheaven] is known, and when these cannot be grasped, the whole Chaldean method vanishes with them. That the sign in the horoscope cannot be discovered by them can be shown in various ways.

For this to be grasped, it is necessary first that the birth of the person under examination be firmly grasped; second, that the horoscopic instrument signaling it be [unerring]; and third, that the rising of the sign be observed with precision.

For at the birth, the rising of the sign ascending in the sky is to be observed, since the Chaldeans, having defined the horoscope, make the configuration of the stars with reference to the rising, which they call the disposition, and on this they base their predictions. But it is not possible to grasp the birth of those under examination, as I shall show; nor is the horoscopic instrument unerring; nor is the rising sign grasped with precision.

Let us now say, then, how the method of the Chaldeans is incoherent. Having first defined that they must seek the birth of those who will fall under examination, they take it either from the depositing of the seed and conception, or from delivery.

And if one tries to take it from conception, the precise account of this cannot be grasped, the time being swift; and reasonably so. For we cannot say whether conception took place at the same moment as the transfer of the seed or not.

For this can happen as quick as thought, just as fat put on the red-hot sides of ovens at once sticks; but it can also happen after a time. For since there is a distance from the mouth of the womb to its base, where physicians say conceptions take place, the nature of the deposited seed must take some time to travel this distance.

Not knowing the length of time precisely, then, the Chaldeans will never grasp conception. For the seed is sometimes cast straight and falls all at once upon the places of the womb well suited for conception, [and sometimes falls scattered, able to be gathered into one place by the power in the womb itself]. It is unknown when the first happens and when the second, and how much time is spent on the one conception and how much on the other; and when these are unknown, a precise grasp of conception is also taken away.

And if, as some of the natural philosophers have said, the seed is first cooked and changed beforehand in the womb, and then approaches its opened vessels, as the seeds of the earth approach the earth, then those who do not know the length of time of the change will not know the moment of conception either.

Moreover, just as women differ from one another in the other parts of the body in activity and other causes, so also in the activity of the womb, some conceiving more quickly and some more slowly. And this is not surprising, since the same women, compared with themselves, are seen now to conceive easily and now not at all. This being so, it is impossible to say precisely when the deposited seed is retained, so that from this time the Chaldeans may fix the horoscope of the birth.

By this argument it is impossible to fix the horoscope from conception; but not from delivery either. For first, it is hard to say when delivery is to be called delivery: is it when the child begins to emerge into the cold air, or when it has come out a little, or when it has been brought down to the ground? Nor in any of these cases is it possible to grasp the precise moment of delivery or to define its time.

For because of the state of the mother's soul, the fitness of her body, the choice of place, the midwife's experience, and countless other reasons, the time at which the child emerges when the membranes break, or comes out a little, or is brought down to the ground, is not the same, but differs from case to case.

And since, again, the Chaldeans cannot measure this definitely and precisely, they will fail to define the hour of delivery as they should. That the Chaldeans profess to know the horoscope at the times of delivery but do not know it is clear from this. That their horoscopic instrument is not unerring either may now be considered.

For when they say that the one attending the woman in labor signals the delivery at once with a gong to the Chaldean observing the stars from a height, and he, looking into the sky, notes the rising sign, let us first show them that, since the delivery is indefinite, as we established a little before, it is not easy to signal it with the gong either.

Then, grant that the delivery can be grasped: still it is not possible to mark it at a precise time; for the sound of the gong takes a longer time to travel to the height, long enough to be divided into perceptible parts.

A proof is what is observed with those cutting trees at a distance: a good while after the axe has come down, the sound of the blow is heard, since it takes longer to reach the hearer. For this reason too, then, the Chaldeans cannot precisely grasp the time of the sign that is rising and truly in the horoscope.

And indeed, not only does considerable time pass after the delivery while the attendant strikes the gong, and then, after the striking, while the one on the height hears it, [but] also while he looks around and sees in which of the signs the moon is and in which each of the other stars is; so the disposition of the stars must necessarily change, since the motion of the pole is carried round with indescribable speed, before he can carefully observe the hour of the newborn as it is seen in the sky.

Thus the art of the Chaldeans will be shown to be incoherent. And if someone should claim to examine the birth of an inquirer from his answers to questions, or the matter he is asking about, not even in this way can he reach precision. For if so much care is recorded among them concerning the art, and even they do not reach precision, as we have shown, how has the layman precisely grasped the time of delivery, so that the Chaldean, learning from him, may truly fix the horoscope?

But neither will the same star appear rising everywhere as the horizon is seen; rather, in one place the declination will be taken for the horoscope, in another the succeeding place, according to how the places appear, being lower or higher; so that in this respect too the prediction will not appear precise, since many are born at the same hour throughout the world, and each observes the stars differently.

Vain too is the supposed grasp by means of water clocks. For the jar … does not fill in the same way by flowing when it is emptied, while the pole itself, on their own account, is carried round at one impulse with equal speed.

And if they turn round and say that they do not take the precise time but approximately, in broad terms, they will be refuted by the outcomes themselves. For those born at the same time did not live the same life; but some, for example, became kings and others grew old in fetters.

No one, at any rate, became equal to Alexander of Macedon, though many were born like him throughout the inhabited world; no one equal to Plato the philosopher. So the Chaldean will not be able to say precisely, from the broad time of birth, whether one born at the same time will prosper.

At any rate, many born at the same time were unfortunate, so that likeness according to dispositions is also vain. Having refuted the vainly laborious inquiry of the Chaldeans in different and many ways, we shall not leave out this either: that their predictions will come to a dead end.

For if one born at the point of the Archer's arrow, as the mathematicians say, must be slaughtered, how were so many myriads of barbarians fighting against the Greeks at Marathon or Salamis slaughtered at once? For surely the horoscope was not the same for all of them.

And again, if one born in the urn of the Water-Carrier will be shipwrecked, how were the Greeks sailing home from Troy drowned together off the hollows of Euboea? For it is incredible that all of them, differing from one another by a long time, were born in the urn of the Water-Carrier.

For it cannot be said that often, because of one man who is fated to perish at sea, all in the ship perish with him. For why does his fate conquer the fates of all, and why are not all saved because of the one who is fated to die on land?

But since they also give an account of the influence of the signs, to which they say those born are made like, we shall not leave this out either: for example, that one born in the Lion will be brave, and one in the Virgin straight-haired, fair-skinned, childless, modest.

These things and the like deserve laughter rather than serious attention. For according to them no Ethiopian is born in the Virgin; otherwise, he will grant that such a one is white, straight-haired, and the rest.

I think rather that the ancients gave the names of the animals mentioned to certain stars for the sake of familiarity, not because of a like nature. For what likeness to a bear have the seven stars, standing apart from one another? Or to a dragon's head the five, as Aratus says: "Two on its temples, two on its eyes, and one below covers the tip of the dread monster's jaw"?

Thus these things too are shown not to be worth so much toil to those who have chosen to think rightly and do not heed the conceit of the Chaldeans, who both destroy kings by instilling cowardice and embolden private persons to dare great things.

And if a man fails, having fallen into misfortune, the one harmed does not become a teacher to all; and wishing to deceive them in their failures, pushing their mind into the boundless, they say that the configuration of the same stars cannot come round to the same place otherwise than through the restoration of the Great Year, in seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven years. How, then, will human observation manage to keep pace with so many ages for a single birth?

And these things, I think, the Chaldean art ought to have been refuted not once but many times, beyond the expectation of many; although we have mentioned it for the sake of other things, not for its own sake.

But since we have chosen to leave out none of the doctrines held among the nations, because of the many-voiced cunning of the heresies, let us see what those say too who have ventured to speak about magnitudes. Seeing the vain toil of the many, each lying in a different way and winning renown, they dared to say something greater, so that they might be more greatly glorified by those who greatly glorified small lies.

These suppose circles and measures, triangles and squares, doubles and triples. There is much to say about this, but it is not necessary for our present purpose.

I think it sufficient, then, to state the marvels they tell. Therefore, using summaries of what they themselves say, I shall turn to other matters. They say this: "The maker gave mastery to the revolution of the same and like; for he left it one and undivided, but the inner one he split six times into seven unequal circles, each according to the interval of the double and the triple, there being three of each; and he commanded the circles to go in directions contrary to one another, three at the same speed, and the other four at speeds unlike one another and unlike the three, but moving in ratio."

He says mastery was given to the motion of the same, not only because it encompasses the motion of the other, that is, the planets, but also because it has so much mastery, that is, so much power, that it carries round with itself, by its

own strength, even those that move the contrary way, the planets carried from west to east, likewise also from east to west. He says this motion was left one and undivided, first because the revolutions of all the fixed stars take equal time and are not divided into longer and shorter times; then because they all have one surface, that of the outermost motion; whereas the planets are divided both into longer and different times of their motions and into unequal distances from the earth.

He says the motion of the other was split six times into seven circles, reasonably. For however many cuts there are in anything, the pieces are one more than the cuts; for example, if it is divided by one cut there will be two pieces, if by two, three pieces; and so if something is cut six times, there will be seven pieces.

He says their distances are arranged alternately in double and triple ratios, there being three of each; which he also showed in the composition of the soul, in the case of the seven numbers.

For among them there are three doubles from the monad …, and three … and … stades. The circumference of the earth is … and … stades; and the distance from the surface of the earth to the circle of the moon Aristarchus of Samos records as … stades, Apollonius as … myriads, and Archimedes as … myriads and … units.

From the circle of the moon to the circle of the sun, … myriads and … stades; from this to the circle of Aphrodite, … myriads and … stades; from this to the circle of Hermes, … myriads, … units; from this to the circle of the Fiery one, … myriads, … units; from this to the circle of Zeus, … myriads, … units; from this to the circle of Cronus, … myriads, … units; from this to the zodiac and the outermost circumference, … myriads, … units.

The distances of the circles from one another and the depths of the spheres are given by Archimedes. He takes the circumference of the zodiac as … of the second order of numbers and … myriads of stades; so that the straight line from the center of the earth to the outermost surface is a sixth of the said number, and the line from the surface of the earth on which we walk to the zodiac is a sixth of the number just mentioned, less four myriads of stades, which is the distance from the center of the earth to its surface. He says the distance from the circle of Cronus to the earth is two units of the second order and … myriads and … units of stades; from the circle of Zeus to the earth, … units of the second order and … myriads and … units; from the circle of the Fiery one to the earth, one unit of the second order and … myriads and … units; from the sun to the earth, one unit of the second order and … myriads and … units; from the Gleaming one to the earth, … myriads, … units; from Aphrodite to the earth, … myriads, … units.

Concerning the moon it was said before. So Archimedes gives the distances and depths of the spheres thus; Hipparchus has spoken otherwise about them, and otherwise Apollonius the mathematician. For us, following the Platonic view, it is enough to think that the distances of the planets from one another are double and triple; for in this way the principle is preserved that the universe is composed in harmony, in concordant ratios according to these distances.

But if the numbers set out by Archimedes and the ratios stated by the others about the distances were not in concordant ratios, that is, in the doubles and triples spoken of by Plato, but were found outside the concords, they would not preserve the principle that the universe has been constructed in harmony;

for it is neither plausible nor possible that their distances should be irrational and outside the concords and harmonic ratios, except perhaps for the moon alone, from the eclipses and the shadow of the earth, concerning which alone one might trust Archimedes about the distance, that is, of the moon from the earth. Once this is taken, it will be easy, according to the Platonic principle itself, to comprehend the other distances by number in the double and triple ratios, as Plato requires.

If, then, according to Archimedes, the moon is … myriads and … stades distant from the surface of the earth, it is easy, by increasing these numbers in double and triple ratio, to find the distances of the others too, taking as one part the number of stades by which the moon is distant from the earth. That the other numbers stated by Archimedes concerning the distance of the planets are not in concordant ratios is easy to see for those who consider how they stand to one another and in what ratios they are; but it is impossible that these, being parts of a world composed in harmony, should not be in harmony and concord. The first number, by which the moon is distant from the earth, being … myriads … units, the second number, by which the sun is distant from the moon, being … myriads … units, is in a ratio of more than …. To this the next number above, being … myriads … units, is in a ratio [less than half. To this the next number above, being … myriads … units, is in a ratio] more than double. To this the next number above, being … myriads … units, will be in a ratio less than five-fourths. To this the next above, being … myriads … units, is in a ratio more than half. To this the highest number, being … myriads … units, is in a ratio less than double.

These ratios, then, more than [ninefold and] less than half, more than double, less than five-fourths, more than half, and less than double, are outside all concords, and from them no harmonious and concordant system could come about. But the whole world and its parts are composed in every respect alike, harmoniously and concordantly.

And the harmonious and concordant ratios are preserved, as we said before, by the double and triple intervals.

If, then, we have considered Archimedes trustworthy only in the first distance, that from the moon to the earth, it is easy to find the others too by increasing in double and triple. Let the distance from the earth to the moon be, according to Archimedes, … myriads … units of stades; then the double of this will be the number of stades by which the sun is distant from the moon, … myriads and …; and the sun is distant from the earth … [myriads] and … stades. And Aphrodite is distant from the sun … myriads

… and … stades, and from the earth … myriads, … stades. Hermes is distant from Aphrodite … myriads, … stades, and from the earth … myriads, five hundred …, … stades. Ares is distant from Hermes … myriads, … stades, and from the earth a myriad of myriads and …, … stades.

Zeus is distant from Ares … myriads, … stades, and from the earth [a myriad of] myriads and …, … stades. Cronus is distant from Zeus a myriad of myriads and … myriads, … stades, and from the earth … myriads of myriads and …, … stades.

Who will not marvel at such great care, taken with so much toil? This Ptolemy, the one who fretted over these things, does not seem to me useless; this alone is a pity, that, being born so recently, he was of no use to the sons of the giants, who, not knowing these measures and thinking the heights of heaven were near, tried in vain to build a tower. If he had been present then and told them the measures, they would not have ventured in vain.

And if anyone says he disbelieves him, let him measure and be persuaded; for he has no clearer proof than this against the unbelieving. O the conceit of a vainly toiling soul, and unbelieving belief, that Ptolemy should by all means be thought wise among those who have practiced a similar wisdom!

Some, attending partly to these things, judging them great and thinking them worthy of account, have put together heresies without measure or limit. One of them is Colarbasus, who tries to set out the worship of God through measures and numbers; and others likewise, whom we shall point out when we begin to speak of them, who give heed to the Pythagorean reckoning as powerful, and improvise the secure philosophy through numbers

and letters, divining vain things. Some, gathering their words likewise, lead laymen astray, calling themselves foreknowers, sometimes hitting on one thing by divining many, and not ashamed of their many failures, but boasting over the one. I shall not pass over their unwise wisdom either, but, setting out those who try from these things to construct a worship of God, I shall refute them as disciples of an unsound root full of knavery.

Those, then, who think they divine by means of reckonings and numbers, letters and names, make this the starting point of their system: they say that each number has a root. For the thousands, the root is as many units as there are thousands: of six thousand the root is six units, of seven thousand seven units, of eight thousand eight units, and similarly for the rest in the same way;

and for the hundreds, as many hundreds as there are, so many units is their root: of seven hundred there are seven hundreds, and their root is seven units; of six hundred, six hundreds, and their root is three units. Similarly for the tens: of eighty, eight units; of sixty, six units; of forty, four units; of ten, one unit.

For the units, the units themselves are the root: of nine, nine; of eight, eight; of seven, seven. So one must do the same with the letters too; for each letter is assigned to a certain number: for example, … is fifty units; and the root of fifty units is five, so the root of the letter … is five.

Let it be granted to take the roots of a name. For example, of the name Agamemnon: of alpha there comes one unit, of … three units, of the other alpha one unit, of … units, of … units, of … units, of … five units, of … units, of … units; together these will be 1, …, 1, …; added together they make … units.

Again they take the roots of these, and of … there come three, and of six the six itself; adding the three and the six makes nine, and the root of nine is nine. So the name Agamemnon ended in the root nine.

Let the same be done also with another name, Hector. The name Hector has the letters …, kappa, tau, …, and …. Their roots are …, 1; added together they make … units. Again, the root of ten is one, of nine nine, which added together make ten; the root of ten is one. So the name Hector, when reckoned, made the root one.

It is easier to do it this way: divide by nine the roots found from the letters, as we just found … units for the name Hector, and call the remainder the root. For example, if I divide … by nine, one unit remains; for twice nine is …, and one unit is left. For if I subtract from …

the eighteen, one unit is left; so the root of the name Hector will be one. Again, the roots of the name Patroclus are these numbers: …, 1, …, 1, …, …, which added together make … units. Of these the remainder is seven units: of … three, and of … the … themselves. So the root of the name Patroclus is … units.

Those who reckon by the rule of nine take the ninth of the number gathered from the roots and define the remainder as the sum of the roots; those who reckon by the rule of seven take the seventh. For example, in the name Patroclus the sum of the roots was found to be … units; this divided into sevens makes …, which is …; six units remain. He says that the root of the name Patroclus is six by the rule of seven.

If it is …, he says the seventh is …; for seven times six is …, and one is left. So the root from … by the rule of seven is one. One must watch whether the number taken divides exactly: for example, if, adding the roots from some name, I find, say, … units, and … divided by nine … divides exactly into nines (for nine times … is …, and nothing is left), then clearly the root is … itself.

And again, if we divide the number forty-five and find that it divides exactly by nine (for nine times five is …, and nothing is left), in such cases they call nine itself the root. And likewise with the rule of seven: if, for example, we divide … by seven and it divides exactly (for seven times … and nothing is left), they call seven the root.

When he reckons names and finds the same letter twice, he reckons it once: for example, the name Patroclus has alpha twice and … twice; so they reckon alpha once and … once. Accordingly the roots will be …, 1, …, 1, …, and added together they make … units; and the root of the name will be nine itself by the rule of nine, and six by the rule of seven.

Likewise Sarpedon, when reckoned, makes two units as root by the rule of nine, and Patroclus makes … units: Patroclus wins. For when one is odd and the other even, the odd wins if it is greater. Again, if eight is even and five odd, the eight wins, for it is greater. But if there are two numbers both even or both odd, the smaller wins. But how does Sarpedon make two units by the rule of nine?

For the letter … is left out: when a name has the letters … and …, they leave out the …, using one letter; for they say both have the same value, and the same letter is not reckoned twice, as was said above.

Again, Ajax makes four units, Hector by the rule of nine makes one unit. And four is even, one odd. In such cases we said the greater wins: Ajax wins. Again, Alexander and Menelaus.

Alexander has a proper name, [Paris]. Paris makes … units by the rule of nine, and Menelaus by the rule of nine … units; and the nine defeats the four; for it was said that when one is odd and the other even, the greater wins, but when both are even or both odd, the smaller.

Again, Amycus and Polydeuces. Amycus makes two units by the rule of nine, and Polydeuces seven: Polydeuces wins. Ajax and Odysseus wrestled at the funeral games. Ajax makes … units by the rule of nine, Odysseus eight by the rule of nine. Is Odysseus's name, then, perhaps an epithet and not a proper name? For he won. By the numbers Ajax wins, but the story hands the victory to Odysseus.

Achilles and Hector. Achilles by the rule of nine makes four, Hector one: Achilles wins. Again, Achilles and Asteropaeus. Achilles makes four, Asteropaeus three: Achilles wins. Again, Menelaus and Euphorbus. Menelaus has nine units, Euphorbus eight: Menelaus wins.

Some, by the rule of seven, use only the vowels; others distinguish vowels by themselves, semivowels by themselves, and mutes by themselves, and making three classes take the roots of the vowels by themselves, of the semivowels by themselves, and of the mutes by themselves, and compare each separately.

Others do not use these customary numbers, but others: for example, they do not want … to have the root … units but …, and the letter … the root … units; and twisting in every direction they find nothing sound. When some compete a second time, they remove the first letter from each of the names; when a third time, two letters from each, and reckoning the rest they compare them.

I think the notion of the arithmeticians too has been clearly set out, who think they can determine life by numbers and names.

I observe that these, having leisure and being practiced in reckoning, have wished, through the art handed down to them from childhood, to be called renowned seers; measuring the letters up and down, they have come to nonsense. For when they fail, they put forward the difficulty and say that perhaps this was not a proper name but an epithet, as they pleaded when they came to grief over Odysseus and Ajax. Who, taking starting points from this marvelous philosophy and wishing to be called a heresiarch, will not win renown?

But since there is also another, deeper art among the all-wise students of the Greeks, whose disciples the heretics pray to be, because they use their opinions for their own undertakings, as will be shown shortly (this is divination by the forehead, or rather madness), we shall not keep silent about this either.

There are those who refer forms to the stars, shaping types and reckoning the natures of men according to their births under the stars. They speak thus: those born in the Ram will be of this kind: long head, red hair, eyebrows joined together, sharp forehead, grey-blue eyes …, drooping cheeks, long-nosed, with open nostrils, thin lips, sharp chin, long mouth.

These, he says, will share such a nature: provident, versatile, timid, sensible, gracious, quiet, curious, of hidden counsels, equipped for every matter, prevailing more by prudence than by strength, mocking the present, lettered, faithful, contentious, easily provoked in a fight, lustful, afflicted with pederasty, turned away from their own homes, displeased with everything, accusers, mad in wine, contemptuous, throwing something away at a word, useful in friendship because of their goodness; very often they die in a foreign land.

Those in the Bull will be of this type: round head, thick hair, broad, square forehead, large black eyes and eyebrows, thin bloodshot veins in the white of the eye, long thick eyelids, large ears, round mouths, thick nose, round nostrils, thick lips; they are strong in the upper parts, and upright from the legs.

The same by nature: pleasing, intelligent, gifted, pious, just, rustic, gracious, hard-working from the age of …, easily provoked, sluggish. Their stomach is small, they are quickly filled; they deliberate much, are prudent, sparing toward themselves, lavish toward others, beneficent, slow of body; at times they are sorrowful, careless in friendship, useful because of their mind, much-suffering.

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:

learned, intelligent, curious, of their own decision, desirous, sparing of their own, lavish, quiet, prudent, crafty; they deliberate much, are calculators, accusers, untimely, not fortunate, loved by women, traders, not very useful in friendship.

Type in the Crab: size not large, hair dark as it were, color reddish, small mouth, round head, sharp forehead, grey-blue eyes, fairly handsome, limbs somewhat mottled.

The same by nature: bad, crafty, finished in counsels, insatiable, stingy, ungrateful, illiberal, useless, forgetful; they neither give back what is another's nor demand back what is their own; useful in friendship.

Type in the Lion: round head, reddish hair, large wrinkled forehead, thick ears, thick-necked, partly bald, ruddy, grey-blue eyes, large jaws, thick mouth, thick in the upper parts, large chest, thin in the lower limbs.

The same by nature: of their own decision, unmixable, pleased with themselves, irascible, passionate, contemptuous, self-willed, deliberating about nothing, extravagant, idle, sociable, poured out on matters of love, adulterers, shameless, untrue in faith, beggars, bold, stingy, grasping, notable, useful in partnership, useless in friendship.

Type in the Virgin: of fair appearance, eyes not large, charming, black, eyebrows joined, cheerful, swimming. They are slender of body, and fair in look, hair nicely arranged, large forehead, prominent nose. The same by nature: quick to learn, moderate, thoughtful, playful, eloquent, slow of speech, deliberating much, easily won over to a favor, gladly observing everything, gifted pupils who hold fast what they have learned, moderate, contemptuous, pederasts, sociable, great-souled, scornful, careless of affairs, attentive to teaching, better in others' affairs than in their own, useful in friendship.

Type in the Balance: fine, prominent hair, reddish, rather long; sharp, wrinkled forehead; fine eyebrows, joined; handsome eyes with black pupils; long thin ears; head inclined; long mouth.

The same by nature: intelligent, honoring the gods, slandering one another, traders, hard-working, not keeping their gains, liars, not loving in affairs by thought, truthful, free of tongue, beneficent, unlearned, liars, sociable, careless; [it does not bring them to do any part unjustly.] They are contemptuous, mockers, sharp, reputable, listeners, and nothing prospers for them; useful in friendship.

Type in the Scorpion: maidenly face, shapely, salty, darkish hair, shapely eyes, forehead not broad, and sharp nose, small close-set ears, wrinkled forehead, narrow eyebrows, drooping cheeks. The same by nature:

crafty, subdued, liars, entrusting their own plans to no one, double-souled, evildoers, contemptuous, guilty of adultery, gifted, quick to learn, useless in friendship.

Type in the Archer: great height, square forehead, full eyebrows held together, hair arranged prominently, reddish.

The same by nature: gracious like the educated, simple, beneficent, pederasts, sociable, hard-working, loving and loved, cheerful in wine, clean, irascible, careless, bad, useless in friendship, contemptuous, great-souled, insolent, servile, useful in partnership.

Type in the Goat-horned: reddish body, greyish prominent hair, round mouth, eyes like an eagle's, eyebrows joined, open forehead, somewhat bald, the lower parts of the body stronger.

The same by nature: philosophers, contemptuous and mocking the present, irascible, forgiving, good, beneficent, lovers of music, irascible in wine, laughable, sociable, talkative, pederasts, cheerful, amiable, loving, provoking, useful in partnership.

Type in the Water-carrier: square in size, small mouth, sharp eyes, fine, fierce; commanding, ungrateful, sharp, finding things easily, useful for friendship and partnership. Also, they make their gains from moist things and lose their gains.

The same by nature: silent, bashful, sociable, adulterers, stingy, busy with affairs, turbulent, clean, gifted, good, with large eyebrows; they are often born in slender circumstances and practice the trade of chariots. If they do good to anyone, no one gives them thanks.

Type in the Fishes: medium height, sharp forehead like fish, thick hair; they often become grey quickly.

The same by nature: great-souled, simple, irascible, stingy, talkative; in their first age they will be sleepy; they want to do business by themselves; reputable, bold, jealous, accusers, changing place, loving, dancers, useful in friendship.

Since we have set out the marvelous wisdom of these men too, and have not concealed their divination, so full of care, by conjecture, we shall not keep silent either about where they go astray and talk vanity. For how weak they have shown themselves in comparing the forms and natures of men to the names of stars!

For we know that those who named the stars from the beginning called them by names according to their own notion, so that they might be easy to mark and recognize. For what likeness have these to the image of the signs, or what like nature of action and activity, that one should say the man in the Lion is passionate, the one in the Virgin moderate, or the one in the Crab bad, and those in …

… taking it, he asks the inquirer to write what he wishes to ask of the demons, [in water] only.

Then, folding the paper, he gives it to the boy and sends him off to burn it, so that the smoke may go carrying the letters to the demons. While the boy is doing what he was ordered, he first tears off equal parts of the paper, and on some more of them he pretends to write the names of demons in Hebrew letters; then, burning the incense of the Egyptian magi called kyphi, he holds these up over the incense and carries them; and what the inquirer happened to write, he placed on the coals and burned it,

then, seeming to be possessed by the god, he rushes into the inner chamber and shouts something loud and discordant and unintelligible to all; … all who are present … invoking the demon Phryn, written on the paper; when those present have come in and stand by, … putting the boy …, he says many things over him, some in Greek and some as if in Hebrew, the incantations usual among the magi; and he begins to inquire.

Inside there is a bowl full of water; putting copper sulfate into it and dissolving the drug, he sprinkles the supposedly blotted-out paper with it and forces the lurking, hidden letters to come to light again, by which he learns what the inquirer wrote. And if one writes with copper sulfate and then fumigates it with ground oak-gall, the hidden letters would become visible.

And if one writes with milk, then burns paper, grinds it, sprinkles it, and rubs it on the letters written in milk, they will be clear. Urine too, and fish sauce, and the juice of spurge and of the fig tree do the same. When he has learned the question in this way, he has thought out beforehand how he ought to answer.

And then he bids those present come in holding laurel branches, shaking them and shouting and invoking the demon Phren; and indeed it is fitting for them to invoke him and worthy to ask of demons what they will not furnish of themselves, having lost their wits. The disorderly shouting and noise prevented them from following what he is thought to have done in secret. What these things are, it is now time to say.

There is much darkness. For he says it is impossible for mortal nature to see divine things; it is enough to converse with them. Laying the boy face down, and placing two of those little writings, which were written supposedly in Hebrew letters as the names of demons, beside each side, he says he will put the rest into his ears.

But this is itself necessary, that he may put to the boy's ears an instrument through which he can signal all he wishes. First it makes a noise to frighten the boy, second it hums, and then third he speaks through the instrument what he wants the boy to say, and the outcome of the matter as he sees fit; then he makes those present keep quiet, and bids the boy declare what he heard from the demons.

The instrument put to the ears is a natural one, the windpipe of long-necked cranes or storks or swans; if none of these is at hand, there are other instruments of art: some little bronze pipes, ten in number, fitting into one another and ending in a narrow end, become well joined, through which he utters to the ear whatever he wishes. And the boy, hearing these things fearfully as spoken by demons, declares them when bidden.

And if one wraps a moist hide around a rod, dries it, draws it together and fits it, and, pulling out the rod, makes the hide into a pipe, it does the same. If none of these is at hand, taking a book roll and drawing out from inside as much as he needs, stretching it to length, he produces the same effect.

If he knows in advance who is present to inquire, he is readier for everything. If he also learns the question beforehand, he writes with the drug; and as one well prepared he is thought more able, having clearly written what was asked. If he does not know, he guesses and declares something ambiguous and varied, open to interpretation, so that the oracle, being unclear at first, may apply to many things, and at the outcome of events may be thought a prediction of what happened.

Then, filling a basin with water, he lets down the paper as if unwritten, throwing copper sulfate in with it; for so the written paper rises bearing the answer. Frightening apparitions also often come to the boy; for he readily strikes blows to terrify him. Throwing frankincense into the fire, he again does it this way: covering a lump of what is called rock salt with Etruscan wax, and splitting a lump of frankincense itself in two, he puts in a grain of salt, glues it together again, puts it on burning coals, and leaves it.

When it has burned together, the salts leaping up produce an apparition as though a strange sight were taking place. Indian ink placed in the frankincense makes a bloody flame, as we said before. He makes a bloody liquid by mixing wax with alkanet and, as I said, putting the wax in the frankincense. He makes coals move by putting split alum underneath; as it dissolves and swells like bubbles, the coals move.

They show eggs of different colors in this way: piercing the top at each end and drawing out the white, then dipping it again, put in red ochre in one and writing ink in the other. Stop up the holes with fine egg-shell scrapings, plastering them with fig juice.

This is the way they make lambs cut off their own heads. Secretly smearing the throat with a caustic drug, he leaves it with a sword placed beside it; and the animal, wanting to scratch itself, falls on the knife, pressing on it, and is slaughtered and almost cuts off its head. The drug is bryony and sea-salt efflorescence and squill mixed in equal parts.

So that he may not be noticed carrying the drug, he carries a double box of horn, whose visible part holds frankincense and the hidden part the drug; and he also puts quicksilver into the ears of the animal that is to die; it is a deadly drug.

They say that if one plasters the ears of goats with wax salve, they die shortly after, being prevented from breathing; for they say this is their passage for the breath drawn in by respiration. They say a ram dies if one bends its head back facing the sun. They make a house burn by smearing it with the juice of a certain sea creature called the dactyl.

And the trick with brine is very useful. It is sea foam boiled with sweet wine in an earthenware jar; if you bring a burning lamp to it as it boils, it catches the fire and blazes, and poured on the head it does not burn at all. If you also sprinkle frankincense powder on it as it boils, it blazes much more. It works better still if it takes some sulfur too.

Thunder is produced in several ways. Many large stones, carried down steep slopes over planks, fall on bronze plates and make a noise like thunder. And they wind a thin cord around a thin board, such as fullers press clothes with, and then, pulling the cord with a whirring, they spin the board, and it, vibrating, produces a sound of thunder.

These things, then, are played thus. I shall set out other things which those who are played upon also think great. Setting a cauldron full of pitch on burning coals, when it boils, they put their hands in and are not burned; and walking on coals of fire with bare feet they are not burned; and placing a stone pyramid on a pyre he makes it burn; and he brings much fiery smoke out of his mouth; then, putting a linen cloth over a basin of water and throwing many burning coals on it, he keeps the cloth unburned.

Making darkness in a house, he claims to bring in gods or demons; and if anyone asks him to show Asclepius, he invokes him thus, saying: "Son of Apollo, perished long ago and again immortal, I call you to come as helper to my libations; you who once rescued the countless tribes of feeble dead, who sail the hard-returning stream in the ever-wailing halls of mouldy Tartarus, the roaring double course that all mortal men alike complete, mourning by the lake and wailing without end: you yourself drew them from unsmiling Persephone. Whether you haunt the seat of holy Tricca, or lovely Pergamum, or besides them Ionian Epidaurus, come here, blessed one: the [chief] of the magi calls you to [be present] here."

When he has finished his mockery, a fiery Asclepius appears on the floor. Then, placing in the middle a basin full of water, he calls all the gods, and they come. For whoever is present, bending over the basin, will see them all, and Artemis leading her baying hounds. We shall not hesitate to tell the account of these things too, how they contrive them.

He puts his hands into the cauldron of pitch as though it were boiling; but he has thrown in vinegar and soda and liquid pitch and lights a fire under the cauldron; the vinegar mixed with the soda, taking a little heat, stirs the pitch so as to send bubbles up to the surface and give only the appearance of boiling. He has also washed his hands many times beforehand with brine, so that it hardly burns at all even if it truly boils. And if he mixes myrtle, soda, and myrrh with vinegar, smears them on, and washes his hands many times in brine, he is not burned; and he is not burned in the feet if he smears them with fish glue and salamander.

The reason the pyramid burns like a torch, though it is stone, is this. It is Cretan earth, molded into the shape of a pyramid and with the color of a milk-white stone, and it is prepared in this way: soaking the lump in plenty of oil, putting it on coals, baking it, soaking it again, and burning it a second and third time and often, he prepares it so that it can burn even if soaked in water; for it contains much oil in itself. The pyre is kindled by it, as the magician hurries, having quicklime burning underneath instead of ashes, and fine frankincense in quantity …

and oiled torches of self-flowing resin and hollow oak-galls with fire inside. He sends smoke out of his mouth after a delay, putting fire in an oak-gall, wrapping it in tow, and blowing in his mouth. The linen laid over the basin, on which he puts the coals, did not burn because of the brine beneath, and it had itself been soaked in brine beforehand and then smeared with egg white and liquid alum. And if one also mixes the juice of houseleek with these, with vinegar, and smears it thoroughly long beforehand, the cloth dipped in the drug remains entirely unburned.

Since we have briefly set out the powers of their secret teachings and shown their method to be easy to understand, we do not wish to keep silent about this either, since it is necessary: how, breaking seals, they return the sealed letters with the very same seals. Melting pitch, resin, sulfur, and also asphalt in equal parts, they shape it into the form of an eye salve and keep it. When the time comes to open a letter, they moisten the tongue with oil, then smear the seal with it; warming the drug on a moderate fire, they apply it to the seal and leave it until it sets completely, and they use it like a signet.

They say that wax itself with pine resin does the same, and two parts of mastic with one part of dry asphalt. Sulfur alone does it reasonably well, and flower of gypsum mixed with water and gum; this indeed does very well also for sealing melted lead.

The mixture of Etruscan wax, tree resin, pitch, asphalt, [and] mastic, and powdered marble, all boiled in equal parts, is better than the others I have mentioned, and the one with gypsum is not inferior. In this way, then, they try to break the seals, attempting to learn what is written inside.

I hesitated to set these devices down in the book, fearing that some evildoer might take occasion from them and attempt them; but now concern for the many young people who can be saved has persuaded me to teach and forewarn them for their protection. For as one will use them for learning evil, so another, having learned, will be on his guard; and the magi themselves, the corrupters of life, will be ashamed to use the art. And having learned these things, taught beforehand by us, they will perhaps be hindered from their madness. And so that a seal may not be broken in this way, let one seal it mixing pig's fat and hair with the wax.

Nor shall I keep silent about their bowl divination, which is a piece of knavery. Preparing a closed room and painting the ceiling blue, they bring in for the occasion some blue vessels and set them up; and in the middle a basin full of water is placed on the ground, which, as the reflection of the blue falls on it, shows it like the sky.

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.

He makes a demon burn by drawing the figure he wishes on a wall, then secretly smearing it with a drug mixed in this way: … Laconian … and Zacynthian asphalt; then, as though prophesying, he brings the torch to the wall. And the drug flashes up and burns.

He contrives that Hecate should seem to run fiery through the air in this way. Hiding an accomplice in a place he chooses, he takes the deceived and persuades them, saying he will show the goddess riding fiery through the air. He instructs them quickly to guard their eyes when they see the flame in the air, and to cover themselves and fall on their faces until he calls them. Having taught them this, on a moonless night he utters these verses:

"Infernal, earthly, and heavenly, come, Bombo, goddess of the roads, of the crossroads, light-bearer, night-wanderer, enemy of light, friend and companion of night, rejoicing in the baying of dogs and in red blood, stalking among the corpses along the tombs of the dead, longing for blood, bringing fear to mortals, Gorgo and Mormo and Mene and many-formed, come graciously to our sacrifices."

When he has said this, fire is seen carried through the air; and they, shuddering at the marvel of the sight, cover their eyes and throw themselves speechless on the ground. The greatness of the art is of this kind: the accomplice, whom I said was hidden, when he hears that the incantation has stopped, holding a kite or a vulture wrapped in tow, sets it alight and lets it go.

The bird, disturbed by the flame, rises aloft and makes its flight swifter; seeing this, the foolish hide themselves as though they had seen something divine. The bird, whirling round because of the fire, comes down wherever it happens to; and sometimes it burns down houses, and sometimes courtyards too. Such is the foreknowledge of the magi.

They show the moon and stars appearing on the ceiling in this way. Fitting a mirror in the middle part of the ceiling, placing a basin full of water in the middle of the floor directly beneath, and placing a dimly shining lamp in the middle, higher than the basin, he thus by reflection makes a moon appear through the

mirror. And often, too, placing a drum high up at a distance at dawn, covering it with some garment, hidden by the accomplice so that it may not appear before the time, and putting a lamp behind it, when he gives the signal to the accomplice, he removes as much of the covering as will help the imitation to match the shape of the moon at that time. He smears the transparent parts of the drum with cinnabar and gum ……

and, cutting off the neck and bottom of a … flask, putting a lamp inside and placing around it some shape suited to shine through, one of the accomplices, hidden high up under some cover, after receiving the signal, lets the devices down from aloft, so that the moon seems to come down from heaven.

The same is also done by means of a pot in wooded places. The indoor tricks are also played with the pot. An altar is set up, and behind it lies the pot with a shining lamp in it; while there are several lamps, nothing of the kind is shown. So when the enchanter invokes the moon, he orders all the lamps to be put out and one dim one left; and then the light from the pot is reflected onto the ceiling and gives those present the appearance of the moon, the mouth of the pot being covered as the occasion seems to require, so that the appearance on the ceiling is shown crescent-shaped.

They make stars seem to be there with the scales of sprats or of the dolphin-fish, soaked in water with gum and stuck to the ceiling at intervals.

They produce the appearance of an earthquake, so that everything seems to move, with ichneumon dung heated on coals together with the magnet stone …

They show a liver that seems to have writing on it. On his left hand he writes what he wishes, fitting it to the question, and the letters are written with oak-gall and sharp vinegar. Then, taking up the liver and resting it on his left hand, he waits a while; it draws the imprint and is thought to have been written on.

They make a skull placed on the ground speak in this way. The skull itself is made of an ox's caul, molded [and] with Etruscan wax and prepared gypsum; with the membrane wrapped around it, it gives the appearance of a skull, which seems to all to speak when the instrument is at work, in the way we described in the case of the boys: preparing the windpipe of a crane or some such long-necked animal, the accomplice, fitting it secretly to the skull, utters what he wishes. When he wants it to disappear, he places a heap of coals around it as if burning incense; the wax, catching their heat, melts, and so the skull is thought to have vanished.

These are the works of the magi, and countless others like them, which by the symmetry of verses and the appearance of deeds performed convincingly persuade the foolish. The heresiarchs, astonished at their art, imitated it, handing on their supposed doctrines partly in secret and darkness, and partly paraphrasing them as their own.

For this reason, wishing to remind the many, we have been rather thorough, so as to leave no room for those who wish to lead astray. Not without reason we were carried off into some of the secrets of the magi, which were not wholly necessary for the matter in hand, but were thought useful for guarding against the knavish and incoherent art of the magi.

Since, then, as far as can be judged, we have set out the opinions of all, taking great care to make plain that what the heresiarchs bring in as though new for the worship of God is vain and spurious, and perhaps not even worth account among themselves, it seems best to recall briefly and in summary what has been said before.

All the philosophers and theologians throughout the world who inquired did not agree about God, what or of what kind he is. Some say he is fire, others spirit, others water, others earth. But each of the elements has some deficiency, and one is defeated by another.

This befell the wise men of the world, as is plain to those who have understanding: seeing the greatness of creation, they were confounded about the substance of existing things, thinking them too great to have received their origin from another, and yet not that the whole together is God. They declared one of the visible things to be the cause, for purposes of theology, each thinking so of what he judged; and so, gazing at the things made by God, which are least in comparison with his surpassing majesty, and unable to stretch their mind to the greatness of the true God, they made these into gods.

The Persians, thinking they had got further inside the truth, said that God is luminous, light held together in air.

The Babylonians said that God is dark, which itself also appears to be a consequence of the other; for day follows night and night follows day. The Egyptians, thinking themselves more ancient than all, the power of God …

reckoning these intervals of the degrees by a most divine inspiration, said that God is an indivisible monad, begetting itself, and that from it all things were constructed. For this, he says, being unbegotten, begets the numbers that follow; for example, the monad added to itself begets the dyad, and likewise, added on, begets the triad and the tetrad, up to the decad, which is the beginning and end of the numbers, so that the monad becomes first and tenth, because the decad also has equal value and is counted as a monad;

and this, multiplied tenfold, becomes a hundred, and again becomes a monad; and the hundred multiplied tenfold will make a thousand, and this will be a monad; so too the thousand multiplied tenfold, if they complete the myriad, will likewise be a monad. Numbers akin to the monad by indivisible comparison are taken: ….

There is also the more natural kinship of another number to the monad according to the treatise of the six-circled spiral, that of the dyad according to the even position and division of numbers.

The number of … and … is akin. These, taking number from the monad, advanced in providence of virtue up to the … elements, I mean spirit and fire, water and earth; and making the world from these he constructed it male-female; and he assigned two elements to the upper hemisphere, spirit and fire, and this hemisphere of the monad is called beneficent, upward-tending, and masculine;

for the monad, being fine in its parts, flies to the finest and purest part of the ether; and the other two elements, being thicker, earth and water, he assigned to the dyad, and this hemisphere is called downward-tending, feminine, and maleficent. And again, the upper two elements themselves, compared with each other, have in themselves the male and the female for the fruitfulness and increase of all things.

Fire is male, and spirit female; and again, water is male and earth female. And so from the beginning fire lived together with spirit, and water with earth. For as fire is the power of spirit, so water is the power of earth ….

and the elements themselves, reckoned and reduced by subtracting nines, end fittingly, some in the male number and some in the female. The nine, again, is subtracted for this reason, that the three hundred and sixty degrees of the whole are composed of nines, and for this reason the four quarters of the world are marked out by ninety complete degrees;

light is assigned to the monad and darkness to the dyad; and to light by nature life, to the dyad death; and to life justice, to death injustice.

Therefore everything born under the male numbers is beneficent, and what is under the female is maleficent. For example, they reckon thus: monad, to begin from it, becomes …, which ends in a monad when the nine is subtracted. Likewise reckon: dyad becomes …; subtract the nines, it ends in a dyad; and each is restored to its own.

So, since the monad is beneficent, they say, from observation, that names ending in the odd number are upward-tending and beneficent; and those ending in the even number are held to be downward-tending, feminine, and maleficent. For they say nature is composed of opposites, of good and bad, like right and left, light and darkness, night and day, life and death.

They say this too: as if, reckoning the word "God" … and indeed to five, it comes to nine, which is even; and writing it and hanging it on as an amulet they heal. So too a certain herb whose number ends in this, likewise hung on, is effective because of the like reckoning of the number.

And a physician heals the sick by a like reckoning; if the reckoning is contrary, he does not heal easily. Attending to these numbers, they reckon whatever is alike in this sense, some by vowels only, others by the whole number. Such is the wisdom of the Egyptians too, by which, glorifying the divine, they think they know it.

These things too, then, seem to us sufficiently set out. But I still think I have left out no opinion of the earthly and groveling wisdom; and I see that the care we have spent on them has not been useless. For we see that the account has proved useful not only for refuting the heresies but also against those who hold these views themselves, who, when they meet with the great pains we have taken, will marvel at our zeal and not despise our industry, and will not declare Christians fools when they see what they themselves foolishly believe.

Further, the account will advance studious lovers of truth to be more prudent, so that, having learned not only the principles of the heresies they may easily overturn those who have dared to lead astray, but also the so-called opinions of the wise, of which, not being ignorant, they will neither be troubled by them as the unlearned are, nor be led astray by those who seem to act by some power, but will even watch over those who are going astray.

Having sufficiently set out these opinions, let us now proceed to the treatise before us, so that, showing what we have undertaken concerning the heresies, and compelling them to give each his own, we may expose the heresiarchs naked, and, convicting the folly of those who are persuaded by them, persuade them to run back to the calm harbor of the truth.

So that what will be said may appear clearer to readers, it seems best to state also what Aratus has worked out about the arrangement of the heavenly stars, how some, making them images of what is said by the Scriptures, allegorize them, trying to divert the mind of those who attend to them, drawing them by persuasive words to what they wish, displaying a strange wonder, as though what they say had been set among the stars;

and those who gaze at the strange wonder are caught, easily amazed, like the bird called the horned owl, whose example it is good to tell because of what is to come. The creature is not very different from an eagle either in size or in shape; and it is caught in this way.

When the bird-catcher sees a flock alighting somewhere, he claps his hands from afar and pretends to dance, and so little by little approaches the birds; they, astonished at the strange sight, become heedless of everything. And others of those prepared for the hunt, coming up from behind, easily catch the birds as they watch the dancer.

Therefore I ask that no one, astonished at similar wonders of those who interpret the heaven, be caught like the horned owl; for the knavery of such people is dancing and nonsense, and not truth.

Aratus, then, speaks thus: "They, many alike and scattered here and there, are drawn across the sky all the days, continually, for ever" (that is, all the stars). "But it does not shift even a little, but just so the axis is ever fixed, and holds the earth in the middle, balanced on every side, and turns the heaven itself around."

He says the stars in the heaven are "many" (polees), that is, turning, because they go round unceasingly from east to west and from west to east in a spherical figure.

He says that there winds among the Bears themselves, like the stream of a river, a great wonder, the monstrous Dragon; and this, he says, is what the devil said to God in Job: "Having walked about under heaven and gone around," that is, having turned round and surveyed what is happening. For they think that the Dragon, the serpent, is set at the arctic pole, looking down on all things from the highest pole and overseeing all, so that nothing done may escape him;

for while all the stars in the heaven set, this pole alone never sets, but moving high above the horizon it surveys and oversees all things, and nothing done, he says, can escape it. "Where most of all settings and risings mingle with one another," there, he says, its head is placed.

For the head of the Dragon lies at the setting and rising of the two hemispheres, so that, he says, nothing may escape it at the same moment, neither of what is in the west nor of what is in the east, but the beast may know all things together. And right over the head of the Dragon there is the figure of a man seen in the stars, which Aratus calls "a wearied image" and "like one toiling"; it is called the Kneeler.

Aratus, then, says he does not know what this toil and this wonder is that turns in the heaven. But the heretics, wishing to establish their own doctrines through the lore of the stars, attending to these things too curiously, say that the Kneeler is Adam, guarding, he says, according to the command of God, as Moses said, the head of the Dragon, and the Dragon his heel. For so Aratus says: "Holding the track of his right foot on the crooked Dragon."

He says that on either side of him (I mean the Kneeler) are set the Lyre and the Crown, and that he bends the knee and stretches out both hands as if confessing his sin.

The lyre is a musical instrument constructed by the Word while still quite an infant; and among the Greeks Hermes is understood to be the Word. Aratus says about the making of the lyre: "Hermes pierced it while still by the cradle, and said it should be called a lyre." It is seven-stringed, [signifying] by its seven strings the whole harmony and melodious construction of the world; for in six days the world was made, and on the seventh he rested.

If, then, he says, Adam, confessing and guarding the head of the beast according to God's command, imitates the lyre, that is, follows the Word of God, that is, obeys the law, he will receive the crown lying beside him. But if he neglects it, he will be carried down together with the beast below, and will have his portion, he says, with the beast.

The Kneeler seems to lay his hands on both sides and to touch on one side the lyre and on the other the crown [and on the other to confess], as can be seen from the figure itself. Yet his crown is plotted against and snatched away by another beast, a smaller dragon, which is the offspring of the one guarded by the Kneeler with his foot.

And a man stands, gripping the serpent firmly with both hands and dragging it back from the crown, and does not let the beast touch the crown, though it tries to force its way. Aratus calls him the Serpent-holder, because he checks the rush of the serpent as it tries to come at the crown.

And it is the Word, he says, in the form of a man, who prevents the beast from coming at the crown, pitying the one who is plotted against by the dragon and its offspring alike.

The Bears themselves, they say, are two sevens, composed of seven stars, images of two creations. For the first creation, he says, is that according to Adam, in toils, which is the one seen kneeling. The second creation is that according to Christ, through which we are born again, which is the Serpent-holder, contending against the beast and preventing it from coming at the crown prepared for man.

The Great Bear is Helice, he says, a symbol of the great creation, toward which the Greeks sail, that is, by which they are trained and which they follow as they are carried through the waves of life; such a creation or teaching or wisdom being a kind of "helix," leading back those who follow such a creation. For the name Helice seems to mean a turning and a circling back to the same things.

The other Bear is a small one, as it were an image of the second creation, created according to God; for few, he says, are those who travel by the narrow way. They say the Cynosure is narrow, by which Aratus says the Sidonians sail. Aratus called the Phoenicians Sidonians from a part, because the wisdom of the Phoenicians is marvelous; and the Greeks say the Phoenicians are those who came from the Red Sea to settle in this land where they still live; for so it seems to Herodotus.

This Bear, he says, is Cynosura, the second creation, the small one, the narrow way, and not Helice. For it does not lead back but guides its followers forward in a straight line, being the dog's. For the Word is a dog, on the one hand guarding and keeping the flock that is plotted against by wolves, on the other hunting and destroying the beasts from creation, and on the other begetting all things; and, as they say, "dog" (kyon), that is, begetting.

Hence, they say, Aratus, speaking of the rising of the Dog Star, said thus: "When the Dog has risen, the plantings no longer deceive." This is what he means: plants planted in the ground up to the rising of the Dog Star, though often they have not taken root, nevertheless flourish with leaves and show the onlookers that they will bear fruit, and seem alive, though they have no life from the root in them;

but when the rising of the Dog Star comes, the living are distinguished from the dead by the Dog; for whatever did not take root truly withers. This Dog, then, he says, being a divine Word, has been appointed judge of the living and the dead; [and] as the Dog Star is seen over the plants in creation, so the Word, he says, is over the heavenly plants, that is, men.

For this reason, then, the second creation, Cynosura, stands in heaven as an image of the rational creation; and the Dragon stretches between the two creations, preventing those from the great creation from passing over to the small creation, and watching over those established in the creation, like the Kneeler, observing how and in what way each one is established in the small creation.

And he himself, he says, is watched at the head by the Serpent-holder. This image, he says, stands in heaven, being a kind of wisdom to those able to see. And if it is unclear in this respect, creation teaches us to philosophize, he says, through another image, about which Aratus has spoken thus: "Nor, then, the toiling race of Cepheus son of Iasus."

Cepheus, he says, is near him, and Cassiepeia and Andromeda and Perseus, great letters of creation to those able to see. For he says Cepheus is Adam, Cassiepeia Eve, Andromeda the soul of both of them, Perseus the Word, the winged offspring of Zeus, and the Sea-monster the plotting beast.

He who killed the beast comes to none of these but to Andromeda alone; and the Word, he says, Perseus, takes Andromeda to himself, who had been given up bound to the beast, and rescues her. Perseus is the winged axis, which pierces both poles through the middle of the earth and turns the world.

And the spirit in the world is the bird, the swan, near the Bears, a [musical] creature, a symbol of the divine Spirit; because, when it has already come to the very end of its life, it alone by nature sings, departing from the evil creation with good hope and sending up hymns to God.

Crabs and bulls and lions and rams and goats and kids, and whatever other beasts are named in the heaven by the stars, are images, he says, and patterns, from which the changeable creation, taking the forms of such animals, becomes full.

Using these words they think they deceive many, as many as pay too curious attention to the astrologers, trying from there to establish a worship of God that stands far removed from their notion. Therefore, beloved, let us flee the easy amazement of the horned owl; for these things and the like are dancing and not truth.

For the stars show nothing of this; rather men of their own accord gave certain stars these names for marking them, so that they might be conspicuous to them. For what likeness to a bear or a lion or kids or a water-carrier or Cepheus or Andromeda or the images named in Hades have the stars scattered across the heaven, since these men and names came into being much later than the stars, when the birth of men took place? So that the heretics too, astonished at the marvel, should work out their own doctrines by such arguments?

But since almost every heresy has devised, by the art of arithmetic, measures of hebdomads and certain emanations of Aeons, some tearing the art apart in one way and others in another, and differing only in names, and since Pythagoras became their teacher in this, the first to hand down such numbers to the Greeks from Egypt, it seems best not to leave this out either, but to show it briefly and then proceed to the demonstration of what is being sought.

There have been arithmeticians and geometers, to whom Pythagoras seems especially to have been the first to provide the principles; and since numbers can always proceed to infinity by multiplication and figures, these took the first principles as though observable by reason alone. For of geometry, as can be seen, the principle is the point, without parts; and from that point by the art the generation of infinite figures from the point is found.

For the point, flowing in length, becomes after its flowing a line, having a point as its limit; a line, flowing in breadth, begets a plane, and the limits of the plane are lines; and a plane, flowing into depth, becomes a body. And when the solid exists, thus from the least point the nature of the great body has entirely come into being; and this is what Simon says thus: "The small will be great," being as it were a point, "and the great boundless," following the geometric point.

Since arithmetic has its philosophy by composition, number came into being as the first principle, which is indefinite, incomprehensible, containing in itself all the numbers that can go on to infinity in multitude. The principle of numbers in substance came to be the first monad, which is a male monad, begetting all the other numbers after the manner of a father.

Second is the dyad, a female number, which is also called even by the arithmeticians. Third is the triad, a male number; this too has been ordained by the arithmeticians to be called odd. After all these is the tetrad, a female number; this same one is also called even, because it is female.

All the numbers, then, taken by kind, are four (number as a kind being indefinite), from which their perfect number, the decad, is composed. For one, two, three, four make ten, as has been shown before, if to each of the numbers its own name is kept according to its substance.

This is the sacred tetractys according to Pythagoras, "having the roots of ever-flowing nature in itself," that is, all the other numbers; for eleven and twelve and the rest take the beginning of their generation from ten.

Of this decad, the perfect number, the four parts are called number, monad, power, cube, of which there come interweavings and mixtures for the generation of increase, completing the fruitful number according to nature. For when a power is cubed upon itself, it becomes a power-power; when a power by a cube, a power-cube; when a cube by a cube, a cube-cube; so that all the numbers become seven, so that the generation of things that come to be arises from the hebdomad, which is: number, monad, power, cube, power-power, power-cube, cube-cube.

This hebdomad Simon and Valentinus, changing the names, turned into marvels, improvising a system for themselves from it. For Simon names them thus: Mind, Thought, Name, Voice, Reasoning, Reflection, He who stood, stands, and will stand; and Valentinus: Mind, Truth, Word, Life, Man, Church, and the Father counted with them; in the same way as those who practiced arithmetical philosophy, [which] they admired as unknown [to] the many, and following it put together the heresies they devised.

Some also try to establish the hebdomads from medicine, astonished at the anatomy of the brain, saying that the substance of the universe, the fatherly power, and the divinity are taught from the arrangement of the brain.

For the brain, being the ruling part of the whole body, lies at rest and unmoved, holding the spirit within itself. Such an account, then, is not implausible, but it is far from their undertaking. For the brain, when dissected, has inside it what is called the vault, on either side of which are thin membranes, which they call little wings, gently moved by the spirit and in turn driving the spirit on to the cerebellum;

which, running through a certain vessel like a reed, goes to the pineal gland, to which the mouth of the cerebellum is attached, receiving the spirit that runs through and passing it on to what is called the spinal marrow; from which the whole body receives the spiritual element, all the arteries being attached like a branch to this vessel, whose end terminates at the generative vessels; whence also the seeds, going from the brain through the loins, are secreted.

The shape of the cerebellum is like the head of a dragon, about which there is much talk among those of the knowledge falsely so called, as we shall show. And six other pairs grow from the brain, which, passing around the head, hold the bodies together, ending in it; and the seventh goes from the cerebellum to the lower parts of the rest of the body, as we said.

And about this too there is much talk, from which Simon and Valentinus will be found to have taken their starting points, and, if they do not admit it, to be first liars and then heretics. Since, then, these things too seem to have been sufficiently set out by us, and all that seem to be the doctrines of earthly philosophy have been comprised in four books, it seems best to proceed to their disciples, or rather their plagiarists.

The following are the contents of the fifth book of the Refutation of All Heresies.

What the Naassenes say, who call themselves Gnostics, and that they teach as doctrine what the philosophers of the Greeks and those who handed down the mysteries taught before, from whom they took their starting points and put together heresies.

And what the Peratae hold, and that their doctrine is established not from the holy Scriptures but from astrology.

What the doctrine of the Sethians is, and that, plagiarizing from the wise men of the Greeks, Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus, they cobbled together their own doctrine.

What Justin holds, and that his doctrine is established not from the holy Scriptures but from the marvel-tales of Herodotus the historian. Book 5.

I think that in the four books before this I have set out very laboriously the opinions of all the [philosophers] among both Greeks and barbarians concerning the divine and the fashioning of the world; not leaving out even their curiosities, I have undertaken no ordinary toil for my readers, urging many toward love of learning and toward security in the knowledge of the truth.

It remains, then, to press on to the refutation of the heresies, for whose sake we have also set out what was said before; from which the heresiarchs took their starting points and, like cobblers of old shoes, stitching together to suit their own mind the errors of the ancients, set them out as new to those who can be led astray, as we shall show in what follows.

For the rest, time summons us to proceed to the treatment of the matters before us, and to begin with those who have dared to hymn the serpent, the cause of the error, through certain words invented at its prompting. The priests and champions of the doctrine, then, were first those called Naassenes, named so from the Hebrew language; for the serpent is called naas.

After this they called themselves Gnostics, claiming that they alone know the depths; and many, splitting off from them, made the heresy, which is one, many-branched, describing the same things with different doctrines, as the account will prove as it proceeds. These, beyond all others, according to their own account, honor Man and the Son of Man.

This Man is male-female, and among them he is called Adamas; and many and various hymns have been made to him. The hymns, to put it briefly, are spoken among them in some such way as this: "From you is Father and through you Mother, the two immortal names, parents of the Aeons, citizen of heaven, Man of great name."

They divide him, like Geryon, into three. For of him, they say, one part is intellectual, one psychic, and one earthly; and they think that knowledge of him is the beginning of being able to know God, saying thus: "The beginning of perfection is knowledge of [man, but knowledge of God] is complete perfection."

All these, he says, the intellectual and psychic and earthly, have passed and [come down] together into one man, Jesus who was born of Mary; and these three men, he says, spoke together at the same time, each from his own substance to his own. For according to them there are three kinds of all things: angelic, psychic, earthly; and three churches: angelic, psychic, earthly; and their names are chosen, called, captive.

These are the chief points of very many discourses which, he says, James the brother of the Lord handed down to Mariamne. So, in order that the impious may no longer lie against Mariamne, or James, or the Savior himself, let us come to the rites (from which they have this myth), if you will, both the barbarian and the Greek, and see how these men, gathering together the hidden and secret mysteries of all the nations and lying against Christ, deceive those who do not know these orgies of the nations.

For since their foundation is the Man Adamas, and they say it is written about him, "Who will tell his generation?", learn how, taking from the nations piece by piece the unsearchable and undifferentiated generation of the Man, they fasten it onto Christ.

"Earth," say the Greeks, "first brought forth man, bearing a fair gift, wishing to become mother not of senseless plants nor of irrational beasts, but of a gentle and god-loving creature;

but it is hard," he says, "to find out whether for the Boeotians Alalcomeneus rose first of men above the Cephisian lake; or whether it was the Idaean Curetes, a divine race, or the Phrygian Corybantes, whom the sun first saw sprouting up like trees; or whether Arcadia brought forth Pelasgus, older than the moon, or Eleusis Diaulus, dweller in Raria, or Lemnos begot Cabirus, fair child of unspeakable orgies, or Pallene Phlegraean Alcyoneus, eldest of the Giants.

The Libyans say that Iarbas, first-born, rising from the parched plains, first gathered the sweet acorn of Zeus. And the Nile of the Egyptians, enriching the mud, even to this day, he says, brings forth living bodies, fleshed by moist warmth.

The Assyrians say that Oannes, the fish-eater, arose among them, and the Chaldeans Adam. And they say that this is the man whom the earth alone brought forth, and that he lay breathless, motionless, unstirring, like a statue, being an image of that one above, the hymned Man Adamas, made by the many powers, about whom the detailed account is long.

So that the great Man from above, from whom, as they say, every fatherhood named on earth and in the heavens has been constituted, might be completely held fast, a soul too was given him, so that through the soul the molded form of the great and most beautiful and perfect Man might suffer and be punished, being enslaved; for this is what they call him.

They inquire again, then, what the soul is, and whence, and of what nature, that coming into man and moving him it should enslave and punish the molded form of the perfect Man. And they inquire not from the Scriptures, but this too from the mystic rites. They say the soul is very hard to find and hard to understand; for it does not remain in the same figure or form always, nor in one state, so that one could either describe it by type or grasp it by substance.

These varied changes they have set out in the gospel entitled According to the Egyptians. They are at a loss, then, like all other men of the nations, whether it is from the Preexistent, [or] from the Self-begotten, or from the outpoured Chaos. And first they take refuge in the rites of the Assyrians, considering the threefold division of man; for the Assyrians first thought the soul to be threefold and one.

For every nature, they say, longs for soul, each in a different way; for soul is the cause of all things that come to be. All that is nourished, he says, and grows needs soul. For nothing, he says, can attain either nourishment or growth without soul present. For even stones, he says, are ensouled, for they have the power of growth; and growth could never come about without nourishment, for things that grow grow by addition, and the addition is the nourishment of what is nourished.

Every nature, then, of things in heaven, he says, and on earth and under the earth, longs for soul. The Assyrians call such a thing Adonis or Endymion; and when it is called Adonis, Aphrodite, he says, loves and desires the soul of such a name. And Aphrodite, according to them, is generation.

When Persephone, the Maiden, loves Adonis, the soul, he says, is something mortal, separated from Aphrodite [from generation]. And if Selene comes to desire Endymion and love of his form, the nature of the higher beings, he says, also needs soul.

And if, he says, the Mother of the gods castrates Attis, though she herself has him as her beloved, the blessed nature above, he says, of the supercosmic and eternal beings calls back to itself the male power of the soul.

For Man, he says, is male-female.

According to this account, then, intercourse of woman with man has been shown in their teaching to be very wicked and forbidden. For Attis, he says, was castrated, that is, cut off from the earthly parts of creation below, and passed over to the eternal substance above, where, he says, there is neither female nor male, but a new creation, a new man, who is male-female. Where they say "above" is, I shall show when I come to the proper place.

They say that not only Rhea bears witness to their account, but, so to speak, the whole creation; and they make clear that this is what is said by the Word: "For his invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse.

Because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but their senseless heart was darkened; claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and reptiles. Therefore God also gave them up to dishonorable passions; for their women exchanged natural use for what is against nature."

What natural use is according to them we shall say later. "And likewise the men too, leaving the natural use of the woman, were inflamed in their desire for one another, men with men working shamelessness" (and shamelessness, according to them, is the first and blessed shapeless substance, the cause of all shapes for things that are shaped) "and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was due."

For in these words which Paul has spoken, they say, their whole hidden and unspeakable mystery of blessed pleasure is contained. For the promise of the washing, according to them, is nothing other than bringing into unfading pleasure the one who is washed, according to them, in living water and anointed with an unspeakable anointing.

They say that not only the mysteries of the Assyrians bear witness to their account, but also those of the Phrygians, concerning the blessed nature, at once hidden and revealed, of things that have been, are, and will yet be, which, he says, is the kingdom of heaven sought within man; concerning which they hand down explicitly in the gospel entitled According to Thomas, saying thus: "He who seeks me will find me in children from seven years old; for there, hidden in the fourteenth age, I am revealed."

But this is not Christ's saying but that of Hippocrates, who says: "A child of seven years is half a father." Hence these men, placing the primal nature of all things in the primal seed, having heard the Hippocratic saying that a child of seven years is half a father, say that in the fourteen years, according to Thomas, it is revealed.

This is their secret and mystic doctrine. They say, then, that the Egyptians, who are older than all men after the Phrygians, and who, as all other men agree, were the first to impart to them the rites and orgies of all the gods together and to proclaim their forms and activities, possess the mysteries of Isis, holy, venerable, and not to be divulged to the uninitiated;

and these are nothing other than the genitals of Osiris, snatched away and sought by the seven-robed and black-clad goddess. Osiris, they say, is water. And the seven-robed nature, having around her and clothed in seven ethereal robes (for so they call the planets, allegorizing and calling them ethereal), is according to them changeable generation, and is shown as creation transformed by the ineffable, unimageable, inconceivable, and formless one;

and this is what is said, he says, in Scripture: "Seven times the righteous man will fall and rise again." For these falls, he says, are the changes of the stars, moved by the one who moves all things.

They say, then, about the substance of the seed, which is the cause of all things that come to be, that it is none of them, yet begets and makes all things that come to be, saying thus: "I become what I will and I am what I am; therefore I say that what moves all things is unmoved. For it remains what it is, making all things, and becomes none of the things that come to be."

This alone, he says, is good, and about this was spoken what the Savior said: "Why do you call me good? One is good, my Father in the heavens, who makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust and sends rain on the holy and on sinners." Who the holy are on whom he rains, and the sinners on whom the same one rains, we shall also say later with the rest.

And this is the great, hidden, and unknown mystery of all things, veiled and unveiled among the Egyptians.

For Osiris, he says, is in a temple in front of Isis, and his hidden part stands naked, looking upward from below and crowned with all its fruits of the things that come to be. They say that such a thing stands not only in the holiest temples, first of the images, but also for the recognition of all, like a light not under the bushel but set on the lampstand, a proclamation proclaimed on the housetops, in all roads and all streets and beside the houses themselves, set up as a boundary and limit of the house; and that this is the good spoken of by all; for they call it good-bringing, saying so without knowing it. And this the Greeks, having received it as a mystery from the Egyptians, keep to this day.

At any rate, he says, we see the Herms honored among them in such a form. And honoring the Cyllenian especially, they call him Logios. For Hermes is the Word, who, being interpreter and fashioner of things that have been, are, and will be, stands honored among them marked with some such form, which is the genitals of a man, having an impulse from below upward.

And that this one, that is, such a Hermes, is the leader and escort of souls and the cause of souls, he says, does not escape even the poets of the nations, who say thus: "Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls of the suitor men"; not of Penelope's suitors, he says, O wretches, but of those who have been awakened and have remembered "from what honor and how great a length of bliss," that is, from the blessed Man above, or Primal Man, or Adamas, as they think, they were brought down here into the clay mold, so as to serve the fashioner of this creation, Ialdabaoth, a fiery god, fourth in number; for so

they call the fashioner and father of the particular world: "And he held in his hands a fair wand, golden, with which he charms the eyes of men, whomsoever he will, and wakes others again who are sleeping."

This, he says, is the one who alone has authority over life and death. About him, he says, it is written: "You will shepherd them with a rod of iron." But the poet, he says, wishing to adorn the incomprehensibility of the blessed nature of the Word, gave him not an iron but a golden rod. He charms the eyes of the dead, he says, "and wakes others again who are sleeping," those who have been awakened and become "suitors."

About these, he says, Scripture says: "Wake up, sleeper, and rise, and Christ will shine on you." This is the Christ, he says, the Son of Man in all things that have come to be, stamped from the unstamped Word.

This, he says, is the great and unspeakable mystery of the Eleusinians: "Rain! Conceive!" And that all things, he says, are subjected to him, and this is what is said: "Their voice has gone out into all the earth"; just as Hermes leads them on, moving his wand, and the souls follow continually squeaking, as the poet has shown through the image, saying: "As when bats in the recess of a wondrous cave fly squeaking, when one falls from the cluster off the rock, and they cling to one another." "Rock," he says, he says of Adamas.

This, he says, is Adamas, the cornerstone that has become the head of the corner (for in the head is the brain, the substance that stamps, from which every fatherhood is stamped), whom, he says, "I set as an adamant into the foundations of Zion"; allegorically, he says, he means the molded form of man.

And the adamant that is set in is … the teeth, as Homer says, "the fence of the teeth," that is, a wall and palisade, in which is the inner man, fallen down there from the Primal Man above, Adamas, the one "cut without hands cutting" and brought down into the mold of forgetfulness, the earthly, the earthen.

And he says that the souls followed him squeaking, the Word: "So these went together squeaking, and Hermes the helper led them" (that is, guided them) "down the dank ways," that is, he says, into the eternal places freed from all evil. For where, he says, did they go? "They went past the streams of Ocean and the White Rock, and past the gates of the Sun and the land of dreams."

This, he says, is Ocean, "origin of gods and origin of men," ever turning in ebb and flow, now up and now down. But when Ocean flows down, he says, it is the generation of men; and when up, to the wall and palisade and the White Rock, it is the generation of gods.

This, he says, is what is written: "I said, You are gods and all sons of the Most High," if you hasten to flee from Egypt and get beyond the Red Sea into the wilderness, that is, from the intercourse below to the Jerusalem above, which is the mother of the living; but if you turn back again to Egypt, that is, to the intercourse below, "you die like men."

For all generation below, he says, is mortal, but what is begotten above is immortal; for it is begotten of water alone and spirit, spiritual, not fleshly; but the one below is fleshly. This, he says, is what is written: "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit." This is, according to them, spiritual generation.

This, he says, is the great Jordan, which, flowing down and preventing the sons of Israel from going out of the land of Egypt (that is, out of the intercourse below; for Egypt, according to them, is the body), Jesus held back and made to flow upward.

Following these and similar things, the most marvelous Gnostics, inventors of a new art of grammar, glorify their own prophet Homer as foreshowing these things in secret, and they outrage the uninitiated by drawing the holy Scriptures into such notions. They say: "Whoever says that all things are composed from one is in error; whoever says from three speaks the truth and will give the demonstration concerning all things."

For one, he says, is the blessed nature of the blessed Man above, Adamas; one is the mortal nature below; and one is the kingless race that has come into being above, where, he says, are Mariam the sought, and Jothor the great sage, and Sepphora the seeing one, and Moses, whose generation is not in Egypt; for his children were born in Midian.

And this, he says, has not escaped even the poets: "All things are divided in three, and each has received his share of honor." For the great things, he says, must be spoken, and spoken thus by all everywhere, "so that hearing they may not hear and seeing they may not see." For if the great things were not spoken, he says, the world could not hold together.

These are the three exalted words: Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar. Kaulakau of the one above, Adamas; Saulasau of the mortal one below; Zeesar of the Jordan that flowed upward. This, he says, is the male-female Man in all things, whom the ignorant call three-bodied Geryon, as flowing from the earth, and the Greeks in common "the heavenly horn of the moon," because he has mixed and blended all things with all.

For "all things," he says, "came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What came into being in him is life." This life, he says, is the ineffable race of perfect men, which was not known to former generations. And the "nothing" that came into being without him is the particular world; for it came into being without him, by the third and fourth.

This, he says, is the cup, the condy, in which the king, drinking, divines. This, he says, was found hidden in the fair seeds of Benjamin. And the Greeks too, he says, speak of it thus, with raving mouth: "Bring water, bring wine, boy; make me drunk and stupefy me. My cup tells me what sort I must become."

This alone, he says, would suffice for men to understand: Anacreon's cup, speaking without speech an unspeakable mystery. For Anacreon's cup, he says, is speechless, which Anacreon says tells him with speechless utterance what sort he must become, that is, spiritual, not fleshly, if he hears the mystery hidden in silence. And this is the water at that fair wedding, which Jesus turned and made wine. This, he says, is the great and true beginning of the signs, which Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and revealed the kingdom of heaven.

This, he says, is the kingdom of heaven lying within us like a treasure, like leaven hidden in three measures of meal.

This, he says, is the great and unspeakable mystery of the Samothracians, which only we, the perfect, he says, may know. For the Samothracians explicitly hand down that Adam as the Primal Man in the mysteries celebrated among them.

In the sanctuary of the Samothracians stand two statues of naked men, with both hands stretched up to heaven and their private parts turned upward, like the statue of Hermes at Cyllene. These statues are images of the Primal Man and of the regenerated spiritual man, in every respect of the same substance as that Man.

This, he says, is what was said by the Savior: "Unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven"; "but even if you drink," he says, "the cup that I drink, where I go, you cannot enter there."

For he knew, he says, of what nature each of his disciples was, and that each of them must go to his own nature. For from the twelve tribes, he says, he chose twelve disciples, and through them spoke to every tribe. Therefore, he says, not all have heard the preaching of the twelve disciples, nor, if they hear, can they receive it. For what is not according to their nature is against their nature for them.

This one, he says, the Thracians who live around Haemus call Corybas, and the Phrygians likewise with the Thracians, because, taking the beginning of his descent from the crown above and from the unstamped brain, and passing through all the principles of the things below, how and in what way he comes down we do not understand.

This, he says, is what is said: "We have heard his voice, but we have not seen his form." For when he has been stretched out and stamped, he says, his voice is heard; but what the form is that came down from above from the unstamped, no one has seen. It is in the earthly mold, but no one knows it.

This, he says, is the God who dwells in the flood, according to the Psalter, and who utters [and] cries out from many waters. The many waters, he says, are the many-branched generation of mortal men, from which he cries and shouts to the unstamped Man, saying: "Rescue my only-begotten from the lions."

To him, he says, it is said: "You are my servant, Israel; do not fear; if you pass through rivers, they will not overwhelm you; if you pass through fire, it will not burn you." By rivers, he says, he means the moist substance of generation, and by fire the impulse and desire toward generation. "You are mine; do not fear."

And again, he says: "If a mother forgets her children, so as not to pity them nor give them the breast, I too will forget you," Adamas, he says, says to his own men; "but even if a woman forgets these things, yet I will not forget you. I have painted you on my hands."

And about his ascent, that is, his rebirth, so that he may become spiritual, not fleshly, Scripture says, he says: "Lift up the gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, you eternal gates, and the King of glory will come in," that is, a wonder of wonders. "For who," he says, "is this King of glory?" "A worm and no man, a reproach of man and despised by the people"; he is the King of glory, mighty in war.

By war he means the war in the body, because the molded body is formed of warring elements, as it is written, he says: "Remember the war that takes place in the body." This entrance and this gate, he says, Jacob saw as he went to Mesopotamia, that is, as he was already becoming a youth and a man from a child; that is, it was made known to him as he went to Mesopotamia. (Mesopotamia, he says,

is the stream of the great Ocean, flowing from the middle parts of the perfect Man.) And he marveled at the heavenly gate, saying: "How fearful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Therefore, he says, Jesus says: "I am the true gate."

And the one who says these things, he says, is the perfect Man, stamped from above from the unstamped. So the perfect man, he says, cannot be saved unless he is reborn by entering through this gate.

This same one, he says, the Phrygians also call Papas, because he stopped all things that were moving in disorder and discord before his manifestation. For the name Papas, he says, belongs to all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth together, saying: "Stop, stop the discord of the world, and make peace for those far off," that is, the material and earthly, "and peace for those near," that is, the spiritual and intellectual perfect men. The Phrygians also call this same one a corpse, as though buried in the body as in a tomb and grave.

This, he says, is what is said: "You are whitewashed tombs, full within," he says, "of dead men's bones," because the living Man is not in you. And again, he says: "The dead will leap out of the tombs," that is, out of the earthly bodies, reborn as spiritual, not fleshly.

This, he says, is the resurrection that takes place through the gate of the heavens, and all who do not enter through it, he says, remain dead. The same Phrygians, he says, again call this same one, after the change, a god. For he becomes a god, he says, when, rising from the dead, he enters heaven through such a gate.

This gate, he says, Paul the apostle knew, opening it slightly in a mystery and saying that he was caught up by an angel and came as far as the second and third heaven, into paradise, and saw what he saw, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak.

These, he says, are the mysteries called unspeakable by all, "which we [also speak] not in words taught by human wisdom but in those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual; but the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him." And these, he says, are the unspeakable mysteries of the Spirit, which we alone know.

About these, he says, the Savior said: "No one can come to me unless my heavenly Father draws him." For it is very hard, he says, to receive and take this great and unspeakable mystery. And again, he says, the Savior said: "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in the heavens."

This one must do, not only hear, to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again, he says, he said: "The tax collectors and the prostitutes go before you into the kingdom of heaven." For the tax collectors (telōnai), he says, are those who receive the ends (telē) of all things; and we, he says, are the tax collectors, "on whom the ends of the ages have come." For the ends, he says, are the seeds sown into the world from the unstamped, through which the whole world is completed; for through them it also began to come into being.

And this, he says, is what is said: "The sower went out to sow; and some fell by the road and was trampled, and some on the rocky places; and it sprang up," he says, "and because it had no depth it withered and died; and some fell," he says, "on the fair and good soil and bore fruit, some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear," he says, "let him hear." That is, he says, no one has become a hearer of these mysteries except the perfect Gnostics alone.

This, he says, is the fair and good land, of which Moses speaks: "I will bring you into a fair and good land, into a land flowing with milk and honey." This, he says, is the honey and the milk, tasting which the perfect become kingless and share in the Pleroma. This, he says, is the Pleroma, through which all begotten things that come to be from the unbegotten have come to be and been filled.

This same one is also called by the Phrygians "unfruitful." For he is unfruitful when he is fleshly and works the desire of the flesh. This, he says, is what is said: "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." For these fruits, he says, are only the rational ones, the living men, who enter through the third gate.

At any rate they say: "If you ate dead things and made them living, what will you do if you eat living things?" And by living things they mean words and minds and men, the pearls of that unstamped one cast down into the mold below.

This is what he means, he says: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor the pearls to the swine," saying that the intercourse of a woman with a man is the work of swine and dogs.

This same one, he says, the Phrygians call goatherd (aipolos), not, he says, because he pastured she-goats and he-goats, as the psychics name it, but because, he says, he is aipolos, that is, the one who always turns (polōn) and revolves and drives round the whole world in its rotation.

For polein is to turn and change things; hence, he says, everyone calls the two pivots of the heaven poles. And the poet says: "There comes and goes (pōleitai) here an unerring old man of the sea, immortal Proteus of Egypt"; he is not sold, he says, but turns about, as it were, and goes around. And the cities (poleis) in which we live are called cities because we turn and go about (peripoloumen) in them.

Thus, he says, the Phrygians call him goatherd, who always turns and changes all things everywhere to what is their own. And the Phrygians, he says, call him also "fruitful," because, he says, "more are the children of the desolate than of her who has the husband," that is, the reborn, immortal and ever-abiding, are many, even if few are born; but the fleshly, he says, are all perishable, even if very many are born.

For this reason, he says, Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted, weeping over them; for she knew, he says, that they are not. And Jeremiah too laments the Jerusalem below, not the city in Phoenicia but the perishable generation below; for Jeremiah too, he says, knew the perfect Man, the one reborn of water and spirit, not the fleshly.

At any rate Jeremiah himself said: "He is a man, and who will know him?" So, he says, the knowledge of the perfect Man is very deep and hard to grasp. For the beginning of perfection, he says, is knowledge of man, but knowledge of God is complete perfection.

The Phrygians, he says, also call him "a green ear of grain reaped," and after the Phrygians the Athenians, initiating into the Eleusinian rites and showing to those admitted to the highest grade the great, marvelous, and most perfect mystery for the initiates there, in silence: a reaped ear of grain.

And this ear of grain is also, among the Athenians, the great perfect luminary from the unstamped one, just as the hierophant himself, not castrated like Attis but made a eunuch by hemlock and having renounced all fleshly generation, by night at Eleusis, under a great fire, celebrating the great and unspeakable mysteries, shouts and cries out, saying: "The lady has borne a holy child, Brimo Brimos," that is, the strong one a strong one.

The lady, he says, is the spiritual generation, the heavenly, the one above; and strong is he who is so begotten. For the mystery is called Eleusis and Anactoreion: Eleusis because we came, he says, the spiritual ones, flowing down from above from Adamas; for eleusesthai, he says, is to come; and the Anactoreion is to go back up.

This, he says, is what those initiated into the mysteries of the Eleusinians say. It is ordained that those initiated into the lesser mysteries should afterward be initiated into the greater. "For greater deaths obtain greater portions."

The lesser mysteries, he says, are those of Persephone below; about these mysteries and the road that leads there, which is broad and spacious and carries those who are perishing to Persephone, … and the poet too says: "But beneath it is a rugged path, hollow, muddy; yet it is the best to lead to the lovely grove of much-honored Aphrodite."

These, he says, are the lesser mysteries, those of fleshly generation; men who have been initiated into them ought to pause a little and be initiated into the great, the heavenly ones. For those who obtain the deaths there, he says, receive greater portions. For this, he says, is the gate of heaven and this the house of God, where the good God dwells alone, into which no unclean person will enter, he says, no psychic, no fleshly one; but it is kept for the spiritual alone, where those who have come must cast off their garments and all become bridegrooms, unmanned through the virginal Spirit.

For this is the virgin who is with child and conceives and bears a son, not psychic, not bodily, but a blessed Aeon of Aeons. About these things, he says, the Savior has spoken explicitly: "Narrow and hard is the way that leads away to life, and few are those who enter it; but broad and spacious is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who pass through it."

Further, the Phrygians say that the Father of all things is an almond (amygdalos), not a tree, he says, but that that preexistent one is an almond, who, having in himself the perfect fruit as it were throbbing and moving in the depth, tore open (diēmyxe) his bosom and begot his invisible, unnameable, and ineffable child, of whom we speak.

For amyxai is as it were to break and cut through, as, he says, in the case of inflamed bodies that have some gathering in them, physicians speak of lancings (amychas) when they cut them open. So, he says, the Phrygians call him the almond, from whom proceeded and was begotten the invisible one, "through whom all things came into being, and without him nothing came into being."

The Phrygians say that what was begotten from there is a piper, because what was begotten is harmonious spirit. For "God is spirit," he says; therefore, he says, "neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem" do the true worshippers worship, but "in spirit."

For the worship of the perfect, he says, is spiritual, not fleshly. And the Spirit, he says, is there where the Father too is named and the Son, begotten [there] from this Father. This, he says, is the one of many names, of ten thousand eyes, incomprehensible, whom every nature longs for, each in a different way.

This, he says, is the word of God, which, he says, is "a word of declaration of the great power; therefore it will be sealed and hidden and veiled, lying in the dwelling where the root of all things has been founded," [from] Aeons, powers, thoughts, gods, angels, spirits sent forth, beings, non-beings, begotten, unbegotten, incomprehensible, comprehensible, years, months, days, hours, the indivisible point, from which the least begins to grow part by part; the point which, he says, is nothing and consists of nothing, being indivisible, will become for itself by thought some incomprehensible magnitude.

This, he says, is the kingdom of heaven, the grain of mustard seed, the indivisible point present in the body, which no one knows, he says, but the spiritual alone. This, he says, is what is said: "There are no words nor speeches whose voices are not heard."

In this way they improvise, adapting to their own mind the things said and done by all men, claiming that all things become spiritual. Hence they say that even those who perform in the theaters do not say or do anything without providence.

Accordingly, he says, when the people have gathered in the theaters and someone comes in dressed in a strange robe, carrying a lyre and playing, he sings thus, speaking the great mysteries without knowing what he says: "Whether you are the race of Cronus or of blessed Zeus or of great Rhea, hail, Attis, sad mutilation of Rhea. The Assyrians call you thrice-longed-for Adonis; Egypt calls you Osiris; the Greeks the heavenly horn of the moon, wisdom; the Samothracians venerable Adamna; the Haemonians Corybas; and the Phrygians sometimes Papas, sometimes corpse, or god, or the unfruitful, or goatherd, or green ear of grain reaped, or the piper whom the fruitful almond bore as a man."

This, he says, is the many-formed Attis, whom they hymn, saying thus: "I will hymn Attis, Rhea's son, not with the booming of bells nor with the bellowing pipes of the Idaean Curetes, but I will blend my song with Phoebus's lyres: evoi, evan, as Pan, as Bacchus, as shepherd of the bright stars."

Because of these and similar words they attend the so-called mysteries of the Great Mother, thinking that through what is done there they see the whole mystery most clearly. For they have nothing more than what is done there, except that they are not castrated; they only perform the work of the castrated.

For they command very sternly and carefully that one abstain from intercourse with a woman, as if castrated. And the rest of their practice, as we have said at length, they do like the eunuchs. And they honor nothing other than the Naas, being called Naassenes.

Naas is the serpent, from which, he says, all things under heaven called temples (naoi) are named, from the Naas; and to that Naas alone every sanctuary, every rite, and every mystery is dedicated; and in general no rite can be found under heaven in which there is not a temple, and the Naas in it, from which it received the name of temple.

They say the serpent is the moist substance, as Thales of Miletus did too, and that nothing at all of the things that exist, immortal or mortal, ensouled or soulless, can have come into being without it.

All things are subject to it, and it is good, and has all things in it as in the horn of a one-horned bull, so as to give beauty [of the others] and loveliness to all things that exist according to their own nature and kinship, as though journeying through all things, as if going out from Eden and dividing into four heads.

They say Eden is the brain, as it were bound (dedemenon) and bound tight in the membranes lying round it, as in heavens; and they think paradise is man as far as the head only. So this river going out from Eden, that is, from the brain, is divided into four heads; and the name of the first river is called Pheison: "this is the one that encircles the whole land of Evilat; there is the gold, and the gold of that land is good, and there is the carbuncle and the green stone."

This, he says, is the eye, bearing witness to what is said by its value and its colors. "And the name of the second river is Geon; this is the one that encircles the whole land of Ethiopia." This, he says, is hearing, being something like a labyrinth. "And the name of the third is Tigris. This is the one that flows over against the Assyrians."

This, he says, is smell, having the swiftest rush of current; and it flows over against the Assyrians, because when breath is breathed out, in breathing in, the breath drawn from the air outside comes in more swiftly and forcibly. For this, he says, is the nature of breathing.

"And the fourth river is Euphrates." This they say is the mouth, through which prayer goes out and food comes in, which gladdens (euphrainei), nourishes, and stamps the spiritual perfect man. This, he says, is the water above the firmament, about which, he says, the Savior said: "If you knew who it is who asks, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water, springing up, to drink."

To this water, he says, every nature comes, choosing out its own substances, and what is its own comes to each nature from this water, he says, more than iron to the Heraclean stone, and gold to the spine of the sea-hawk, and chaff to amber.

And if anyone, he says, is blind from birth and has not seen the true light, "which enlightens every man coming into the world," let him recover sight through us and see, as it were through a paradise full of plants and seeds, water passing through all the plants and seeds; and he will see that from one and the same water the olive chooses and draws the oil, and the vine the wine, and each of the other plants according to its kind.

And that Man, he says, is without honor in the world, and of great honor …… by those who do not know him, to those who do not know him, "reckoned as a drop from a bucket"; but we, he says, are the spiritual ones, who choose out our own from the living water of the Euphrates flowing through the middle of Babylon, traveling through the true gate, which is the blessed Jesus.

And we alone of all men are Christians, completing the mystery at the third gate and anointed there with an unspeakable anointing from a horn, like David, not from an earthen flask, he says, like Saul, who kept company with the evil demon of fleshly desire.

These few things, then, we have set out from many. For the arguments of their folly are countless, being silly and mad; but since we have set out, as far as we can, their unknown knowledge, it seemed good to set out this too.

This psalm has been composed by them, through which they think they hymn all the mysteries of their error, thus: "The generative law of the All was the first Mind; the second was the poured-out Chaos of the First-born; and third the soul received a law to work by. Therefore, wrapped in the form of a deer, she toils, a plaything held fast by death. Now, holding a kingdom, she sees the light; now, cast into pity, she weeps; now she is wept for and rejoices; now she weeps and is judged; now she is judged and dies; and now the wretched one finds no way out of evil; wandering, she has entered a labyrinth. And Jesus said: Look, Father: a quest of evils upon earth wanders away from your breath. She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos and does not know how she will pass through. For her sake send me, Father; bearing the seals I will descend; I will journey through whole Aeons, I will open all mysteries, and I will show the forms of the gods; and the hidden things of the holy way, calling them knowledge, I will hand down."

These, then, are the undertakings of the Naassenes, who name themselves Gnostics. But since error is many-headed and many-branched, truly like the Hydra of the story, by striking its heads one at a time through refutation, using the rod of truth, we shall destroy the whole beast; for the other heresies too do not differ much from this one, being held together in the spirit of error. But since, by changing the words and names of the serpent, they have wished the serpent to have many heads, even so we shall not fail to refute them as they wish.

There is at any rate another, the Peratic heresy, whose blasphemy against Christ has escaped notice for many years; it has seemed good now to bring their secret mysteries into the open. These say that the world is one, divided in three.

Of the threefold division among them, [one part] is as it were a single principle, like a great spring, which can be cut in thought into infinite sections. The first and most prominent section, according to them, is the triad, and [one part] is called the perfect Good, the Fatherly Greatness; the second part of their triad is as it were an infinite multitude of powers begotten from themselves; the third is the particular.

The first is unbegotten, which is good; the second is the self-begotten good; the third is begotten. Hence they say explicitly: three gods, three words, three minds, three men. For to each part of the world, when the division has been made, they assign gods and words and minds and men and the rest.

From above, from the unbegottenness and the first section of the world, when the world was at last established at its consummation, there came down, for reasons we shall state later, in the times of Herod, a man of threefold nature, three bodies, and three powers, called Christ, having in himself all the compounds and powers from the three parts of the world.

And this, he says, is what is said: "All the Pleroma was pleased to dwell in him bodily," and all the divinity of the triad so divided is in him. For he says that from the two worlds lying above, the unbegotten and the self-begotten, seeds of all kinds of powers have been brought down into this world in which we are.

What the manner of their descent is, we shall say later. He says, then, that Christ came down from above, from the unbegottenness, so that through his descent all things divided in three might be saved. For the things brought down from above, he says, will go up through him; but those that plotted against the things brought down from above are let go, and, punished, are rejected. This, he says, is what is said: "For the Son of Man did not come into the world to destroy the world, but that the world might be saved through him." By "world," he says, he means the two portions above, the unbegotten and the self-begotten. And when Scripture says, he says, "that we may not be condemned with the world," it means the third portion, the particular world. For the third, which it calls "world," must perish, and the two above be freed from perishing.

Let us learn first, then, how, having taken this teaching from the astrologers, they abuse Christ, working ruin for those who follow them in such error. For the astrologers, having said that the cosmos is one, divide it into the twelve fixed parts of the zodiac signs, and they call the cosmos of the fixed zodiac signs one fixed cosmos; and they say that the other cosmos is that of the wandering stars, in power, position, and number, which reaches as far as the moon.

And they say that one cosmos receives from the other a certain power and participation, and that the things below share in those above. So that what is said may be clear, I will use in part the very words of the astrologers, reminding readers of what was said before in the place where we set out the whole art of the astrologers.

What they hold, then, is this: that the births of the things below are brought about by the effluence of the stars. For the Chaldeans, having looked up into heaven with excessive curiosity, said that [the seven stars] hold the account of active causes for each of the things that happen to us, and that the parts of the fixed zodiac signs cooperate.

[They divide the zodiac circle, then, into] twelve [parts], each sign into thirty degrees, and each degree into sixty minutes; for so they call the smallest and indivisible parts.

Of the signs they call some masculine and others feminine; some bicorporeal and others not; some tropic and others fixed.

Masculine or feminine, then, are those which have a nature that cooperates in the birth of males [or of females]. For the Ram is a masculine sign, the Bull feminine, and the rest in the same alternation, some masculine and some feminine. Moved by these, I suppose, the Pythagoreans call the monad male, the dyad female, and the triad male again, and the rest of the even and odd numbers correspondingly.

Some also divide each sign into twelfths and use almost the same method: for example, in the case of the Ram, [they call its first twelfth both Ram] and male, the second both Bull and female, the third both Twins and male; and the same account holds for the other parts.

They say that the bicorporeal signs are [the Twins and] the Archer diametrically opposite them, the Virgin, and the Fishes; the rest are not bicorporeal. And likewise the tropic signs are those in which the sun, when it comes to be in them, turns and makes the turnings of the surrounding air: such is the sign of the Ram and the one diametrically opposite it, the Balance, and Capricorn and the Crab.

For in the Ram occurs the spring turning, in Capricorn the winter, in the Crab the summer, and in the Balance the autumn. These things and the account of them we set out in detail in the book before this one, from which the lover of learning may learn how the leaders of the Peratic heresy, Euphrates the Peratic and Celbes the Carystian, transferring these things, changed them in name only but laid down in substance the same things, being themselves excessively devoted to the art.

For the astrologers also speak of the “boundaries” of the stars, in which they claim the ruling stars have greater power: for example, [in some they do harm], in others good; and some of them they call maleficent, others beneficent. And they are said to look upon one another and to be in harmony with one another, as those that appear in trine [or in square.

In trine, then,] stars are configured as regarding one another when they have an interval of three signs between them, and in square when of two. [And just as in a human being] the parts below sympathize with the head, and the head sympathizes with the parts below, so too earthly things with those above the moon. Yet there is a certain difference and lack of sympathy between them, since they do not have one and the same unity.

This Chaldean doctrine of the combination and difference of the stars those whom we mentioned before have drawn to themselves; and, falsely using the name of the truth, they have proclaimed as the word of Christ a revolt of Aeons and apostasies of good powers into evil, speaking also of concords of good powers with wicked ones. Calling them, then, “toparchs” and “suburbans” and inventing for themselves very many other names that correspond to nothing real, but artlessly making a system of the whole fantasy of the astrologers about the stars, and so introducing the ground of a great error, they will be refuted by our careful treatment.

For I will set beside the Chaldean art of the astrologers stated above some of the Peratic treatises, from which it will be possible for those who compare them to see how the Peratic doctrines are admittedly those of the astrologers, not of Christ.

It seems good, then, to set out one of the books held in esteem among them, in which it says: “I am a voice of awakening in the age of the night. Now I begin to lay bare the power from Chaos. The power of the abyssal mire, which bears up the clay of the incorruptible, gaping, watery …; the whole power of the convulsion, water-colored, ever-moving, bearing what abides, holding back what trembles, releasing what comes, lightening what abides, diminishing what grows; faithful steward of the track of the airs, which enjoys the command of what is belched up from the twelve eyes, showing a seal to the power that with them governs the invisible waters that are borne above: it was called Sea.”

This power ignorance called Kronos, guarded with bonds, since he bound tight the tangle of dense, misty, obscure, dark Tartarus. After its image came Cepheus, Prometheus, Iapetus.

The power entrusted with the Sea is male-female; it fits the hissing that runs up from the twelve mouths to the twelve pipes and pours it out, being fine, and it tames the violent upward surge that holds sway, and seals its paths …, so that it may not make war or alter what is not through it: a Typhonic daughter, faithful guardian of waters of every kind. Her name is Chorzar. Ignorance called her Poseidon, after whose image came Glaucus, Melicertes, Ino, Nebroe.

Having encircled the twelve-angled pyramid, darkening the gate into the pyramid with varied colors and completing the whole night-colored one: this one ignorance called Kore, whose ministers are five: first Ou, second Aoai, third Ouo, fourth Ouoab, fifth …; other faithful stewards of his toparchy of day and night, who rest in their own authority.

These ignorance called the planets, on which corruptible generation hangs. Stewards of the rising of the air, Karphakasēeocheir, Ekkabbakara: these ignorance called the Curetes. The third ruler of the winds is Ariel, after whose image came Aeolus, Briares.

And the ruler of the twelve hours of night is Soklan, whom ignorance called Osiris; after his image came Admetus, Medea, Hellen, Aethusa. The ruler of the twelve hours of day is Euno; he is steward of the first-vaulted and ethereal rising, whom ignorance called Isis.

His sign is the Dog Star, after whose image came Ptolemy son of Arsinoe, Didyme, Cleopatra, Olympias. The right-hand power of God, whom ignorance called Rhea, after whose image came Attis, Mygdon, Oenone. The left-hand power has authority over food; ignorance called it Demeter; its name is Bena; after its image came Celeus, Triptolemus, Misyr, Apraxia.

The right-hand power has authority over fruits; this one ignorance called Men, after whose image came Bumegas, Ostanes, Hermes Trismegistus, Kourites, Petosiris, Zodarion, Berossus, Astrampsuchos, Zoroaster. The left-hand power of fire: this one ignorance called Hephaestus, after whose image came Erichthonius, Achilles, Capaneus, Phaethon, Meleager, …, Celadus, Raphael, Suriel, Omphale.

Three middle powers suspended in the air, causes of generation. These ignorance called the Fates, after whose image came the house of Priam, the house of Laius, Ino, Autonoe, Agave, Athamas, Procne, the Danaids, the Peliads.

A male-female power, ever childlike, unaging, cause of beauty, pleasure, youthful bloom, appetite, and desire, whom ignorance called Eros, after whose image came Paris, Narcissus, Ganymede, Endymion, Tithonus, Icarius, Leda, Amymone, Thetis, the Hesperides, Iasion, Leander, Hero. These are the “suburbans up to the ether”; for so the book is entitled.

The heresy of the Peratae has easily become plain to all, as adapted from that of the astrologers by the names alone. And their other books contain matter of the same kind, if anyone should care to go through them all.

For, as I said, they think that the unbegotten and supercelestial things are the causes of the generation of all begotten things, and that the cosmos in which we live, which they call “particular,” came into being by effluence, and that all these stars seen together in heaven have become causes of the generation of this cosmos, though they have changed their names, as one may find by comparing with the “suburbans”;

and secondly, in the same way, as the cosmos came into being from the effluence above, so they say that the things here have their generation and corruption, and are governed, by the effluence of the stars.

Since, then, the astrologers know the horoscope and the mid-heaven, the setting and the anti-mid-heaven, and that, since these stars move now one way and now another because of the constant revolution of the universe, there are at different times different declinations from a center and ascensions toward the centers, the Peratae, allegorizing the astrologers' arrangement, depict the center as a kind of God and monad and lord of all generation, the declination as left, and the ascension as right.

When, then, someone reading their writings finds a power spoken of among them as right or left, let him run back to the center, the declination, and the ascension, and he will see clearly that their whole system consists of astrological teaching.

They call themselves Peratae, because they think that nothing established in generation can escape the fate appointed by generation for the things that have come to be. “For if anything is begotten,” he says, “it also wholly perishes, as the Sibyl also holds. But we alone,” he says, “who have known the necessity of generation and have been accurately taught the ways by which man has entered the world, are alone able to pass through and cross over corruption.”

“And corruption,” he says, “is water; and by nothing else,” he says, “was the world destroyed more swiftly than by water. And the water is that which encircles among the suburbans,” they say, “Kronos. For it is a water-colored power,” he says, “which power,” he says, “that is, Kronos, none of those established in generation can escape;

for Kronos is set over every generation as the cause of its falling under corruption, and there could be no generation in which Kronos does not hinder. This is,” he says, “what the poets also say, the thing that makes even the gods shudder: ‘Let earth know this,’ he says, ‘and broad heaven above, and the down-flowing water of Styx, which is the greatest and most dread oath for the blessed gods.’”

“Not only the poets say this,” he says, “but already also the wisest of the Greeks, of whom Heraclitus is one, saying: ‘For to souls it is death to become water.’ This death,” he says, “overtakes the Egyptians in the Red Sea with their chariots.”

“All who are ignorant,” he says, “are Egyptians. And this,” they say, “is to go out of Egypt: out of the body.” For they think the body is a little Egypt, and that to cross the Red Sea (that is, the water of corruption, which is Kronos), and to come to be beyond the Red Sea (that is, beyond generation), and to come into the wilderness, is to come to be outside generation, where all the gods of destruction and the God of salvation are together.

“The gods of destruction,” he says, “are the stars, which bring on the things that come to be the necessity of changeable generation. These,” he says, “Moses called serpents of the wilderness, biting and destroying those who think they have crossed the Red Sea.”

“So to the children of Israel,” he says, “when they were bitten in the wilderness, Moses showed the true, perfect serpent; those who believed in it were not bitten in the wilderness, that is, by the powers. No one, then,” he says, “is able to save and deliver those who come out of the land of Egypt, that is, out of the body and out of this world, except only the perfect one, the serpent full of the full.”

“He who has hoped in this one,” he says, “is not destroyed by the serpents of the wilderness, that is, by the gods of generation. It is written,” he says, “in the book of Moses. This serpent,” he says, “is the power that accompanied Moses, the rod turned into a serpent. The serpents of the magicians in Egypt, the gods of destruction, withstood the power of Moses,” he says, “but the rod of Moses subdued and destroyed them all. This universal serpent,” he says, “is the wise word of Eve.”

“This,” he says, “is the mystery of Eden; this is the river out of Eden; this is the mark set on Cain, so that everyone who found him should not kill him. This,” he says, “is Cain, whose sacrifice the god of this world did not accept; but he accepted Abel's bloody one, for the master of this world delights in blood.”

“This is,” he says, “the one who appeared in the last days in human form in the times of Herod, born after the image of Joseph, who was sold from the hand of his brothers, whose garment alone was of many colors. This is,” he says, “the one after the image of Esau, whose robe was blessed even when he was not present; who did not receive,” he says, “the dim-sighted blessing, but grew rich from outside, taking nothing from the dim-sighted one; whose face Jacob saw as a man might see the face of God.”

“Of him,” he says, “it is written that Nimrod was a giant hunter before the Lord. And there are,” he says, “many counterfeits of him, as many as appeared biting the children of Israel in the wilderness, from whom that perfect one whom Moses set up delivered those who were bitten. This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’”

After his image was made the bronze serpent in the wilderness which Moses set up. “Of him alone,” he says, “the likeness is always in heaven, seen in light. This,” he says, “is the great beginning of which it is written. Of this,” he says, “it was said: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be. What came to be in him is life.’”

“And in him,” he says, “Eve came to be; Eve is life.”

“And this,” he says, “is Eve, the mother of all the living, the common nature, that is, of gods and angels, of immortals and mortals, of irrational and rational beings; for he who says ‘all,’” he says, “says ‘all.’ And if anyone's eyes are blessed,” he says, “he will look up to heaven and see the beautiful image of the serpent turning in the great beginning of heaven and becoming the beginning of all motion for all things that come to be; and he will know that without him nothing, neither of things in heaven nor on earth nor under the earth, has come to stand: not night, not moon, not fruits, not generation, not wealth, not travel, nor is anything at all of the things that are without his signifying it.”

“In him,” he says, “is the great wonder seen in heaven by those who can see. For at this extremity of his, his head,” he says, “(which is the most incredible thing of all to those who do not know), setting and rising mingle with one another. This is what ignorance spoke of: ‘In heaven there winds a great wonder, the Dragon, a terrible monster.’”

On either side of him are set the Crown and the Lyre, and above, by the very top of his head, a pitiable man, the one seen as “the Kneeler,” “holding the tip of his right foot on the crooked Dragon.” And at the back of the Kneeler is the imperfect serpent, gripped with both hands by the Serpent-holder and prevented from touching the Crown that lies beside the perfect serpent.

This is the all-various wisdom of the Peratic heresy, which it is hard to set out entire, so tortuous is it, because it seems to have been compounded out of astrology. As far as was possible, then, we have set out its whole import in few words. But so that we may set out their whole opinion in summary, it seems good to add the following. According to them the universe is Father, Son, Matter; and each of these three has infinite powers in itself.

The Son, then, the Word, the serpent, sits in the middle between Matter and the Father, ever moving toward the unmoved Father and toward moving Matter. At one time he turns toward the Father and takes up the powers into his own face; and having taken up the powers he turns toward Matter; and Matter, being without quality and without form, receives the impress of the forms from the Son, which the Son received as impressions from the Father.

The Son receives his impress from the Father ineffably, silently, and without change, just as Moses says that the colors flowed from the rods at the watering troughs onto the ewes that conceived.

Likewise, again, the powers flowed from the Son onto Matter, after the manner of the conceiving caused by the power of the rods in the ewes that conceived; and the difference of the colors and the unlikeness that flowed from the rods through the waters onto the sheep is,” he says, “the difference between corruptible and incorruptible generation;

or rather, as a painter, taking nothing away from living creatures, transfers all their forms to the panel by drawing them with his brush, so the Son by his own power transfers the paternal characters from the Father to Matter. All the paternal things, then, are here, and yet are nothing.

“For if anyone of those here,” he says, “is strong enough to perceive that he is a paternal character carried down from above and embodied here, then, as by the conceiving caused by the rod, he has become white, wholly of one substance with the Father in heaven, and ascends there; but if he does not attain this teaching and does not recognize the necessity of generation, like an abortion born by night he will perish by night.”

“When, then,” he says, “the Savior says, ‘Your Father who is in heaven,’ he means that one from whom the Son took the characters and carried them here; but when he says, ‘Your father is a murderer from the beginning,’ he means the ruler and demiurge of matter, who took up the characters distributed by the Son and begot here; he is a murderer from the beginning, for his work produces corruption and death.”

“No one, then,” he says, “can be saved or go up without the Son, who is the serpent. For as he brought down the paternal characters from above, so again he carries up from here those who have been awakened and have become paternal characters, transferring them from here to there, made substantial from the insubstantial.”

“This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘I am the door.’ And he transfers,” he says, …

… to those who close the eyelid of the eye, as naphtha draws fire to itself from every side, or rather as the Heraclean stone draws iron and nothing else, or as the spine of the sea-hawk draws gold and nothing else, or as chaff is drawn by amber: so,” he says, “the perfect race, formed in the image and of one substance, is drawn back from the world by the serpent, and nothing else, just as it was sent down by him.”

As proof of this they adduce the anatomy of the brain, likening the brain itself to the Father because it is unmoved, and the cerebellum to the Son because it moves and is serpent-shaped;

and they claim that it draws in, ineffably and imperceptibly, through the pineal gland the spiritual and life-giving substance that flows from the vaulted chamber; and the cerebellum, receiving it, like the Son silently imparts the forms to matter: that is, the seeds and kinds of things begotten according to the flesh flow down into the spinal marrow.

Using this example they seem cleverly to introduce their ineffable mysteries, handed down in silence, which it is not lawful for us to speak out, yet which are easy to understand from what has been said.

But since I think I have set out the Peratic heresy clearly and have made plain, by many proofs, a heresy that had escaped notice, that mixes everything with everything and hides its own poison, it seems best to bring no further charges against them, since the doctrines they themselves teach are sufficient to accuse them.

Let us see, then, what the Sethians say. They hold that there are three defined principles of all things, and that each of the principles has infinite powers. When they speak of “powers,” let the hearer take them to mean this: everything you conceive by thought, or even pass over without conceiving it, each of the principles is by nature able to become, just as in a human soul any art whatever that is taught;

“as if,” he says, “this child will become a flute player by spending time with a flute player, or a geometer with a geometer, a grammarian with a grammarian, a carpenter with a carpenter; and the same will happen when it comes near all the other arts.”

“The substances of the principles,” he says, “are light and darkness, and between these is pure spirit. The spirit placed between the darkness, which is below, and the light, which is above, is not spirit as a gust of wind or some light breeze that can be conceived, but like the fragrance of an ointment or of an incense prepared from a compound: a fine power passing through with a movement of fragrance that cannot be conceived and is better than words can express.”

Since the light is above and the darkness below, and between them, as I said, is the spirit in this manner; and the light by nature shines like a ray of the sun from above into the darkness beneath, while conversely the fragrance of the spirit, holding the middle rank, extends and is carried everywhere, as we recognize with incense on the fire that its fragrance is carried everywhere;

and since such is the power of the things divided in three, the power of the spirit and of the light together is in the darkness placed beneath them. And the darkness is a fearful water, into which the light, together with the spirit, has been drawn down and transferred into such a nature.

The darkness is not unintelligent but thoroughly shrewd, and it knows that if the light is taken away from the darkness, the darkness remains desolate, obscure, without brightness, without power, inactive, weak. Therefore with all shrewdness and intelligence it strains to hold within itself the brightness and the spark of the light together with the fragrance of the spirit.

And one can see an image of the nature of these things in the human face: the pupil of the eye, dark from the waters beneath, lit up by spirit. As, then, the darkness lays claim to the brightness, so that it may have the spark as its servant and may see, so the light and the spirit lay claim to their own power, and they hasten to lift up and bring back to themselves their powers that have been mingled into the dark and fearful water beneath.

All the powers of the three principles, being in number infinitely infinite, are each, according to its own substance, prudent and intelligent; and, though countless in multitude, prudent, and intelligent, when they remain by themselves they are all at rest;

but if power approaches power, the unlikeness of the juxtaposition produces a certain motion, and from the motion an activity shaped by the concourse of the juxtaposed powers that have come together.

For the concourse of the powers becomes like the impression of a seal, struck off by the concourse, like the seal that stamps the substances brought to it. Since, then, the powers of the three principles are infinite in number, and from infinite powers come infinite concourses, there have necessarily come to be images of infinite seals.

These images, then, are the forms of the various living creatures. From the first great concourse of the three principles came a great form of a seal, heaven and earth. Heaven and earth have a shape like a womb with the navel in the middle; and if,” he says, “anyone wishes to bring this shape before his eyes, let him skillfully examine the pregnant womb of whatever animal he likes, and he will find the impress of heaven and earth and of all things between lying there without variation;

and the shape of heaven and earth came to be of this kind, like a womb, at the first concourse. And again, in the middle between heaven and earth there came to be infinite concourses of powers; and each concourse wrought and stamped nothing other than a seal of heaven and earth like a womb. And in the earth, again, from the infinite seals there sprang up infinite multitudes of various living creatures.

Into all this infinity under heaven, in the various living creatures, the fragrance of the spirit from above has been sown and distributed together with the light. From the water, then, there came a firstborn principle, a wind, violent and fierce, and the cause of all generation.

For, producing a kind of seething in the waters, it rouses waves from the waters; and the motion of the waves, being like an impulse … to have become pregnant with man or with mind, whenever, swelling under the impulse of the spirit, it is urged on.

And when this wave, raised from the water by the wind and having made nature pregnant, has received in itself the offspring of the female, it holds the light sown from above together with the fragrance of the spirit, that is, mind shaped in the various forms, which is perfect God, who, brought down from unbegotten light above and from spirit into human nature as into a temple, by the course of nature and the motion of the wind, born of water, blended and mingled with bodies, as being the salt of the things that have come to be and the light of the darkness, hastens to be released from the bodies and cannot find release and its way out; for a certain smallest spark from …

… song from above … as,” he says, “it says in the psalm. All the thought and care of the light above, then, is how and in what way the mind may be released from the death of the wicked and dark body, from the father below, who is the wind that in seething and turmoil raised waves and begot a perfect mind as his son, which is not his own by substance.

For it was a ray from above, from that perfect light, held fast in the dark, fearful, bitter, and foul water; this is the luminous spirit borne above the water. Since, then, … waves … various … a womb … sown …

as is observed in all living creatures. And the wind, rushing violent and fierce, is like a serpent in its hissing. First, then, from the wind, that is, from the serpent, the beginning of generation came about in the way described, all things together having received the beginning of generation.

“Since, then, the light and the spirit have been caught,” he says, “in the unclean, much-afflicting, disordered womb, the serpent, the wind of the darkness, the firstborn of the waters, entering in, begets man; and the unclean womb neither loves nor recognizes any other form.”

The perfect Word of the light from above, then, having made himself like the beast, the serpent, entered into the unclean womb, deceiving it by the likeness of the beast, in order to loose the bonds lying about the perfect mind begotten in the uncleanness of the womb by the firstborn of the water, the serpent, the wind. “This,” he says, “is the form of the slave, and this is the necessity for the Word of God to come down into the womb of a virgin.”

“But it is not enough,” he says, “that the perfect man, the Word, entered the womb of a virgin and loosed the pangs in that darkness; but after entering the foul mysteries in the womb, he washed himself and drank the cup of living water springing up, which anyone must by all means drink who is to put off the form of the slave and put on a heavenly garment.”

These are the things that the champions of the Sethian doctrines say, to put it briefly. Their doctrine is composed out of the natural philosophers and out of sayings spoken with reference to other matters, which they transfer into their own doctrine and expound, as we have said.

They say that Moses too supports their doctrine when he speaks of darkness and gloom and whirlwind: “these,” he says, “are the three principles”; or when he says that three came to be in paradise, Adam, Eve, and the serpent; or when he speaks of three, Cain, Abel, Seth, and again three, Shem, Ham, Japheth; or when he speaks of three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; or when he says that three days came before sun and moon; or when he speaks of three laws, prohibitive, permissive, and penal.

The prohibitive law is: “Of every tree in paradise you may eat for food, but of the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat.” In the saying, “Go out from your land and from your kindred and come into the land that I will show you,” this law, he says, is permissive; for one who chooses may go out, and one who does not choose may stay. The penal law is the one that says, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal”; for a penalty has been fixed for each of the wrongs.

Their whole teaching of the doctrine comes from the ancient theologians, Musaeus and Linus and Orpheus, who above all revealed the initiations and the mysteries.

For their account of the womb and of Orpheus, and the navel, which is harmony, is found expressly in this form in the Bacchica of Orpheus. And these things were celebrated and handed down to men before the initiation of Celeus, Triptolemus, Demeter, Kore, and Dionysus at Eleusis, at Phlius in Attica. For before the Eleusinian mysteries there are at Phlius the rites of the one called the Great.

There is a portico there, and on the portico there is painted to this day the form of all the doctrines mentioned. Many things are painted on that portico, about which Plutarch also discourses in his ten books against Empedocles. And among most of them there is painted an old man, gray-haired, winged, with his member erect, pursuing a fleeing woman of dark-blue color.

Over the old man is written “phaos rhyentes” and over the woman “pereēphikola.” According to the Sethian doctrine, the phaos rhyentes seems to be the light, the phikola the dark water, and the interval between them the harmony of the spirit placed between. The name phaos rhyentes indicates, as they say, the flowing of the light from above downward.

So one might reasonably say that the Sethians celebrate among themselves something close to the rites of the Great at Phlius. And the poet too seems to bear witness to the threefold division, saying: “All things were divided in three, and each received its share of honor”; that is, each of the three divided parts has received power.

And the water lying below is dark because the light has sunk into it, and the spark brought down from above must be recovered and taken back up out of it; so the all-wise Sethians seem to say, taking it from Homer:

“Let earth know this,” he says, “and broad heaven above, and the down-flowing water of Styx, which is the greatest and most dread oath for the blessed gods”; that is, according to Homer, the gods think water something to be averted and dreadful, which the Sethian doctrine says is fearful to the mind.

These are the things they say, and things like them, in countless writings; and they persuade their disciples to read the doctrine of blending and mixture, which has been studied by many, including Andronicus the Peripatetic.

The Sethians say, then, that the doctrine of blending and mixture stands thus: the luminous ray from above has been blended in, and the smallest spark has been finely mixed down in the dark waters below, united with them, and become one dough, like a single scent from many incenses mixed on the fire;

and the expert, having a keen sense of smell as his criterion, must finely distinguish from the single scent of the incense each of the incenses mixed on the fire, such as storax and myrrh and frankincense, or whatever else may be mixed in.

They use other examples as well, saying that bronze is mixed even with gold, and an art has been found that separates the bronze from the gold. Likewise, if tin or bronze or something of the same kind is found mixed in silver, these too are separated by an art superior to the mixing. And already someone separates even water mixed with wine.

“So,” they say, “all blended things are separated. And learn it from living creatures,” he says. “For when the creature dies, each part is separated, and when it is thus dissolved the creature disappears. This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘I did not come to bring peace upon the earth, but a sword,’ that is, to divide and separate what has been blended.”

For each of the blended things is divided and separated when it reaches its proper place. For as there is one place of blending for all living creatures, so there is also one place of separation, which no one knows,” he says, “except us alone, who are reborn spiritual, not fleshly, whose citizenship is in heaven above.”

In this way they creep in and corrupt their hearers, at times misusing texts, wrongly gathering what was well said to the end they wish, and hiding their own wrongdoing in its lair by whatever parables they please.

“All blended things, then,” he says, “as has been said, have their own place and run to what is akin to them, as iron to the Heraclean stone, chaff when near amber, and gold to the spine of the sea-hawk.”

“So the ray of the light that has been mixed with the water, having received its proper place through teaching and learning, hastens to the Word who came from above in the likeness of a slave, and becomes, with the Word, word there where the Word is, more swiftly than iron to the Heraclean stone. And that these things are so,” he says, “and that all blended things are separated into their proper places, learn this:

There is a well in Persia, in the city of Ampe, beside the river Tigris; and beside the well, above it, a cistern has been built, with three outlets. Someone who draws from the well with a bucket and brings up whatever is drawn from the well pours it into the cistern beside it; and what is poured, coming to the outlets, though taken up in one vessel, is separated.

And in the first outlet salt is shown solidifying, in another of the outlets asphalt, and in the third oil. The oil is black, as Herodotus also relates,” he says, “and gives off a heavy smell; the Persians call it rhadinake.”

The likeness of the well, say the Sethians, was sufficient to prove the proposition, more than all the examples mentioned before.

The Sethians' opinion seems to us to have been made sufficiently clear. If anyone wishes to learn their whole system, let him read the book entitled Paraphrase of Seth; for he will find all their secrets contained there. But since we have set out the doctrines of the Sethians, let us see what the views of Justin are too.

Justin set himself wholly against the teaching of the holy Scriptures, and moreover against the written word of the blessed evangelists; for the Word taught the disciples, saying, “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles,” which means not to give heed to the vain teaching of the Gentiles. Yet this man tries to lead his hearers back to the marvels told and taught by the Gentiles, recounting word for word the myths of the Greeks, and he neither teaches nor hands on his perfect mystery until he has bound the one being led astray with an oath.

Then he sets out the myths for entertainment, so that those reading the countless drivel of his books may have the myths as a relief (as when someone walking a long road comes upon an inn and decides to rest), and so, turning again to the great mass of learning in the readings, they may not come to hate it, until, having been dinned through by more and more of it, they rush, befogged, into the lawless thing he has contrived. Having first bound them with dreadful oaths and forced them to agree neither to divulge nor to depart, he then hands on the mysteries he has devised in impiety, at times, as we said before, using Greek myths, at times forged books that in some respect resemble the heresies mentioned before.

For all of them, driven by one spirit, are gathered into one deep ditch, telling and mythologizing the same things, some in one way and others in another; and all these specially call themselves Gnostics, as if they alone had drunk down the marvelous knowledge of the perfect and good.

“Swear,” says Justin, “if you wish to know what eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the Good one who is above all, the higher: swear to keep unspoken the things of the teaching that are kept in silence. For our father too, having seen the Good one and been initiated with him, kept the unspoken things of silence, and swore, as it is written: ‘The Lord swore and will not repent.’”

Having sealed these things in this way, he entertains them with more myths through more books, and so leads them to the Good one, perfecting the initiates in the unspeakable mysteries. But so that we may not travel through many books, we will show his secrets from one book of his, which, as he thinks, is highly esteemed.

This book is entitled Baruch. In it we will show one mythology, out of the many set out by him, which is found in Herodotus; he recounts it to his hearers, reshaping it as if it were new, and makes it the whole foundation of his school.

Herodotus, then, says that Heracles, driving the cattle of Geryon from Erytheia, came into Scythia; and being wearied by the journey he lay down in a deserted place and slept a little. While he slept, the horse on which he had ridden the long road vanished; and on waking he made a long search through the wilderness, trying to find the horse.

He failed to find the horse, but finding in the wilderness a girl who was half maiden, he asked her whether she had seen the horse anywhere. The girl said that she knew, but would not show him unless Heracles first came together with her in the union of love.

“Her upper parts,” says Herodotus, “down to the groin were a maiden's, but all the body below the groin was a dreadful sight, a viper's.” Eager to find the horse, Heracles yields to the monster; for he knew her and made her pregnant, and after their union he foretold to her that she had in her womb from him three sons together, who would be illustrious.

He ordered the mother to give them names when they were born: Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. And receiving the horse from the monstrous girl as his wage for this, he departed, taking the cattle as well. The myth that follows in Herodotus is long; let it go for now. But what Justin's views are, as he transfers the myth to the generation of all things, we will relate.

He says: “There were three unbegotten principles of all things, two male and one female. Of the male ones, one is called Good, being called by this name alone, and he foreknows all things. The other is the Father of all begotten things, without foreknowledge, [unknown,] and invisible. The female is without foreknowledge, wrathful, double-minded, double-bodied, in every way like the girl in Herodotus's myth, a maiden to the groin and a viper below,” as Justin says.

This girl is called Eden and Israel. “These,” he says, “are the principles of all things, roots and springs, from which all things came to be; and there was nothing else. The Father, then, being without foreknowledge, saw that half-maiden Eden and came to desire her; this Father,” he says, “is called Elohim. And no less did Eden desire Elohim, and desire brought them together into one affection of love.”

From such a union the Father begets for himself twelve angels from Eden. The names of the paternal angels are these: Michael, Amen, Baruch, Gabriel, Esaddaeus, …

And the names of the maternal angels, whom Eden made, are likewise listed; they are these: Babel, Achamoth, Naas, Bel, Belias, Satan, Sael, Adonaeus, Kavithan, Pharaoh, Karkamenos, Lathen.

Of these twenty-four angels, the paternal ones side with the Father and do everything according to his will, and the maternal ones with the mother, Eden. And the multitude of all these angels together,” he says, “is paradise, of which Moses says: ‘God planted a paradise in Eden toward the east,’ that is, before the face of Eden, so that Eden might always see the paradise, that is, the angels.”

The angels of this paradise are allegorically called trees; and the tree of life is the third of the paternal angels, Baruch, and the tree of knowing the knowledge of good and evil is the third of the maternal angels, Naas. For so he says the writings of Moses must be interpreted, saying: “Moses spoke them in veiled form because not all can receive the truth.”

“When paradise had come to be,” he says, “from the common good pleasure of Elohim and Eden, the angels of Elohim took from the finest earth, that is, not from the beastly part of Eden but from the human-shaped and gentle regions of the earth above the groin, and they made man. And from the beastly parts,” he says, “came the wild beasts and the other animals.”

They made man, then, as a symbol of their unity and affection, and they deposit their own powers in him, Eden the soul and Elohim the spirit. And man, Adam, becomes as it were a seal and memorial of love and an eternal symbol of the marriage of Eden and Elohim.

“Likewise Eve also came to be,” he says, “as it is written in Moses, an image and symbol, a seal of Eden to be kept forever; and likewise in Eve, the image, soul was deposited from Eden and spirit from Elohim. And commands were given them: ‘Increase and multiply and inherit the earth,’ that is, Eden”; for so he would have it written.

For Eden brought all her own power to Elohim in marriage, as a kind of property. “Hence,” he says, “in imitation of that first marriage, women to this day bring a dowry to their husbands, obeying a divine and ancestral law that arose from Eden's dealing with Elohim.”

“When all things had been created, as it is written in Moses, heaven and earth and what is in it, the twelve angels of the mother were divided into four principalities, and each of these quarters is called a river, Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates, as,” he says, “Moses says. These twelve angels, intertwined in four parts, go around and govern the world, holding from Eden a kind of satrap's authority over the world.”

They do not always stay in the same places but go around as in a circular dance, changing from place to place and at set times and intervals yielding the places assigned to them.

When Pishon prevails over the places, famine, distress, and affliction occur in that part of the earth, for the array of these angels is stingy; and likewise with each of the four parts, according to the power and nature of each, come evil times and outbreaks of disease. And this flood of evil, according to the dominance of the quarters, like the stream of rivers, continually goes around the world without ceasing, according to the will of Eden.

The necessity of evil arose from some such cause as this. Elohim, having furnished and fashioned the world out of their common good pleasure, wished to go up to the high parts of heaven and see whether anything in the creation had turned out deficient. He took his own angels with him, for he tended upward, and left Eden below; for she, being earth, was unwilling to follow her consort upward.

Elohim, then, came to the upper limit of heaven, and seeing a light better than what he himself had fashioned, he said: “Open to me the gates, that I may enter and give thanks to the Lord; for I thought that I was lord.”

A voice was given him from the light, saying: “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous enter through it.” And at once the gate was opened, and the Father entered without the angels to the Good one, and saw what eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man. Then the Good one says to him: “Sit at my right hand.”

And the Father says to the Good one: “Allow me, Lord, to overturn the world that I have made; for my spirit is bound up in human beings, and I want to take it back.”

Then the Good one says to him: “You can do no evil now that you are with me; for you and Eden made the world out of common good pleasure. Let Eden, then, have the creation as long as she wishes; but you, remain with me.”

Then Eden, knowing that she had been abandoned by Elohim, grieved, set her own angels beside her, and adorned herself becomingly, in case Elohim might come to desire her and come down to her.

But when Elohim, held fast by the Good one, no longer came down to Eden, Eden commanded Babel, who is Aphrodite, to bring about adulteries and separations of marriages among human beings, so that, as she herself had been separated from Elohim, so too the spirit of Elohim that is in human beings might be tormented and grieved by such separations, and suffer the same things as Eden, abandoned.

And Eden gives great authority to her third angel, Naas, to punish with every punishment the spirit of Elohim that is in human beings, so that through the spirit Elohim himself might be punished, who had abandoned his consort contrary to the compacts made between them. Seeing this, the Father Elohim sends out Baruch, the third of his own angels, to help the spirit that is in human beings.

Baruch, then, came and stood in the middle of the angels of Eden, that is, in the middle of paradise (for the angels, in the middle of whom he stood, are paradise), and commanded the man to eat for food of every tree in paradise, but not to eat of the [tree of] knowing good and evil, which is Naas; that is, to obey the other eleven angels of Eden, for the eleven have passions but not lawlessness, whereas Naas had lawlessness. For he approached

Eve, deceiving her, and committed adultery with her, which is lawless; and he approached Adam too and had him as a boy, which is itself also lawless. From this came adultery and sexual relations between males. From then on evil things prevailed among human beings, and good things too, which came from one principle, that of the Father. For the Father, by going up to the Good one, showed a way for those who wish to go up.

But by departing from Eden he made a beginning of evils for the spirit that is in human beings. Baruch, then, was sent to Moses, and through him spoke to the children of Israel, that they might turn to the Good one.

But the third [angel, Naas], … through the soul from Eden that dwells in Moses, as in all human beings, overshadowed the commands of Baruch and made his own heard. For this reason the soul is ranged against the spirit and the spirit against the soul. For the soul is Eden and the spirit Elohim, both being in all human beings, female and male.

Again after this Baruch was sent to the prophets, so that through the prophets the spirit dwelling in human beings might hear and flee Eden and the wicked creation, as the Father Elohim fled. And likewise, [through the prophets,] by the same device, Naas, through the soul that dwells in man together with the Father's spirit, drew the prophets aside; and all were drawn aside and did not follow the words of Baruch which Elohim commanded.

Last of all, Elohim chose from the uncircumcision a prophet, Heracles, and sent him to overcome the twelve angels of Eden and to free the Father from the twelve wicked angels of the creation. These are the twelve labors of Heracles, which Heracles accomplished in order, from the first to the last: the lion, the hydra, the boar, and the rest.

“For these are the names given by the Gentiles,” they say, “which were renamed from the activity of the maternal angels. But when he seemed to have prevailed, Omphale, who is Babel or Aphrodite, entwines herself with him, draws Heracles aside, and strips him of his power, the commands of Baruch which Elohim commanded, and clothes him instead in her own robe, that is, the power of Eden, the power below; and so the prophecy of Heracles and his works were left incomplete.”

Last of all, in the days of Herod the king, Baruch is sent, sent down once more by Elohim; and coming to Nazareth he found Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, a boy of twelve years, feeding sheep, and he announces to him from the beginning everything that had happened from Eden and Elohim and what would be after this, and he said: “All the prophets before you were drawn aside.

Try, then, Jesus, son of man, not to be drawn aside, but proclaim this word to human beings and announce to them the things concerning the Father and the things concerning the Good one; and go up to the Good one and sit there with Elohim, the Father of us all.”

And Jesus obeyed the angel, saying, “Lord, I will do all things,” and he preached. Naas, then, wished to draw him aside too, … for he remained faithful to Baruch. So Naas, angered that he could not draw him aside, had him crucified. But he, leaving the body of Eden on the tree, went up to the Good one.

And having said to Eden, “Woman, you have your son back,” that is, the soul-endowed man and the earthly man, and himself committing the spirit of the Father into [his] hands, he went up to the Good one.

The Good one is Priapus, who made before anything was; he is called Priapus for this reason, because he pre-made all things. For this reason,” he says, “he stands in every temple, honored by the whole creation, and on the roads carrying the ripe fruits upon him, that is, the fruits of creation, of which he became the cause, having pre-made the creation, which did not exist before.

When, then,” he says, “you hear people saying that a swan came upon Leda and begot children from her, the swan is Elohim, and Leda is Eden.

And when people say that an eagle came upon Ganymede, the eagle is Naas and Ganymede is Adam; and when they say that gold came upon Danae and begot a child from her, the gold is Elohim and Danae is Eden.” In the same way they teach by adducing all such accounts that resemble myths.

When, then, the prophets say, “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth; the Lord has spoken,” by heaven, he says, he means the spirit in man, that of Elohim; by earth the soul in man together with the spirit; by Lord, Baruch; and by Israel, Eden; for the consort of Elohim is called Eden and also Israel.

“Israel did not know me,” he says; “for if she had known that I am with the Good one, she would not have punished the spirit that is in human beings on account of the Father's ignorance.”

From this also an oath is written in the first book, entitled Baruch, which they administer to those who are about to hear these mysteries and be initiated with the Good one; this oath, he says, our father Elohim swore when he came to be with the Good one, and he did not repent of having sworn; about which it is written, he says, “The Lord swore and will not repent.”

This is the oath: “I swear by the one who is above all, the Good, to keep these mysteries and to divulge them to no one, and not to turn back from the Good to the creation.” When he has sworn this oath, he enters to the Good one and sees what eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, and he drinks from the living water, which for them, as they think, is a washing, a spring of living water springing up.

“For there has been a separation,” he says, “between water and water: there is the water below the firmament of the wicked creation, in which earthly and soul-endowed people wash, and there is living water above the firmament of the Good, in which spiritual, living people wash; in it Elohim washed, and having washed he did not repent.”

“And when the prophet,” he says, “is told to take for himself a wife of sexual immorality, because the land will go whoring after sexual immorality away from following the Lord, that is, Eden away from Elohim, in these words,” he says, “the prophet speaks the whole mystery clearly, and he is not heard because of the wickedness of Naas.”

In that same way they likewise misinterpret the other prophetic sayings through many books; but above all they have a book entitled Baruch, in which the reader will learn the whole course of their myth. I have met with many heresies, beloved, but with no evil worse than this.

Truly, as the saying goes, we must imitate his own Heracles and clean out the dung of Augeas, or rather the ditch, into which those who hold to him have fallen and will never be washed clean, nor even be able to lift their heads.

Since, then, we have set out the arguments of Justin the pseudo-Gnostic as well, it seems good to set out in the following books the opinions of the heresies that follow, and to leave none of them unrefuted, setting out the things they say, which are sufficient to make an example of them, if only their hidden and unspeakable things are spoken out, into which the senseless are initiated with difficulty and much toil. Let us see, then, what Simon too says.

The following is contained in the sixth book of the Refutation of All Heresies.

What Simon dared, and that he strengthens his doctrine from magical and poetic sources.

What Valentinus teaches, and that his doctrine is not built on the Scriptures but on Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines.

And what the views of Secundus, Ptolemy, and Heracleon are, and that they too used, in other words, the same doctrines as the wise men of the Greeks.

What Marcus and Colarbasus held, and that some of them engaged in magic and Pythagorean numbers.

In the book before this one, the fifth of the Refutation of Heresies, I set out the views of those who received their principles from the serpent and who, at the fulfillment of the times, willingly brought their opinions into the open. Now I will not keep silent about the opinions of those who follow them either, but will leave not one unrefuted, if indeed it is possible to recall them all and their secret orgies, which are rightly to be called orgies; for those who have dared such things are not far from wrath, if I may also use the etymology.

It seems good, then, now to set out the doctrines of Simon of Gitta, a village of Samaria, from whom we will show that his followers took their starting points and dared similar things under other names. This Simon, being skilled in magic, both made sport of many by the art of Thrasymedes, in the way we set out above, and also did mischief through demons, and tried to make himself a god: a sorcerer full of madness, whom the apostles refuted in the Acts;

far more wisely and more moderately than he, Apsethus the Libyan, longing to be thought a god, made the attempt in Libya. His story, which is not very different from the desire of the vain Simon, it seems good to relate, since it is a fit match for Simon's attempt.

Apsethus the Libyan desired to become a god; but when, for all his efforts, he completely failed in his desire, he wished at least to seem to have become one; and indeed for a long time he did seem to have become a god. For the foolish Libyans sacrificed to him as to some divine power, thinking that they were trusting a voice from heaven above.

For he gathered a great many birds, parrots, and shut them up in one little house; there are very many parrots in Libya, and they imitate the human voice very clearly. Having reared the birds for some time, he taught them to say, “Apsethus is a god.” And when the birds had practiced for a long time and were saying this, which he thought, once said, would make Apsethus be thought a god, he then opened the house and let the parrots go, one here and another there.

As the birds flew, their voice went out into all Libya, and their words passed through as far as the land of the Greeks; and so the Libyans, amazed at the voice of the birds and not perceiving the trick played by Apsethus, held Apsethus to be a god.

But one of the Greeks, perceiving exactly the trick of the supposed god, not only refutes but also destroys that boastful and vulgar man by means of those same parrots. The Greek shut up many of the parrots and retaught them to say: “Apsethus shut us up and forced us to say, ‘Apsethus is a god.’” When the Libyans heard the parrots' recantation, they all came together with one accord and burned Apsethus.

So one must regard Simon the magician, likening him to the Libyan, a man who became a god so quickly in this way.

And if the comparison holds exactly, and the magician has suffered something like Apsethus, let us try to reteach Simon's parrots that Simon was not the Christ, “he who stands, stood, and will stand,” but a man from seed, offspring of a woman, born of blood and fleshly desire like the rest; and that this is so we will easily show as the argument proceeds.

Simon, paraphrasing the law of Moses senselessly and with bad craft, says this: since Moses says that God is a burning and consuming fire, Simon, taking what Moses said wrongly, says that fire is the principle of all things. He did not understand what was said, that God is not fire, but a burning and consuming fire; and so he not only tears apart the law of Moses itself but also plunders Heraclitus the Obscure.

Simon calls the principle of all things infinite power, speaking thus: “This is the writing of the declaration of voice and name from the thought of the great, infinite power. Therefore it will be sealed, hidden, veiled, lying in the dwelling in which the root of all things has been founded.”

He says that the dwelling is this man who is born of blood, and that the infinite power, which he says is the root of all things, dwells in him. According to Simon, the infinite power, the fire, is nothing simple (as most people, saying that the four elements are simple, have thought fire to be simple); rather the nature of fire is a kind of double one, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden and the other manifest;

and the hidden things are hidden in the manifest things of the fire, and the manifest things of the fire have come to be from the hidden. This is what Aristotle calls potentiality and actuality, or Plato intelligible and sensible.

And the manifest part of the fire has in itself all the visible things that anyone might conceive or even overlook unawares; and the hidden part, everything that anyone might conceive as intelligible and escaping sense, or even pass over without thinking of it.

In general one may say that of all the things that are, both sensible and intelligible, which he calls hidden and manifest, the supercelestial fire is the treasury, like a great tree, such as the one seen in a dream by Nebuchadnezzar, from which all flesh is fed.

And he thinks the manifest part of the fire is the trunk, the branches, the leaves, and the bark that surrounds it outside. “All these parts of the great tree,” he says, “are kindled by the all-devouring flame of the fire and vanish.

But the fruit of the tree, if it is brought to its full image and receives its own form, is put into the storehouse, not into the fire. For the fruit came to be,” he says, “in order to be put into the storehouse, and the chaff in order to be handed over to the fire; the chaff is the trunk, which came to be not for its own sake but for the fruit's.”

“And this is,” he says, “what is written in Scripture: ‘For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah a beloved new plant.’ And if the man of Judah is a beloved new plant, it has been shown,” he says, “that the tree is nothing other than man.”

“But about its secretion and separation,” he says, “Scripture has said enough, and for the teaching of those who have been brought to their full image what was said suffices: that ‘all flesh is grass, and all the glory of flesh like the flower of grass. The grass withered, and its flower fell off; but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ The word of the Lord,” he says, “is the word and speech born in the mouth; and there is no other place of its generation.”

Such being the fire according to Simon, to put it briefly, and such all things that are, visible and invisible, likewise sounding and soundless, numerable and numbers, he calls it in the Great Declaration a perfect intelligent being, so that each of the things that can be conceived infinitely many times infinitely speaks, thinks, and acts, as Empedocles says: “For by earth we see earth, by water water, by air [bright] air, and by fire destructive fire, and [by love] love, and strife by baleful strife.”

For he held, he says, that all the parts of the fire, visible and invisible, have intelligence and a share of thought. The begotten world, then, came to be from the unbegotten fire. “And it began to come to be,” he says, “in this way.”

The begotten world took the first six roots of the principle of generation from the principle of that fire; and he says that the roots came to be in pairs from the fire, and he calls these roots Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection; and in these six roots the whole infinite power is present together, in potentiality, not in actuality.

This infinite power he calls “he who stands, stood, and will stand.” If, being in the six powers, it is brought to its full image, it will be in substance, power, magnitude, and completion one and the same with the unbegotten and infinite power, and will lack nothing at all in comparison with that unbegotten, unchanging, and infinite power; but if

it remains only in potentiality in the six powers and is not brought to its full image, it vanishes,” he says, “and perishes, just as the capacity for grammar or geometry in a human soul. For the capacity, when it acquires the art, becomes a light of the things that come to be; but when it does not acquire it, it is lack of art and darkness, and, as if it had never been, it perishes with the man when he dies.”

Of these six powers, and of the seventh that is with the six, he calls the first pair Mind and Thought, heaven and earth; the male looks down from above and cares for his consort, while the earth below receives the intelligent fruits, akin to the earth, that are brought down from heaven. “For this reason,” he says, “the Word, often looking toward the things begotten from Mind and Thought, that is, from heaven and earth, says: ‘Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have rejected me.’ The one who says this,” he says, “is the seventh power, he who stands, stood, and will stand; for he is the cause of these good things which Moses praised, saying they were very good. And Voice and Name are sun and moon; Reasoning and Reflection are air and water. And in all these, as I said, the great, infinite power, he who stands, is mixed and blended.”

Since Moses has said, “In six days God made heaven and earth, and on the seventh he rested from all his works,” Simon, rearranging this in the manner described, makes himself a god.

When, then, they say that there are three days that came to be before sun and moon, they are hinting at Mind and Thought, that is, heaven and earth, and at the seventh, infinite power. For these three powers came to be before all the others.

And when they say, “Before all the ages he begets me,” such things, he says, are said about the seventh power.

This seventh power, which was a power existing in the infinite power and which came to be before all the ages, is,” he says, “the seventh power of which Moses says, ‘And the Spirit of God was borne above the water’; that is,” he says, “the Spirit that holds all things in itself, image of the infinite power, of which Simon says: ‘An image from an incorruptible form, alone ordering all things.’”

For this power that is borne above the water, born,” he says, “from an incorruptible form, alone orders all things. When, then, the fashioning of the world had come about among them in some such way, God,” he says, “formed man, taking dust from the earth; and he formed him not single but double, according to image and according to likeness.”

The image is the Spirit borne above the water, which, if it is not brought to its full image, will perish with the world, remaining only in potentiality and not coming into actuality. “This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘That we may not be condemned with the world.’ But if it is brought to its full image and comes to be from an indivisible point, as is written in the Declaration, the small will become great; and the great will be to the infinite and unchangeable age, which no longer comes to be.”

“How, then, and in what way,” he says, “does God form man? In paradise”; for so he thinks. “Let paradise,” he says, “be the womb; and that this is true Scripture will teach when it says: ‘I am the one who forms you in your mother's womb’”; for he wants this too to be written so. “Moses,” he says, “speaking allegorically, called the womb paradise, if one must believe the word.”

“If God forms man in the mother's womb, that is, in paradise, as I said, let the womb be paradise, and Eden the region, and ‘the river going out of Eden to water paradise’ the navel. This navel,” he says, “is divided into four principles; for on either side of the navel two arteries are stretched, channels of spirit, and two veins, channels of blood.

And when,” he says, “the navel cord, going out from the region Eden, grows into the offspring at the abdomen, at what everyone commonly calls the navel, …

and the two veins, through which the blood flows and is carried from the region Eden by the so-called gates of the liver, nourish the offspring; and the arteries, which we said are channels of spirit, embracing the bladder on either side by the broad bone, join the great artery along the spine called the aorta; and so the spirit, travelling through the side-doors to the heart, produces the movement of the embryos.

For the infant being formed in paradise neither takes food by the mouth nor breathes through the nostrils; for since it lies in fluids, death would be at its feet if it breathed, for it would draw in the fluids and perish. But it is wholly enclosed in the so-called amniotic membrane; it is nourished through the navel, and through the artery along the spine, as I said, it receives the substance of the spirit.”

“The river, then,” he says, “that goes out of Eden is divided into four principles, four channels, that is, into the senses of the offspring: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. For the child being formed in paradise has only these senses. This,” he says, “is the law that Moses laid down, and each of the books is written with reference to this very law, as the titles show.”

The first book is Genesis. “The title of the book,” he says, “was enough for the knowledge of all things. For this Genesis,” he says, “is sight, into which one branch of the river is divided; for the world was beheld by sight.” The title of the second book is Exodus.

For what was born had to travel through the Red Sea and come into the wilderness (by “Red,” they say, he means the blood) and taste bitter water. “For bitter,” he says, “is the water after the Red Sea, which is the road of knowledge in life, travelled through toils and bitter things.

But when it is changed by Moses, that is, by the Word, that bitter water becomes sweet. And that this is so one can hear from all people in common, speaking after the poets: ‘Black at the root [it was], but its flower like milk; moly the gods call it; and it is hard for mortal men to dig; but the gods can do all things.’”

“What was said by the Gentiles,” he says, “suffices for the knowledge of all things for those who have ears to hear. For he who tasted this fruit,” he says, “not only was not turned into a beast by Circe himself, but, using the power of such a fruit, he also reshaped, re-formed, and called back to that first character of their own those who had already been turned into beasts.

And a faithful man, beloved by that sorceress, he is found,” he says, “because of that milky and divine fruit.” Likewise Leviticus, the third book, is smell or breathing. For that whole book is about sacrifices and offerings; and where there is sacrifice, a fragrant smell arises from the sacrifice through the incense; and smell is the test of that fragrance.

Numbers, the fourth of the books, he calls taste, where speech is active; for by speaking all things are named in the order of number. And Deuteronomy,” he says, “is entitled with reference to the touch of the child that has been formed.

For as touch, handling the things seen by the other senses, sums them up and confirms them, testing whether they are hard or hot or sticky, so the fifth book of the law is a summing-up of the four written before it.

“All unbegotten things, then,” he says, “are in us in potentiality, not in actuality, like grammar or geometry. If, then, a man meets with the fitting word and teaching, the bitter too will be turned into sweet, that is, spears into sickles and swords into ploughs; and what is born will not be chaff and wood for the fire, but perfect fruit, brought to its full image, as I said, equal and like to the unbegotten and infinite power.

But if it remains only a tree, not bearing fruit and not brought to its full image, it vanishes. For the axe is near,” he says, “at the roots of the tree; every tree,” he says, “that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

According to Simon, then, that blessed and incorruptible thing is hidden in everything, in potentiality, not in actuality; it is he who stands, stood, and will stand: standing above, in the unbegotten power; having stood below, in the stream of the waters, begotten in an image; and who will stand above, beside the blessed infinite power, if he is brought to his full image.

“For there are three who stand,” he says, “and unless there are three standing Aeons, the begotten one is not set in order, the one who according to them is borne upon the water, refashioned according to likeness, perfect, [heavenly], having become in no conceivable respect inferior to the unbegotten power; that is what they say:

‘I and you are one; before me, you; what is after you, I.’ This,” he says, “is one power, divided above and below, begetting itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own consort, its own daughter, its own son; mother, father, one, being the root of all things.”

“And that the principle of generation of things begotten is from fire,” he says, “understand in some such way as this. Of all things that have generation, the beginning of the desire for generation arises from fire. Accordingly, to desire changeable generation is called ‘to be inflamed.’

Fire, being one, turns in two turnings. For in the man,” he says, “the blood, hot and yellow, stamped like fire, turns into seed, and in the woman this same blood turns into milk. And the male's turning becomes generation, and the female's turning nourishment for what is born. This,” he says, “is the flaming sword that turns to guard the way to the tree of life.

For the blood turns into seed and milk, and this power becomes mother and father, father of the things that come to be and increase of those that are nourished, needing nothing, self-sufficient. And the tree of life is guarded,” he says, “by the turning flaming sword, as we have said: the seventh power, which comes from itself, which contains all, which lies in the six powers.

For if the flaming sword does not turn, that fine tree will be corrupted and perish; but if it turns into seed and milk, he who lies in these in potentiality, when he meets with the fitting word and the proper place in which the word is begotten, beginning as from the smallest spark, will be magnified completely and will grow, and will be an infinite, unchangeable power, [equal and like] to an unchangeable age that no longer comes to be, to the infinite age.”

According to this account, then, Simon admittedly became a god for the senseless, like that Libyan, Apsethus: begotten and subject to suffering while he is in potentiality, but free from suffering after being begotten, when he is brought to his full image and, having become perfect, goes out from the first two powers, that is, heaven and earth.

For Simon speaks expressly about this in the Declaration, thus: “To you, then, I say what I say, and I write what I write.

The writing is this: there are two offshoots of all the Aeons, having neither beginning nor end, from one root, which is a power, Silence, invisible, incomprehensible. Of these one appears from above, which is great Power, Mind of all things, governing all things, male; and the other from below, great Thought, female, begetting all things. Thence, corresponding to one another, they form a pair, and they display the interval between them, incomprehensible Air, having neither beginning nor end.

In this is the Father, who bears all things and nourishes the things that have beginning and end. This is he who stands, stood, and will stand, being a male-female power corresponding to the pre-existing infinite power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in singleness; for the Thought in singleness, proceeding from this, became two.

And he was one; for having her in himself he was alone, yet not first, though pre-existing; but appearing to himself from himself, he became second. Nor was he called Father before she named him Father.

As, then, he himself, bringing himself forth by himself, manifested to himself his own Thought, so too the Thought that appeared did not make him, but seeing him she hid the Father, that is, the power, within herself; and it is a male-female power and thought, whence they correspond to one another (for power differs in no way from thought), being one.

From the things above power is found, from those below thought. So it is also that what appeared from them, being one, is found to be two, male-female, having the female within itself. So Mind is in Thought; and these, separable from one another, though one, are found to be two.”

Simon, then, having devised these things, not only reinterpreted the writings of Moses with bad craft to suit what he wished, but also those of the poets. For he allegorizes the wooden horse, and Helen with the torch, and very many other things, which he transfers to his own story and that of the Thought, and so fabricates.

He said that she was the lost sheep, who, always dwelling in women, troubled the powers in the world because of her unsurpassable beauty; whence also the Trojan war came about because of her. For this Thought dwelt in the Helen who lived at that time, and so, as all the authorities laid claim to her, strife and war arose among the nations in which she appeared.

So, at any rate, Stesichorus, who reviled her in his verses, was blinded; and afterward, when he repented and wrote the palinodes in which he praised her, he regained his sight. And being moved from body to body by the angels and the powers below, who, he says, also made the world, she later stood in a brothel in Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, where he came down and found her.

For he said that he had come first of all to seek her, in order to rescue her from her bonds; and having redeemed her he took her about with him, saying that she was the lost sheep and saying that he himself was the power above all. But the liar, having fallen in love with this woman, called Helen, bought her and kept her, and out of shame before his disciples he fabricated this myth.

And those who in turn have become imitators of the deceiver and magician Simon do similar things, saying irrationally that one must have intercourse indiscriminately, and saying: “All earth is earth, and it makes no difference where one sows, so long as one sows.” Indeed they even count themselves blessed for their [promiscuous] intercourse, saying that this is perfect love, and the “holy of holies … shall be sanctified”; for they are not held accountable for any supposed evil, since they have been redeemed. And having thus redeemed Helen, he provided salvation to human beings through his own knowledge.

For since the angels governed the world badly because of their love of rule, he said that he had come to set things right, transformed and made like the principalities and authorities and angels, so that he appeared as a man though he was not a man, and seemed to suffer in Judea though he had not suffered; but he appeared to the Jews as Son, in Samaria as Father, and among the other nations as Holy Spirit; and he allowed himself to be called by whatever name people wished to call him.

And they say that the prophets spoke their prophecies inspired by the world-making angels; therefore those who up to now have believed in Simon and Helen pay no attention to them, and do whatever they wish as free people; for they claim that they are saved by his grace.

For nothing is a ground for punishment if someone acts badly; for evil is not by nature but by convention. “For the angels who made the world,” he says, “laid down whatever they wished, thinking by such words to enslave those who listen to them.” And they speak again of a dissolution of the world for the redemption of their own people.

His disciples, then, practice magic and incantations, and send love charms, spells of attraction, and the so-called dream-sending demons to trouble whomever they wish; they also cultivate the so-called familiar spirits. And they have an image of Simon in the form of Zeus and of Helen in the form of Athena, and they worship these, calling him Lord and her Lady.

And if anyone among them, seeing the images, calls them by the name of Simon or Helen, he is cast out as ignorant of the mysteries. This Simon, leading many astray in Samaria by magic, was refuted by the apostles; and having been cursed, as is written in the Acts, he afterward, having lost favor, attempted these things; until, having come even to Rome, he clashed with the apostles. Peter opposed him at length, as he was leading many astray by magic. Coming at last to …

…, he taught sitting under a plane tree. And at last, when he was close to being exposed because of the length of time, he said that if he were buried alive he would rise on the third day. And indeed he ordered a trench to be dug by his disciples and ordered himself to be buried in it. They did what was commanded, but he has remained there until now; for he was not the Christ.

This, then, is the myth according to Simon, from which Valentinus took his starting points and calls them by other names. For Mind and Truth and Word and Life and Man and Church, the Aeons of Valentinus, are admittedly Simon's six roots: Mind, Thought, Voice, Name, Reasoning, and Reflection. But since Simon's mythmaking seems to us to have been set out sufficiently, let us see what Valentinus too says.

The heresy of Valentinus, then, has a Pythagorean and Platonic foundation. For Plato in the Timaeus wholly modeled himself on Pythagoras; accordingly Timaeus himself is for him a Pythagorean stranger. Therefore it seems good to begin by recalling a little of the Pythagorean and Platonic foundation, and then to speak of the doctrines of Valentinus.

For even though the views held by Pythagoras and Plato are contained in what we worked out earlier, yet now too I will not unreasonably recall in summary the chief points of what they held, so that the views of Valentinus may become easy to recognize through closer juxtaposition and a like comparison: the former having received these things long ago from the

Egyptians and taught them to the Greeks, while he, having received them from these men, lied that they were his own and tried to establish a doctrine of his own, … tearing theirs apart with names and numbers, calling them by terms of his own and marking them off by measures, so as to establish a Greek heresy, varied indeed, but incoherent and not belonging to Christ.

The beginning of the foundation, then, in Plato's Timaeus is the wisdom of the Egyptians; for from there Solon taught the Greeks the whole foundation concerning the generation and destruction of the world by an ancient and prophetic account, as Plato says, since the Greeks were young children and knew no older theological teaching.

So that we may follow the doctrines on which Valentinus has built, I will first set out now what Pythagoras of Samos teaches as philosophy, together with that silence of his celebrated among the Greeks; and then those things which Valentinus, taking them from Pythagoras and Plato, grandly ascribes to Christ and, before Christ, to the Father of all and to Silence, the consort of the Father.

Pythagoras, then, declared that the unbegotten principle of all things is the monad, and that the dyad and all the other numbers are begotten. And he says that the monad is the father of the dyad, and the dyad the mother of all begotten things, a begotten mother of begotten things.

And Zaratas, the teacher of Pythagoras, called the one father and the two mother. For according to Pythagoras the dyad has been begotten from the monad, and the monad is male and first, the dyad female. And from the dyad in turn, as Pythagoras says, come the triad and the following numbers up to ten.

For Pythagoras knows only this number, ten, as perfect; for eleven and twelve are an addition to and repetition of the decad, and what is added is not the generation of any other number. And he generates all solid bodies from incorporeal things. For he says that the element and principle of both bodies and incorporeals together is the point, which is without parts; from a point, he says, comes a line, [from a line a surface], and a surface flowing into depth becomes, he says, a solid body. Hence the Pythagoreans also have an oath, the concord of the four elements. They swear thus: “Yes, by him who handed to our head the tetraktys, a spring holding [the roots] of ever-flowing nature.” The tetraktys is the principle of natural and solid bodies, as the monad is of intelligibles. And that the tetraktys, as [the monad] among the intelligibles, also generates, he says, the perfect number, ten, they teach thus: if someone beginning to count says one, and adds two, and then likewise three, these will be six; and adding to these four more, the whole will likewise be ten. For one, two, three, four make ten, the perfect number. So, he says, the tetraktys imitated in every respect the intelligible monad, being able to generate a perfect number.

According to Pythagoras, then, there are two worlds: one intelligible, which has the monad as its principle, and one sensible, whose principle is the tetraktys, which has the iota, the one stroke, a perfect number; and according to the Pythagoreans the iota, the one stroke, is first and most sovereign, and the substance of the intelligibles, taken both intelligibly and sensibly;

and the incorporeal genera of accidents are nine, which cannot exist apart from substance: quality, quantity, relation, where, when, position, possession, acting, and being acted upon. These, then, are the nine accidents of substance; counted together with them, substance contains the perfect number, the iota.

Therefore, since the universe is divided, as we said, into an intelligible and a sensible world, we too have reason from the intelligible world, so that by reason we may contemplate the substance of intelligible, incorporeal, and divine things; and we have, he says, five senses, smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch, by which we come to knowledge of sensible things. And so, he says, the sensible world is divided from the intelligible. And that we have an instrument of knowledge for each of them, we perceive from the following.

“Nothing of the intelligibles,” he says, “can become known to us through sense; for that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor,” he says, “has any of the other senses whatever known it.”

Nor again is it possible to come to the knowledge of any sensible thing by reason; but one must see that a thing is white, and taste that it is sweet, and know by hearing whether it is melodious or unmelodious; and whether any smell is fragrant or unpleasant is the work of smell, not of reason.

The same holds for touch; for it is not possible to know by hearing whether a thing is hard or soft, hot or cold; touch is the judge of such things. These things being so, the ordering of the things that have come to be and are coming to be is seen to take place by number.

For just as, beginning from the monad, by adding monads or triads and the following numbers as they are gathered, we make one very great system of number, and then again, from what has been gathered by composition, by a kind of subtraction and reversal we accomplish arithmetically the dissolution of what has been composed,

so, he says, the world too, bound by a kind of arithmetical and musical bond, by tension and relaxation, addition and subtraction, is always and throughout kept incorruptible. Accordingly, the Pythagoreans also declare concerning the distribution of the world in some such way: “For it was before and will be, nor ever, I think, will boundless time be emptied of these two.” Of which two? Of Strife and Love.

And Love, as they suppose, makes the world incorruptible and everlasting for them; for substance and the world are one; but Strife tears apart and separates it, and tries, by dividing the world, to make it many.

As if someone were arithmetically to cut up the myriad into thousands, hundreds, and tens, and drachmas into obols and small quadrantes, so, he says, Strife cuts the substance of the world into animals, plants, metals, and the like. And according to them Strife is the craftsman of the generation of all things that come to be, while Love governs and cares for the universe so that it may remain; gathering into one the things that have been divided and torn from the universe, and leading them out of life, it joins and adds them to the universe, so that it may remain; and it is one.

Strife, then, will not cease dividing the world, nor Love assigning back to the world what has been divided. Such, it seems, is the distribution of the world according to Pythagoras. And Pythagoras says that the stars are fragments broken off the sun, and that the souls of living creatures are carried down from the stars; and that they are mortal when they are in the body, buried in it as in a tomb, but rise and become immortal when we are released from our bodies. Hence Plato, asked by someone, “What is philosophy?”

said, “The separation of the soul from the body,” having become a disciple of Pythagoras and of these doctrines, in which he speaks also through riddles and sayings such as: “If you go abroad from your own, do not turn back; otherwise the Furies, helpers of Justice, will pursue you,” calling the body “your own” and the passions Furies.

“If, then,” he says, “you go abroad, that is, if you go out of the body, do not lay claim to it; but if you lay claim to it, the passions will shut you up again in a body.” For these men believe in the transmigration of souls, as Empedocles too says, Pythagorizing.

“For pleasure-loving souls,” he says, “as Plato says, if they come into the passion of a man and do not practice philosophy, must pass through all animals and plants back into a human body; and if a soul practices philosophy three times in the same way, it goes up to the nature of its kindred star; but if it does not practice philosophy, back again to the same things. The soul, then,” he says, “can sometimes become mortal, if it is mastered by the Furies, that is, the passions, and immortal, if it escapes the Furies, which are passions.”

But since we have begun to speak also of the things said obscurely by Pythagoras to his disciples through symbols, it seems good to recall the others as well, because the heresiarchs too have attempted to converse in some such way through symbols, and these not their own, but sayings they have appropriated from the Pythagoreans.

Pythagoras, then, teaches his disciples, saying: “Tie up the bedding-bundle”; for those about to travel tie their clothes in a leather bag to prepare for the journey. So he wants his disciples to be ready, as though death were about to come upon them at every moment, so that his disciples may lack nothing.

Therefore he taught the Pythagoreans that they must urge one another, as soon as day came, to tie up the bedding-bundle, that is, to be ready for death.

“Do not stir fire with a knife”: he means, do not provoke an angry man; for the angry man is like fire, and speech like a knife. “Do not step over a broom”: do not despise a small matter. “Do not plant a palm tree in a house”: do not create contentiousness in a house; for the palm is a sign of battle and discord. “Do not eat from a stool”: do not take up a menial craft, so that you may not be a slave to the body, which is perishable, but make your living from learning; for then you will be able both to feed the body and to make the soul better.

“Do not bite from a whole loaf”: do not diminish your possessions, but live from the income, and keep your property like a whole loaf. “Do not eat beans”: do not accept public office; for in that time they chose officials by lot with beans.

These things, then, and the like the Pythagoreans say, and the heretics, imitating them, are thought by some to say great things. And the Pythagorean doctrine says that the craftsman of all things that have come to be is the great geometer and arithmetician, the sun, and that he is fixed in the whole world as the soul in bodies, as Plato says.

For the sun is fire, as the soul, and earth is body. Apart from fire nothing would ever be visible, nor tangible without something solid, and nothing is solid without earth. Hence God, placing air in the middle between fire and earth, fashioned the body of the universe. And the sun, he says, numbers and measures the world in some such way as this.

The sensible world, of which we are now speaking, is one. He, being an arithmetician and geometer, has divided it into twelve parts. And these parts have names: Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Balance, Scorpion, Archer, Capricorn, Water-bearer, Fishes.

Again he divides each of the twelve parts into thirty parts, which are the days of a month. Again he divides each of the thirty parts into sixty minutes, and the minutes into minutes, and still finer. And always doing this and never ceasing, but gathering from these divided parts and making a year, and again dissolving and dividing what has been composed, he produces the great year of the world.

Such, to put it in summary as I go over it, is the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato, from which Valentinus, and not from the Gospels, compiled his heresy, as we will show; he would rightly be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, not a Christian. Valentinus, then, and Heracleon and Ptolemy and their whole school, disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, following their guides, laid down their teaching on the basis of number.

For their principle of all things too is a monad, unbegotten, incorruptible, incomprehensible, inconceivable, generative, and the cause of the generation of all things that have come to be; and this monad is called by them Father.

But much disagreement is found among them. For some of them, so that the doctrine of Valentinus may be wholly and purely Pythagorean, think that the Father is without female, without consort, and alone; while others, thinking it impossible that any generation of the things that have come to be could come from a male alone, of necessity count Silence as consort with the Father of all, so that he may become a father.

But about Silence, whether she is a consort or not, let them have this contest among themselves. For now we ourselves, keeping to the Pythagorean principle, which is one, without consort, without female, lacking nothing, will speak, recalling what they teach.

“There was nothing at all begotten,” he says, “but the Father alone was unbegotten, having no place, no time, no counsellor, no other being that could be conceived in any way; but he was alone, at rest, as they say, and reposing, himself in himself alone. But since he was generative, it seemed good to him at some point to beget and bring forth what was most beautiful and most perfect, which he had in himself; for he was not a lover of solitude. For he was all love,” he says, “and love is not love if there is not a beloved.”

The Father himself, then, alone as he was, put forth and begot Mind and Truth, that is, a dyad, which became lady and principle and mother of all the Aeons that they count within the Pleroma.

And Mind and Truth, put forth from the Father, generative from generative, themselves also put forth Word and Life, imitating the Father; and Word and Life put forth Man and Church. And Mind and Truth, when they saw that their own offspring [Word and Life] had been born generative, gave thanks to the Father of all and offer him a perfect number, ten Aeons.

“For Mind and Truth,” he says, “could not offer the Father a more perfect number than this. For the Father, being perfect, had to be glorified by a perfect number; and ten is perfect, because it is the first of the numbers formed by multitude that is perfect. But the Father is more perfect, because, being alone unbegotten, through the first single pair, Mind and Truth, he was able to put forth all the roots of the things that have come to be.”

Word and Life, then, seeing that Mind and Truth had glorified the Father of all in a perfect number, Word too, with Life, wished to glorify his own father and mother, Mind and Truth.

But since Mind and Truth were begotten and did not have the Father's perfection, unbegottenness, Word and Life no longer glorify their own father, Mind, with a perfect number, but with an imperfect one; for Word and Life offer twelve Aeons to Mind and Truth.

For according to Valentinus these became the first roots of the Aeons: Mind and Truth, Word and Life, Man and Church; ten are those of Mind and Truth, and twelve those of Word and Life; twenty-

eight in all. They give them these names: Of-the-Deep and Mixture, Unaging and Union, Self-grown and Pleasure, Immovable and Blending, Only-begotten and Blessed. These are the ten Aeons, which some say are from Mind and Truth, others from Word and Life.

Others say that the twelve are from Man and Church, others from Word and Life; and they bestow on them these names: Paraclete and Faith, Paternal and Hope, Maternal and Love, Ever-mind and Understanding, Ecclesiastical and Blessedness, Willed and Wisdom.

Of the twelve, the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-eight Aeons, being female and called Sophia, perceived the multitude and power of the Aeons that had been begotten, and ran back up into the depth of the Father, and understood that all the other Aeons, being begotten, beget in pairs, but the Father alone begot without a consort.

She wished to imitate the Father and to beget by herself without her consort, so that she might accomplish a work in no way inferior to the Father's, not knowing that the unbegotten one, being the principle of all things and root and depth and abyss, is able to beget alone, whereas Sophia, being begotten and having come into being after many others, cannot have the power of the unbegotten.

“For in the unbegotten,” he says, “all things are together; but among the begotten the female emits substance, and the male gives form to the substance emitted by the female. Sophia, then, emitted only what she could, a substance without form and unfurnished.”

“And this is,” he says, “what Moses says: ‘And the earth was invisible and unfurnished.’ This,” he says, “is the good land, the heavenly Jerusalem, into which God promised to bring the children of Israel, saying: ‘I will bring you into a good land flowing with honey and milk.’”

When, then, there had come to be within the Pleroma ignorance on the part of Sophia and formlessness on the part of Sophia's offspring, there was a commotion in the Pleroma [among the Aeons that had come to be], for fear that the offspring of the Aeons would likewise become formless and imperfect, and that some corruption would before long seize the Aeons.

All the Aeons, then, fled to the Father in supplication, that he might give rest to the grieving Sophia; for she was weeping and lamenting over the abortion begotten by her, for so they call it. The Father, then, pitying Sophia's tears and accepting the Aeons' supplication, orders a further emission; for he himself, he says, did not emit, but Mind and Truth emitted Christ and the Holy Spirit, for the forming and separating of the abortion and for the consolation and relief of Sophia's groans.

And with Christ and the Holy Spirit there come to be thirty Aeons. Some of them want this to be the triacontad of the Aeons; others want Silence to coexist with the Father and the Aeons to be counted together with them.

Christ and the Holy Spirit, then, having been further emitted by Mind and Truth, immediately separate from all the Aeons this formless abortion of Sophia, only-begotten and begotten without a consort, so that the perfect Aeons might not see it and be troubled by its formlessness.

So that the formlessness of the abortion might not appear to the perfect Aeons at all, the Father too again further emits one Aeon, the Cross, who, begotten great, as from a great and perfect Father, and emitted for the guard and palisade of the Aeons, becomes the Boundary of the Pleroma, holding within himself all thirty Aeons together; for these are the ones that were emitted.

He is called Boundary because he bounds off the Deficiency outside from the Pleroma; Participator, because he participates also in the Deficiency; and Cross, because he has been fixed immovably and unrepentantly, so that nothing of the Deficiency can come near the Aeons within the Pleroma.

Outside the Boundary, the Cross, the Participator, then, is what they call the Ogdoad, which is the Sophia outside the Pleroma; Christ, further emitted by Mind and Truth, formed her and made her a perfect Aeon, so that she became inferior to none of those within the Pleroma.

But since Sophia outside had been formed, and it was not possible for Christ and the Holy [Spirit], emitted alike from Mind and Truth, to remain outside the Pleroma, Christ and the Holy Spirit ran back up from her who had been formed to Mind and Truth within the Boundary, glorifying the Father with the other Aeons.

Since, then, there was one peace and concord among all the Aeons within the Pleroma, it seemed good to them not only to have glorified the Father by pairs, but also to glorify him by an offering of fitting fruits. All thirty Aeons, then, were pleased to emit one Aeon, the common fruit of the Pleroma, that he might be a pledge of their unity, unanimity, and peace.

And this one, emitted to the Father by all the Aeons alone, is the one called by them the common fruit of the Pleroma. These things, then, were thus within the Pleroma. And the common fruit of the Pleroma had been emitted, Jesus (for this is his name), the great high priest. But Sophia outside the Pleroma, seeking Christ, who had formed her, and the Holy Spirit, fell into great fear that she would perish, since he who had formed and established her had gone away.

And she grieved and fell into great perplexity, reasoning who it was who had formed her, what the Holy Spirit was, where he had gone, who had prevented them from being with her, who had begrudged her that fair and blessed sight. Set in these passions, she turns to supplication and entreaty of him who had left her.

As she entreated, then, Christ, who is within the Pleroma, and all the other Aeons took pity on her, and they send out of the Pleroma the common fruit of the Pleroma, as consort of the Sophia outside and corrector of the passions she suffered in seeking Christ.

The Fruit, then, having come outside the Pleroma and found her in the first four passions, fear, grief, perplexity, and supplication, corrected her passions; and in correcting them he saw that it was not good for them to be destroyed, since they were eternal and Sophia's own, nor for Sophia to remain in such passions, in fear and grief, entreaty, and perplexity.

So he, being so great an Aeon and offspring of the whole Pleroma, made the passions stand out from her, and made them substantial beings: fear he made psychic substance, grief material, perplexity that of demons; and turning, supplication, and entreaty he made ascent, repentance, and power of the psychic substance, which is called the right.

The Demiurge is from fear; that is what, he says, Scripture says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” For this was the beginning of Sophia's passions: she feared, then grieved, then was perplexed, and so fled to supplication and entreaty. And the psychic substance, he says, is fiery, and it is also called by them Place […], Hebdomad, and Ancient of Days; and whatever such things they say about him belong to the psychic one, whom they say is the Demiurge of the world; and he is fiery.

“Moses too,” he says, “says: ‘The Lord your God is a burning and consuming fire’”; for he wants this to be written so. “The power of fire,” he says, “is twofold; for there is an all-devouring fire that cannot be quenched … In this respect, then, the soul is something mortal, being a kind of middle; for it is Hebdomad and rest.”

For it is below the Ogdoad, where Sophia is, the day that has been formed, and the common fruit of the Pleroma, but above matter, of which it is the Demiurge. If, then, it is made like those above, the Ogdoad, it has become immortal and has come into the Ogdoad, which is, he says, the heavenly Jerusalem; but if it is made like matter, that is, the material passions, it will be corruptible and has perished.

As, then, of the psychic substance the first and greatest power has come to be … image, the devil, the ruler of this world; and of the substance of the demons, which is from perplexity, Beelzebul; while Sophia works from above, from the Ogdoad, as far as the Hebdomad. The Demiurge, they say, knows nothing at all, but according to them is mindless and foolish, and does not know what he does or works. But while he was ignorant of what he was doing, Sophia worked all things and gave them strength; and while she was working, he thought that he himself was making the creation of the world from himself; whence he began to say: “I am God, and besides me there is no other.”

The tetraktys according to Valentinus, then, is “a spring holding the roots of ever-flowing nature,” and so is Sophia, from whom the psychic and material creation now consists. And Sophia is called spirit, the Demiurge soul, the devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.

These are the things they say. And besides these, making their whole teaching arithmetical, as I said before, they say that the thirty Aeons within the Pleroma have in turn further emitted for themselves other Aeons by proportion, so that the Pleroma may be gathered in a perfect number.

For as the Pythagoreans divided into twelve and thirty and sixty [and they have minutes of minutes, as has been shown], so these subdivide the things within the Pleroma. The things in the Ogdoad have also been subdivided, and Sophia, who according to them is the mother of all the living, and the common fruit of the Pleroma have emitted …

words, which are heavenly angels, having their citizenship in the Jerusalem above, the one in heaven; for this Jerusalem is the Sophia outside, and her bridegroom is the common fruit of the Pleroma. The Demiurge also emitted souls; for this is the substance of souls; this, according to them, is Abraham, and these are the children of Abraham. From the material and devilish substance, then, the Demiurge made the bodies for the souls.

This is what was said: “And God formed man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life; and the man became a living soul.” This, according to them, is the inner man, the psychic one, dwelling in the material body, which is the material man, corruptible, imperfect, formed from the devilish substance.

According to them this material man is as it were an inn or dwelling, sometimes of the soul alone, sometimes of the soul and demons, sometimes of the soul and words; these are words sown from above into this world by the common fruit of the Pleroma and by Sophia, dwelling in an earthly [body] with the soul when demons do not dwell with the soul.

“This is,” he says, “what is written in Scripture: ‘For this reason I bow my knees to the God and Father and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God may grant you that Christ may dwell in the inner man,’ that is, the psychic, not the bodily, ‘that you may be able to understand what is the depth,’ which is the Father of all, ‘and what is the breadth,’ which is the Cross, the Boundary of the Pleroma, ‘or what is the length,’ that is, the Pleroma of the Aeons.”

“For this reason,” he says, “‘the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him’; and foolishness,” he says, “is the power of the Demiurge; for he was foolish and mindless, and thought that he himself was fashioning the world, not knowing that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, was working everything for him, without his knowledge, for the creation of the world.”

All the prophets, then, and the law spoke from the Demiurge, a foolish god, he says, and they were fools knowing nothing. “For this reason,” he says, “the Savior says: ‘All who came before me are thieves and robbers’; and the apostle: ‘the mystery which was not made known to former generations.’”

“For none of the prophets,” he says, “said anything about the things of which we speak; for they were unknown; all … as having been spoken by the Demiurge alone. When, then, the creation had reached its end, and it remained for the revelation of the sons of God, that is, of the Demiurge, to take place, the revelation that had been veiled, with which, he says, the psychic man had been veiled, and he had a veil over his heart,

when, then, the veil had to be taken away and these mysteries seen, Jesus was born through Mary the virgin according to what was said: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” (the Spirit is Sophia) “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (the Most High is the Demiurge); “therefore what is born of you will be called holy.”

For he was born not from the Most High alone, as those created after Adam were created from the Most High alone, that is, [from Sophia and] from the Demiurge; but Jesus, the new man, was born from the Holy Spirit, that is, from Sophia, and from the Demiurge, so that the Demiurge might complete the fashioning and furnishing of his body, and the Holy Spirit might supply his substance, and he might become a heavenly Word born from the Ogdoad through Mary.

About this there is a great inquiry among them, and an occasion of divisions and disagreement. And hence their teaching has become divided; and according to them one teaching is called Eastern, the other Italian.

Those from Italy, among whom are Heracleon and Ptolemy, say that the body of Jesus was psychic, and that for this reason at the baptism the Spirit came down like a dove, that is, the Word of the Mother above, Sophia, and came to the psychic one and raised him from the dead. “This is,” he says, “what was said: ‘He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies,’ that is, psychic ones. For the dust has come under a curse.

For ‘you are earth,’” he says, “‘and to earth you will return.’” But those from the East, among whom are Axionicus and Ardesianes, say that the Savior's body was spiritual; for the Holy Spirit, that is, Sophia, came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High, the Demiurge's craft, so that what was given to Mary by the Spirit might be fashioned.

Let them, then, inquire into these things among themselves, and anyone else who may care to inquire.

But he adds: when the errors among the Aeons within had been corrected, and those in the Ogdoad, the Sophia outside, had been corrected, and those in the Hebdomad too had been corrected (for the Demiurge was taught by Sophia that he is not God alone, as he thought, and that besides him there is no other; but, taught by Sophia, he came to know the greater one; for he was instructed by her and initiated and taught the great mystery of the Father and the Aeons, and he divulged it to no one; that is, as he says, what he says to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and the name of God I did not declare to them”; that is, I did not tell the mystery, nor explain who God is, but kept by myself in secret the mystery which I heard from Sophia), it was necessary

then, since the things above had been corrected, that by the same sequence the things here too should obtain correction. For this reason Jesus the Savior was born through Mary, to correct the things here, just as Christ, further emitted from above by Mind and Truth, corrected the passions of the Sophia outside, that is, of the abortion; and again the Savior born through Mary came to correct the passions of the soul.

There are, then, [according to them] three Christs: the one further emitted by Mind and Truth with the Holy Spirit; the common fruit of the Pleroma, the equal consort of the Sophia outside, who herself is also called Holy Spirit, inferior to the first; and third, the one born through Mary for the restoration of our creation.

I think that at some length I have sufficiently outlined the heresy of Valentinus, which is Pythagorean. But it seems good also to set out their opinions by way of refutation, and then to stop.

Plato, then, setting out mysteries about the universe, writes to Dionysius in some such way: “I must tell you in riddles, so that if the tablet suffers anything in the folds of sea [or land], whoever reads it may not understand. For it is thus: all things are about the king of all, and all are for his sake, and he is the cause of all fair things; second about the second things, and third about the third.

About the king and the things I spoke of there is nothing of that kind. But after this the soul seeks to learn what sort of things they are, looking to things akin to itself, none of which is adequate. This, O son of Dionysius and Doris, is the question which is the cause of all evils; or rather the anxiety about it that arises in the soul, which unless one removes, he will never truly attain the truth. But what is wonderful about it, [hear].

For there are men who have heard these things, men [able to learn] and able to remember, and to judge after testing them thoroughly in every way, men already old, who say that things which then seemed credible now seem incredible, and things then incredible now the opposite. Looking to this, then, take care that you never regret these things falling out unworthily.

For this reason I have [written nothing] about these things, and there is no writing of Plato's, nor will there ever be; the things now called his belong to Socrates, made fair and young.” Having come upon these words, Valentinus posited the king of all, of whom Plato spoke, as the Father and Depth and … of all the Aeons.

Since Plato said “second about the second things,” Valentinus posited as the second things the Boundary and all the Aeons within the Boundary; and as “third about the third” he placed the whole arrangement outside the Boundary and the Pleroma.

And Valentinus has shown this in very few words in a psalm, beginning from below, not from above as Plato did, speaking thus: “All things hanging from the ether I see by spirit, all things borne along I perceive by spirit: flesh hanging from soul, soul borne out by air, air hanging from ether, fruits borne out of the depth, a babe borne out of the womb.” Understanding these things thus:

flesh, according to them, is matter, which hangs from the soul of the Demiurge. Soul is borne out by air, that is, the Demiurge by the spirit outside the Pleroma. Air is borne out by ether, that is, the Sophia outside by the one within the Boundary and the whole Pleroma. And fruits are borne out of the depth: the whole emission of the Aeons that came from the Father.

The views of Valentinus, then, have been sufficiently stated … to set out for those who have advanced in the school, each having taught his opinions in a different way.

A certain Secundus, who lived at the same time as Ptolemy, speaks thus: there is a right tetrad and a left tetrad, light and darkness; and he says that the power that fell away and became deficient came into being not from the thirty Aeons but from their fruits.

Another teacher of theirs, a certain Epiphanes, speaks thus: “The first principle was inconceivable, ineffable, and unnameable, which he calls Oneness; and with it coexisted a power which he names Unity. This Unity and Oneness sent forth, without sending forth, a principle over all things, intelligible, unbegotten, and invisible, which he calls Monad.

With this power coexists a power of the same substance with it, which I too name the One. These four powers sent forth the remaining emissions of the Aeons.” Others of them, again, called the first and original Ogdoad by these names: [first Pre-principle, then Inconceivable, the third Ineffable, and] the fourth Invisible.

And from the first, the Pre-principle, was emitted in the first and fifth place Principle; from the Inconceivable, in second and sixth place, Incomprehensible; from the Ineffable, in third and seventh place, Incomprehensible; from the Invisible, Unbegotten: the fullness of the first Ogdoad. These powers they want to exist before Depth and Silence.

There are many and differing opinions about Depth himself. Some say that he is without consort, neither male nor female; others that Silence, a female, is with him and that this is the first pair. Those around Ptolemy say that he has two consorts, which they also call dispositions, Thought and Will; for first he thought of emitting something, as they say, and then he willed it.

Therefore, from these two dispositions and powers, Thought and Will, as though blended with one another, came the emission in a pair of the Only-begotten and Truth, which came forth as types and images of the Father's two dispositions, visible from invisible: Mind of the Will, and Truth of the Thought. And for this reason, of the Will that came after, the

male is the image, and of the unbegotten Thought the female, since the Will became as it were the power of the Thought. For Thought was always thinking of the emission, but could not emit by itself; it only thought; but when the power of the Will [came in addition], then it emits [what] it was thinking.

Another teacher of theirs, Marcus, skilled in magic, deceived many, working some things by sleight of hand and others through demons. He said that the greatest power from the invisible and unnameable places was in him.

And indeed, often taking a cup as if giving thanks and prolonging the word of the invocation, he made the mixture appear purple and sometimes red, so that those deceived thought that some grace was coming down and giving a blood-like power to the drink.

But the rascal, though he escaped the notice of many at the time, will now be refuted and stop. For, secretly putting into the mixture a drug able to give such a color, he waited a long while babbling, so that it might take up moisture, dissolve, and, being mixed in, color the drink. The drugs able to do this we set out earlier in the book against the magicians, showing how they lead many astray and ruin them; if anyone cares to attend more carefully to what was said there, he will recognize Marcus's deception.

He would also mix a smaller cup and give it to a woman to give thanks over, while he stood by holding another, empty cup larger than that; and when the deceived woman had given thanks, he took it and poured it into the larger one, and pouring back and forth many times from one into the other, he said over it thus: “May the

Grace that is before all things, inconceivable and ineffable, fill your inner man and multiply in you her knowledge, sowing the grain of mustard seed in the good ground.” And saying some such things, and amazing both the deceived woman and those present, he was thought a wonder-worker, as the larger cup was filled from the smaller so that it even overflowed.

The technique of this too we set out likewise in the book mentioned before, showing very many drugs able to produce an increase when mixed with liquid substances, especially mixed wine. One such drug he secretly … smeared in the empty cup, and showed it as having nothing in it; then, pouring in from … and pouring back, as the drug dissolved by being mixed with the liquid, since it was effervescent, the mixture increased, and it grew as much as it was stirred by the pouring back, such being the nature of the drug;

and if one set the full cup aside, after a little it would go back to its natural measure, the drug's power being quenched as the liquid stood. Therefore he hastily gave it to those present to drink, and they drank it, shuddering as at something divine and devised by God, and at the same time hurrying.

Such things, and others, the deceiver attempted to do; therefore he was glorified by those he deceived, and sometimes he himself was thought to prophesy, and sometimes he made others do so, at times working these things through demons, at times by sleight of hand, as we said before. Having ruined many, then, he also brought forward many such people who became his disciples, teaching them to be ready to sin and free from danger, because they belonged to the perfect power and shared in the inconceivable authority;

to whom they also promise, after baptism, another, which they call redemption; and by this they wickedly overturn those who remain with them in hope of the redemption, as though, after being baptized once, they could again obtain

forgiveness. By such a trick they think they hold their hearers; and when they think them tested and able to keep faith with them, then they lead them to this; and not content with this alone, they also promise something further, to hold them fast by hope, so that they may never leave.

For they say something in an ineffable voice, laying a hand on the one who has received the redemption, which they claim cannot easily be spoken out, unless someone be exceptionally approved; or else the bishop comes and says it into his ear when he is dying.

And this too is a trick, so that the disciples may always remain with the bishop, longing to learn what it may be that is spoken at the very end, through which the learner will be among the perfect. These things I have kept silent for this reason, lest anyone think I am maligning them; for this is not our purpose, but only to show from what sources they took their starting points and set up their opinions.

For the blessed presbyter Irenaeus too, having undertaken the refutation with greater frankness, set out such washings and redemptions, describing rather broadly what they do; some of them, having read it, have denied that they received it so, being always taught to deny. Therefore we have taken care to inquire more exactly and to find out in detail what they hand down both in the first washing, as they call it, and in the second, which they call redemption.

But not even their secret escaped us. Let these things, however, be conceded to Valentinus and his school. But Marcus, imitating his teacher, himself also fabricates a vision, thinking to be glorified in this way. For Valentinus claims that he saw a newborn infant, and asked it who it might be; and it answered, saying that it was the Word. Then, adding some tragic myth, he wishes to build from this the heresy he had undertaken.

Daring things like this, Marcus says that the Tetrad came to him in the form of a woman, since, he says, the world could not bear her male form, and revealed who she was, and the generation of all things, which she had never revealed to anyone, of gods or men, she narrated to him alone, speaking thus:

“When first his Father, the inconceivable, who is without substance, who is neither male nor female, wished that his ineffable should become spoken and the invisible be formed, he opened his mouth and sent forth a Word like himself, who, standing beside him, showed him what he was, himself appearing as the form of the invisible.

The utterance of the name was as follows: he spoke the first word of his name, which was ‘Beginning,’ and its syllable was of four letters; then he joined the second, and it too was of four letters; next he spoke the third, which was of ten letters; and he spoke the fourth, and it was of twelve letters.

The utterance of the whole name, then, was of thirty letters and four syllables. And each of the letters has its own written signs and its own character and its own pronunciation and shapes and images; and none of them sees the form of that of which it is a letter; nor indeed does each know the pronunciation of its neighbor, but, pronouncing what it itself pronounces, it thinks that, pronouncing everything, it names the whole;

for each of them, being part of the whole, names its own sound as the whole, and does not stop sounding until, speaking singly, it arrives at the last letter of the last element.” And then, he said, the restoration of all things takes place, when all things, coming down into the one letter, sound one and the same utterance; and he supposed that the image of this utterance is the Amen which we say together. And the [sounds] are those that give form to the Aeon without substance and unbegotten; and these are the forms which the Lord called angels, who continually behold the face of the Father.

The common and speakable names of the letters he called Aeons, Words, Roots, Seeds, Fullnesses, and Fruits; and the particular names of each of them are to be understood as contained in the name of the Church.

Of these letters, the last [sign] of the last letter sent forth its own voice, whose sound, going out, begot letters of its own after the image of the letters, from which he says that the things here have been ordered and the things before these begotten. The sign itself, whose sound followed the sound downward, he says was taken up above by its own syllable to complete the whole, while the sound remained below, as if thrown outside.

The letter itself, from which the sign came down below with its own pronunciation, he says is of thirty signs, and each one of the thirty signs has in itself other signs, by which the name of the sign is named; and again the others are named by other signs, and the others by others, so that the multitude falls into infinity when the signs are written out separately.

One may understand what is said more clearly thus: the letter delta has five letters in itself, delta, epsilon, lambda, tau, and alpha; and these very letters [are written with other letters, and the others with others].

If, then, the whole substance of the delta falls into infinity, as ever other letters beget others and succeed one another, how much greater than that letter must the sea of letters be? And if the one letter is thus infinite, see the depth of the letters of the whole name, out of which the industry, or rather the futility, of Marcus wishes to compose the Forefather.

Therefore, he says, the Father too, knowing his own incomprehensibility, has given to the letters, which he also calls Aeons, to cry out each its own pronunciation, because no one can pronounce the whole.

When she had made these things clear to him, the Tetrad said: “I wish to show you Truth herself; for I have brought her down from the dwellings above, so that you may see her naked and learn her beauty, and also hear her speaking and marvel at her wisdom.

See, then,” she says, “her head above, the first, alpha [and omega]; her neck, [beta and psi]; her shoulders [with hands], [gamma and chi]; her breast, delta [and phi]; her diaphragm, [epsilon and upsilon]; her belly, [zeta and tau]; her private parts, [eta and sigma]; her thighs, [theta and rho]; her knees, [iota and pi]; her shins, [kappa and omicron]; her ankles, [lambda and xi]; her feet, [mu and nu].” This is the body of Truth according to Marcus, this the shape of the element, this the character of the letter.

And he calls this element Man, and says that it is the spring of every word, the beginning of every voice, the utterance of all that is ineffable, and the mouth of silent Silence. “And this is her body. But you, raising aloft the thought of your mind, hear from the mouths of Truth the self-begetting and Father-giving Word.”

When she had said this, Truth looked at him and opened her mouth and spoke a word; and the word became a name, and the name is this, which we know and speak: Christ Jesus; and having named it she at once fell silent.

As Marcus expected her to say something more, the Tetrad again came into the middle and said: “So you have thought this word which you heard from the mouths of Truth a simple one? It is not what you know and think you have long possessed, that is, a name; for you have only its sound, but you do not know its power.

For Jesus is a notable name, having six letters, called upon by all those of the calling. But the name among the [five] Aeons of the Pleroma, being of many parts, is of another form and a different type, known by those kindred beings whose magnitudes are always with him.

Know that these twenty-four letters which you have are emanations, [images] of the three powers that contain the whole number of the elements above.

Consider the nine mute letters to belong to the Father and Truth, because they are voiceless, that is, ineffable and unspeakable; the semivowels, being eight, to Word and Life, because they are as it were in the middle between the mutes and the vowels, and have received the outflow from those above and the ascent of those below; and the vowels, themselves seven, to Man and Church, since through Man the voice came forth and gave form to all things; for the sound of the voice clothed them with form.

Word and Life, then, have the eight, Man and Church the seven, the Father and Truth the nine. But because the reckoning fell short, the one who had been set apart in the Father came down, sent out to the one from whom he had been separated, for the correction of what had been done, so that the unity of the Pleromas, being in the Good, might bear as fruit one power in all, from all.

And so the one of the seven received the power of the eight, and the three places became alike in their numbers, being ogdoads; and these three, added to one another, displayed the number twenty-four. The three elements, however (which he himself says belong to the three powers in pairs, which are six, from which the twenty-four letters flowed), multiplied four times by the ratio of the ineffable Tetrad, make the same number as they; and these, he says, belong to the Unnameable.

And they are borne by the six powers into the likeness of the invisible; the images of the images of these elements are the six double letters, which, counted together with the twenty-four letters by the power of proportion, make the number thirty.

The fruit of this account and this economy, he says, appeared in the likeness of an image: he who after six days went up the mountain as the fourth and became the sixth, who came down and was held fast in the hebdomad, being a notable ogdoad and having in himself the whole number of the elements;

whom the descent of the dove made manifest when he came to baptism; the dove is omega and alpha, shown by the number eight hundred and one; and for this reason Moses says that man came into being on the sixth day.

And the economy of the passion took place on the sixth of the days, which is the Preparation, when the last man appeared for the regeneration of the first man. The beginning and end of this economy is the sixth hour, in which he was nailed to the tree.

For the perfect Mind, knowing that the number six has the power of making and of regeneration, revealed to the children of light the regeneration that came about through the notable one who appeared. Hence also he says that the double letters have the notable number; for the notable number, blended with the twenty-four letters, completed the thirty-lettered name.

He has used as servant the magnitude of the seven numbers, so that the fruit of the self-willed [counsel] might be made manifest. “For the present,” he says, “understand the notable one as the one formed upon the notable one, who was as it were divided and remained outside, who by his own power and wisdom, through his own emission, gave soul to this world of seven powers in imitation of the seven-powered power, and made it the soul of the whole visible universe.

This one, then, uses this work as if it had come to be by him of his own choice, and the rest serve, being imitations of the inimitable, of the Mother's Reflection. And the first heaven utters alpha, the one after it epsilon, the third eta, the fourth, the middle of the seven, the power of iota, the fifth omicron, the sixth upsilon, and the seventh, fourth from the middle, omega.

And all the powers, woven together into one, sound and glorify him by whom they were emitted, and the glory of the sounding is sent up to the Forefather. The sound of this doxology, borne to the earth, he says, becomes the fashioner and begetter of the things on earth; and the proof is from newborn infants, whose soul, as soon as it comes out of the womb, cries out likewise the sound of each one of these elements.

“As, then, the seven powers,” he says, “glorify the Word, so also does the soul in infants, crying. For this reason,” he says, “David too said: ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nurslings you have prepared praise’; and again: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ And when the soul is in pains, it cries out nothing other than omega, in which it is grieved, so that the soul above, recognizing its kin, may send down help to it.”

So much about these things. And about the generation of the twenty-four letters he speaks thus: “With Oneness coexists Unity, from which come two emissions, the Monad and the One, which, being twice two, became four; for twice two is four. And again the two and the four, put together, revealed the number six; and these six, multiplied four times, made the twenty-four.

And the names of the [first] tetrad, understood as holy of holies and unable to be spoken, are known by the Son alone; the Father knows what they are. The names spoken by him with silence and with faith are these: Ineffable and Silence, Father and Truth.

The whole number of the letters of this tetrad is twenty-four. For Ineffable (arrētos) has seven letters, Silence (sigē, spelled seigē) five, Father (patēr) five, and Truth (alētheia) seven. Likewise the second tetrad too, Word and Life, Man and Church, displayed the same number of letters. And the speakable name of the Savior [that is, Jesus] is of six letters, but his ineffable name, by the count of the letters taken one by one, is of twenty-four letters; Son Christ (huios chreistos) of twelve; and the ineffable in Christ of thirty letters, it too counted by the letters within it one by one. For Christ (chreistos) has eight letters: chi has three, rho two, ei two, iota four, sigma five, tau three, ou two, and san three. So they say the ineffable in Christ is of thirty letters. And for this reason, they say, he says, “I am the alpha and the omega,” showing the dove, which has this number, eight hundred and one.

Jesus has this ineffable generation. From the Mother of all things, the first tetrad, the second tetrad came forth in the manner of a daughter, and it became an ogdoad, from which the decad came forth; so it became eighteen.

The decad, then, joining the ogdoad and making it tenfold, [brought forth the number eighty, and the eighty] again made tenfold begot the number eight hundred, so that the whole number of the letters, proceeding from ogdoad to decad, is eight hundred and eighty and eight, which is Jesus; for the name Jesus, by the number in its letters, is eight hundred and eighty-eight.

And the Greek alphabet has eight units, [eight tens,] and eight hundreds, displaying the sum of eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, Jesus, who consists of all the numbers. And for this reason he is called alpha [and omega], signifying the generation from all.

About his fashioning he speaks thus: that powers that flowed from the second tetrad fashioned the Jesus who appeared on earth; the angel Gabriel filled the place of the Word, the Holy Spirit that of Life, the power of the Most High that of Man, and the Virgin that of the Church. So, according to him, the man of the economy is brought into being through Mary.

And when he came into the water, there came down upon him as a dove the one who had gone up above and completed the twelfth number, in whom is the seed of those who were sown together with him and came down with him and went up with him.

This power that came down into him, he says, is the [seed] of the Pleroma, having in itself both the Father and the Son and the unnameable power of Silence known through them, and all the Aeons.

And this is the Spirit in him, which spoke through the mouth of the Son, which confessed itself Son of Man and manifested the Father, and which, having come down into Jesus, was united with him. And the Savior of the economy, they say, destroyed death, and Christ [Jesus] made known the Father.

He says, then, that Jesus is the name of the man of the economy, and that it was given as the likeness and form of the Man who was about to come down into him; having received him, he had him; and he himself was the Man, himself the Word, himself the Father and the Ineffable and Silence and Truth and Church and Life.

These things, I hope, are plain to all who possess a sound mind to be invalid and far from the knowledge that accords with godliness, being parts of astrological invention and Pythagorean arithmetic, as you lovers of learning will know, since these doctrines were set out in what we worked out earlier.

But so that we may show more clearly that these men are disciples not of Christ but of Pythagoras and of those … about the heavenly bodies, I will set out as much as can be given in summary. For they say this: that all things consist of monad and dyad; and counting from the monad up to four, they thus generate the decad.

And again the dyad, proceeding up to the episemon, that is, two and four and six, displayed the dodecad. And again, when we count from the dyad up to ten, the triacontad was displayed, in which are the ogdoad, the decad, and the dodecad.

The dodecad, then, because it had the episemon, had the notable passion following along with it; and for this reason, since the error arose around the twelfth number, the sheep leapt away and went astray …; and likewise also from the decad.

And in reference to these they speak of the drachma which a woman lost and, lighting a lamp, sought, and of the loss of the one sheep; and, combining the numbers of the ninety-nine for themselves, they tell the tale that the eleven, woven together with the nine, make the number ninety-nine, and that for this reason Amen is said, which contains the number ninety-nine. Another number …

… they say thus: the letter eta, with the episemon, is an ogdoad, lying in the eighth place from alpha; then again, reckoning the number of the letters themselves without the episemon and adding them up to eta, they show the number thirty.

For anyone who begins from alpha and goes up to eta, leaving out the episemon, will find the number of the letters to be thirty. Since, then, the number thirty is united from the three powers, becoming [three times] itself it made ninety; for three times thirty is ninety.

So the ogdoad brought forth the number ninety-nine from the first ogdoad, decad, and dodecad; this number they sometimes gather into a whole and make a triacontad, and sometimes, taking away the twelfth, they reckon eleven; likewise they make the tenth nine; and weaving these together and multiplying by ten they complete the number ninety-nine.

And since the twelfth Aeon left the eleven and departed and went down below, they say that this too is fitting. For the form of the letters teaches it: lambda lies eleventh among the letters, and it is the number thirty; and it lies after the image of the economy above, since from alpha, without the episemon, the number of the letters themselves up to lambda, added together according to the increase of the letters, with lambda itself, makes the number ninety-nine.

And that lambda, lying in the eleventh place, came down in search of its like, to complete the twelfth number, and, finding it, was filled up, is plain from the very shape of the letter. For lambda, having come as it were in search of its like, and having found it and snatched it up, filled the place of the twelfth, the letter M, which is composed of two lambdas. Therefore they too flee through knowledge the place of the ninety-nine, that is, the Deficiency, the type of the left hand, and pursue the one, which, added to the ninety-nine, transferred them to his right hand.

They say that through the Mother there were first constructed the four elements, which, he says, are fire, water, earth, and air, emitted as an image of the tetrad above; and counting their activities too, such as hot, cold, wet, and dry, they say that they exactly image the ogdoad.

Next they count up ten powers as follows: seven circular bodies, which they also call heavens; then the circle that encloses them, which they name the eighth heaven; and besides these, the sun and the moon.

And these, being ten in number, they say are images of the invisible Decad, the one that came from Word and Life; and the Duodecad [is indicated] through the circle called the zodiac. For these twelve signs, they say, most plainly foreshadow the Duodecad, the daughter of Man and Church.

And since, he says, the highest heaven was yoked in opposition to the motion of the universe, which is very swift, the heaven that presses on the very vault and counterbalances the swiftness of the other by its own slowness, so that it completes its circuit from sign back to sign in thirty years, they say that it is an image of Limit, which encloses their Mother of thirty names;

and again that the moon, going round the heaven in thirty days, expresses by the days the number of the Aeons; and that the sun, which completes and ends its circular return in twelve months, makes the Duodecad manifest;

and that the days themselves, having the measure of twelve hours, are a type of the empty Duodecad; and that the circumference of the zodiac itself is three hundred and sixty degrees, for each sign has thirty degrees.

In this way, they say, the image of the union of the twelve with the thirty has been preserved even through the circle. Moreover they claim that the earth has been divided into twelve zones, and that each single zone receives one power from the heavens perpendicularly and bears children in likeness to the power that sends it down through its outflow, a type [being] of the Duodecad above.

Besides this, they say that the Demiurge, wishing to imitate the boundless, eternal, unlimited, and timeless character of the Ogdoad above, and being unable to express its permanence and everlastingness because he himself is the fruit of a deficiency, set times and seasons and numbers of many years to match its eternity, thinking to imitate its invisibility by the multitude of times.

Here, they say, since the truth escaped him, falsehood followed, and for this reason, when the times are fulfilled, his work will meet its dissolution.

These, then, are the things that the members of the school of Valentinus say about the creation and about the universe, always begetting newer inventions besides; and they consider it fruitfulness if someone appears to work some greater marvel by inventing something of the same kind.

And finding in the Scriptures particular things that agree with the numbers mentioned above, they accuse Moses and the prophets, claiming that they speak allegorically of the measures of the Aeons. I have decided not to set these out, since they are silly and incoherent, and since the blessed presbyter Irenaeus has already refuted their doctrines powerfully and laboriously; from him [we have received] their inventions as well, showing that they, having appropriated these things from Pythagorean philosophy and the curious arts of the astrologers, charge Christ with having handed them down.

But since I think that the silly doctrines of these men too have been sufficiently set out, and it has been clearly shown whose disciples Marcus and Colarbasus were, who became successors of the school of Valentinus, let us see what Basilides also says.

The following are the contents of the seventh book of the Refutation of All Heresies:

What the opinion of Basilides is, and that, struck with amazement by the doctrines of Aristotle, he built his heresy out of them.

And what Saturnilus says, who flourished at [about] the same time as Basilides.

How Menander undertook to say that the world was made by angels.

What the madness of Marcion is, and that his doctrine is not new, nor from the holy Scriptures, but is Empedocles'.

How Carpocrates talks folly, he too claiming that the things that exist were made by angels.

That Cerinthus framed his opinion not from the Scriptures at all but from the opinions of the Egyptians.

What the opinions of the Ebionites are, and that they give their attention rather to Jewish customs.

How Theodotus too went astray, collecting some things from the Ebionites [and others from Cerinthus].

And what Cerdo thought, who also said the things of Empedocles and led Marcion on to evil.

And how Lucian, who became a disciple of Marcion, likewise shamelessly blasphemed God.

Of whom Apelles also became a disciple; he did not teach the same doctrines as his teacher, but, moved by the doctrines of natural philosophy, laid down his own account of the substance of the universe.

Seeing that the doctrines of the heretics are like a sea tossed by the force of winds, the hearers ought to sail past them, seeking the calm harbor. For such a sea is both full of monsters and hard to pass, like, one might say, the Sicilian sea, in which the Cyclops, Charybdis, and Scylla are said in fable to be … and the mountain of the Sirens, which the poets of the Greeks say Odysseus sailed through, dealing cunningly with the terror of those strange beasts; for their savagery toward those who sailed through was of various kinds.

And the Sirens, singing clearly and musically, deceived those who sailed by, persuading their hearers by their sweet voice to put in to shore. They say that Odysseus, learning this, stopped the ears of his companions with wax, and having bound himself to the mast, sailed past the Sirens without danger while listening to their song.

My advice to those who read is to do this: either, because of weakness, stop their ears with wax and sail through the doctrines of the heresies without even listening to them, since those doctrines can easily persuade toward pleasure, like the clear song of the Sirens; or else, binding oneself faithfully to the wood of Christ, to listen and not be troubled, trusting in him to whom one is bound fast, and to stand upright.

Since, then, in the six books before this one we have set out the earlier matters, it now seems right not to pass over in silence the doctrines of Basilides, which are the doctrines of Aristotle the Stagirite, not of Christ. And although the opinions of Aristotle have been set out previously, we shall not now hesitate to lay them down briefly beforehand, so that readers, by comparing them side by side at closer range, may easily see that the teachings of Basilides are Aristotelian sophistries.

Aristotle, then, divides substance in three ways. For one part of it is genus, another species, as he says, and another the individual; and it is individual (atomon, “uncut”) not because of smallness of body but because by nature it cannot admit any division whatever.

The genus is like a kind of heap mixed together out of many different seeds, and from this genus, as from a heap, all the species of things that have come into being are distributed. And the genus is a [cause] sufficient for all things that have come into being. And so that what is said may be clear, I shall show it by an example, through which it will be possible to run back to the whole theory of the Peripatos.

We say that there is animal simply, not some particular animal. And this animal is not an ox, not a horse, not a human being, not a god, nor anything else that can be pointed to at all, but simply animal. From this animal the forms of all the particular animals have their subsistence.

And this formless animal is the subsistence for the animals that have come into being in species, and yet it is none of the things that have come into being. For a human being is an animal that takes its origin from that animal, and a horse is an animal that takes its origin from that animal. The horse and the ox and the dog and each of the other animals takes its origin from the simple animal, which is not a single one of these.

But if that animal is not a single one of these, then according to Aristotle the subsistence of the things that have come into being has come from things that are not; for the animal from which these were taken one by one is not a single one of them, and being not one of them it has become a single origin of the things that exist. But who it is that laid down this origin as the substance of the things that later came into being, we shall say when we come to the proper account of such things.

Since substance is [divided] threefold, as I said, into genus, species, and individual, and we have set down that the genus is animal, and that the human being is a species already separated from the many animals, but still confused and not yet shaped into a species of subsisting substance: when I give shape by a name to the human being taken from the genus, calling him Socrates or Diogenes or some one of the many names, and when I grasp by a name the human being who has become a species of the genus, I call such a substance an individual.

For the genus was divided into species, and the species into the individual; but the individual, once it has been grasped by a name, cannot by nature be divided into anything else, as we divided each of the things mentioned before. This is what Aristotle [calls substance] first, most of all, and most properly: that which is neither said of some subject nor is in a subject.

By “said of a subject” he means something like the genus, which I called animal, said by a common name of all the particular animals that fall under it, such as ox, horse, and the rest. For it is true to say that a human being is an animal, and a horse is an animal, and an ox is an animal, and each of the others; that is, what is “said of a subject” is that which, being one, can be said alike of many things differing in species.

For a horse does not differ from a human being insofar as it is an animal, nor does an ox; for the definition of animal is such as to fit all animals alike. For what is an animal? If we define it, a common definition will take in all the animals. For an animal is an ensouled, sentient substance; this is what an ox, a human being, a horse, and each of the others is.

And “in a subject,” he says, is that which, being in something not as a part, cannot exist apart from that in which it is; [that is,] each of the accidents of substance, which is called quality, according to which we are said to be of a certain kind, such as white, grey-eyed, black, just, unjust, temperate, and the like. None of these can come to be by itself; it must be in something.

But if neither the animal, which I say of all the particular animals, nor the accidents, which are found in all the things to which they belong, can come to be by themselves, and the individuals are made up of these, then the substance divided threefold has been constituted out of things that are not, and is not composed of anything else. If, therefore, the substance that is called substance first, most properly, and most of all exists out of these, then according to Aristotle it is from things that are not.

But concerning substance what has now been said will suffice. And substance is called not only genus, species, and individual, but also matter, form, and privation. But it makes no difference among these, since the division remains. Substance being such, the arrangement of the world, according to him, came about in some such way as this.

The world, according to Aristotle, is divided into several [different] parts; and one part of the world is this, the region from the earth up to the moon, which is without providence and without governance, content with its own nature alone; while the part beyond the moon, up to the surface of heaven, is ordered in all order, providence, and governance.

And the surface is a kind of fifth substance, free from all the natural elements from which the world has its constitution; and this is, according to Aristotle, a certain fifth substance, as it were a supramundane substance. And in keeping with his division of the world, his account of philosophy is divided too.

For he wrote a Lecture on Nature, in which he labored over the things from the earth up to the moon that are managed by nature and not by providence. He also wrote another particular treatise of discourses about the things beyond the moon, entitled in this way, After the Physics. And he wrote a particular discourse on the fifth substance, which for him is theology. Such, to sum it up in outline, is the division of the universe, [and of] philosophy according to Aristotle.

But his account of the soul is unclear. For in three whole treatises it is impossible to say clearly what Aristotle thinks about the soul. The definition he gives of the soul is easy to state, but what is shown by the definition is hard to discover.

For the soul, he says, is the actuality (entelecheia) of a natural organic body; and what this is needs [very many] words and much inquiry. And God, the cause of all these beautiful things that exist, is even harder than the soul to know, even for one who contemplates with longer reasoning.

And the definition that Aristotle gives of God is not hard to know, but impossible to conceive. For he says that he is thought of thought, which is something altogether non-existent. And the world according to Aristotle is incorruptible and eternal; for it has nothing faulty in it, being governed by providence and nature.

And Aristotle laid down discourses not only about nature, the world, providence, and God; but … he also wrote a treatise of ethical discourses, and he entitles these Ethical Books, by which he makes the character of his hearers good instead of bad. If, [then,] Basilides is found transferring the doctrines of Aristotle, not in meaning only but in the very words and names, into our saving gospel teaching, what remains but to give back what is not theirs and show the disciples of this man that, since they are pagans, Christ will profit them nothing?

Basilides, then, and Isidore, Basilides' true son and disciple, say that Matthias spoke to them secret words which he heard from the Savior, having been taught privately. Let us see, then, how plainly Basilides and Isidore alike and their whole chorus lie not simply against Matthias alone but against the Savior himself.

There was, he says, when there was nothing; but not even the nothing was one of the things that exist, but, barely and without any mental reservation, without any sophistry, there was altogether not even one thing. And when I say “was,” he says, I do not say that it was, but in order to signify what I wish to show, I say, he says, that there was altogether nothing.

For that, he says, is not simply unspeakable which is named; at any rate we call it unspeakable, but that is not even unspeakable. For what is not even unspeakable is not named unspeakable, but is, he says, above every name that is named.

For not even for the world, he says, are the names sufficient, so manifold is it; they fall short. And I do not accept, he says, that one can find proper names for all things, but one must grasp with the mind, in an unspeakable way, the properties of the things named, and not by their names. For sameness of names has caused confusion and error about things among hearers.

Having taken this first appropriation and theft from the Peripatos, they deceive the folly of those who herd together with them. For Aristotle, born many generations before Basilides, laid down in the Categories the account of homonyms, which these men explain as their own and new, and as one of the secret words of Matthias.

Since, then, there was nothing, not matter, not substance, not the insubstantial, not simple, not compound, not unthinkable, not imperceptible, not human, not angel, not god, nor anything at all of the things that are named or grasped by sense or of intelligible things, but all things were thus, and still more subtly, simply blotted out, the non-existent God (whom Aristotle calls thought of thought, but these men the non-existent), without thought, without perception, without will, without choice, without passion, without desire, willed to make a world.