Book VII, II, pp. 82 ff. _infra_.

[Footnote 52: Diog. Laert., VIII, _vit. Heraclit._, from whom Hippolytus is probably quoting, says that in his boyhood, Heraclitus used to say, he knew nothing, in his manhood everything. Has Hippolytus garbled this?]

[Footnote 53: There is nothing of this in what Hippolytus, Diogenes Laertius or any other author extant gives as Empedocles’ opinions. τὰ κακά seems to be equivalent to δαίμονες, as suggested in n. on p. 39 _supra_. Hippolytus returns to Heraclitus’ opinions in Book IX, II, pp. 119 ff. _infra_.]

[Footnote 54: So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Anaximander_, c. 1, _verbatim_.]

[Footnote 55: κόσμοι. He therefore believed in a plurality of worlds.]

[Footnote 56: οὐσία. It may here mean essence or being. A good discussion of the changes in the meaning of the word and its successors, ὑπόστασις and πρόσωπον, is to be found in Hatch, _op. cit._, pp. 275-278.]

[Footnote 57: μετέωρον, a phenomenon in the heavens, but also something hung up or suspended.]

[Footnote 58: στρογγύλον, used by Theophrastus for logs of timber.]

[Footnote 59: Lit., “from the separation of the finest atoms of the air and from their movement when crowded together.”]

[Footnote 60: So Roeper. Cruice agrees.]

[Footnote 61: A. W. Benn, _op. cit._, p. 51, gives a readable account of Anaximander’s speculations in physics. Diels, _op. cit._, pp. 132, 133 shows in an excellently clear conspectus of parallel passages the different authors from whom Hippolytus took the statements in our text regarding the Ionians. The majority are to be found in Simplicius’ commentaries on Aristotle, Simplicius’ source being, according to Diels, the fragments of Theophrastus’ book on physics. Next in order come Plutarch’s _Stromata_ and Aetius’ _De Placitis Philosophorum_, many passages being common to both.]

[Footnote 62: ὁμαλώτατος, _aequabilis_, Cr., “homogeneous.”]

[Footnote 63: Lit., “whatever changes.”]

[Footnote 64: Planets. See n. on p. 36 _supra_.]

[Footnote 65: διὰ πλάτος. Cruice translates _ob latitudinem_, Macmahon “through expanse of space.”]

[Footnote 66: μετεωριζόμενου. See n. on p. 42 _supra_.]

[Footnote 67: So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Anaxim._, c. 1. This is the feature of Anaximenes’ teaching which seems to have most impressed the Greeks.]

[Footnote 68: παχυθέντα.]

[Footnote 69: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, puts Anaximander in the 58th Olympiad (548 B.C.) and Anaximenes in the 63rd. This is more probable than the dates in our text. For Anaximenes’ sources, mostly Aetius and Theophrastus, see Diels’ conspectus mentioned in n. on p. 43 _supra_.]

[Footnote 70: τὴν δὲ ὕλην γινομένην, _fieri materiam_, Cr.]

[Footnote 71: τῆς ἐγκυκλίου κινήσεως. Macmahon says “orbicular,” but it means if anything centripetal and centrifugal, as appears in next sentence.]

[Footnote 72: ὑποστῆναι. Hippolytus seems most frequently to use the word in this sense.]

[Footnote 73: μετέωρον. See n. on p. 42 _supra_.]

[Footnote 74: τά τε ἐν αὐτῇ ὕδατα ἐξατμισθέντα ... ὑποστάντα οὕτως γεγονέναι. I propose to fill the lacuna with καὶ πυκνωθέντα ἐν κοίλῳ. For a description of this cavity see the _Phædo_ of Plato, c. 138. I do not understand Roeper’s suggested emendation as given by Cruice.]

[Footnote 75: There must be some mistake here. He has just said that the sun and moon are below the stars.]

[Footnote 76: φωτισμοί, _illuminationes_, Cr. So Macmahon. It clearly means here “shinings forth again,” or “lightings up.”]

[Footnote 77: Diog. Laert. quotes from Apollodorus’ _Chronica_ that Anaxagoras died in the 1st year of the 78th Olympiad, or ten years before Plato’s birth. For Hippolytus’ sources for his teaching, mainly Diog. Laert., Aetius and Theophrastus, see Diels, _ubi cit._]

[Footnote 78: μῖγμα, not μῖξις. But of what could the creative mind be compounded before anything else had come into being?]

[Footnote 79: ἐκ τῆς πυρῶσεως. Does he mean the heated air, and why should the earth form no part of the universe? Something is probably omitted here.]

[Footnote 80: Ἐπικλιθῆναι, _de super incumbere_, Cr., “inclined at an angle,” Macmahon. Evidently Archelaus imagined a concave heaven fitting over the earth like a dish cover or an upturned boat or coracle. This was the Babylonian theory. Cf. Maspero, _Hist. anc^{nne} de l’Orient classique_, Paris, 1895, I, p. 543, and illustration. Many of the Ionian ideas about physics doubtless come from the same source.]

[Footnote 81: Reading, as Cruice suggests, καὶ ἀνθρώπους for καὶ ἀνόμοια. So Diog. Laert., II, _vit. Archel._, c. 17.]

[Footnote 82: χρήσασθαι, _uti_, Cr., “employed,” Macmahon.]

[Footnote 83: A fair specimen of Hippolytus’ verbose and inflated style.]

[Footnote 84: No other philosopher has yet been quoted as saying that the earth was spherical.]

[Footnote 85: This sentence is said to have been interpolated.]

[Footnote 86: ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος, “from the surrounding (æther).” An expression much used by writers on astrology and generally translated “ambient.”]

[Footnote 87: Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Dem._, c. 1, says either Damasippus or Hegesistratus or Athenocritus.]

[Footnote 88: It is doubtful whether astrology was known in Egypt before the Alexandrian age. Diog. Laert., _vit. cit._, quotes from Antisthenes that Democritus studied mathematics there, and astrology was looked on by the Romans as a branch of mathematics. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, _ubi cit., supra_.]

[Footnote 89: καὶ τῇ μὲν γένεσθαι, τῇ δὲ ἐκλείπειν.]

[Footnote 90: So Apollodorus. Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Xenophan._, c. 1, says of Dexius.]

[Footnote 91: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, says Sotion of Alexandria is the authority for this, but that he was mistaken. Hippolytus says later in Book I (p. 59 _infra_) that Pyrrho was the first to assert the incomprehensibility of everything. If, as Sotion asserted, Xenophanes was a contemporary of Anaximander, he must have died two centuries before Pyrrho was born.]

[Footnote 92: δόκος δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται, _sed in omnibus opinio est_, Cr. Yet δόκος is surely a “guess.”]

[Footnote 93: αἰσθητικός.]

[Footnote 94: ἐν τῷ βάθει τοῦ λίθου, “deep down in the stone.” Perhaps the earliest mention of fossils.]

[Footnote 95: Is this a survival of the Babylonian legends of the Flood?]

[Footnote 96: παραλλαγγάς, _differentias_, Cr. Perhaps “alternations.”]

[Footnote 97: The whole of this section on Ecphantus is corrupt. He is not alluded to again in the book.]

[Footnote 98: Hippo is mentioned by Iamblichus in his life of Pythagoras.]

[Footnote 99: ἀπομαξάμενος, “been sealed with,” or “copied.” Cf. Diog. Laert., II, _vit._ _Socrates_, c. 12.]

[Footnote 100: προνοούμενον αὐτοῦ. The τόδε τὸ πᾶν of the line above shows that Plato did not mean that the forethought extended to other worlds than this.]

[Footnote 101: This expression, like many others in this epitome of Plato’s doctrines, is found in the Εἰς τὰ τοῦ Πλάτωνος Εἰσαγωγή of Alcinous, who flourished in Roman times. The best edition still seems to be Bishop Fell’s, Oxford, 1667. Alcinous’ work was, as will appear, the main source from which Hippolytus drew his account of Plato’s doctrines.]

[Footnote 102: Alcinous, _op. cit._, c. 12.]

[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, cc. 9, 12.]

[Footnote 104: ἐδημιούργει. Not created _ex nihilo_, but made out of existing material as an architect makes a house.]

[Footnote 105: Alcinous, _op. cit._, cc. 8, 10.]

[Footnote 106: ἐξ αὐτοῦ συνεστάναι αὐτόν. So Cruice. Macmahon reads with Roeper αὐτῆς for αὐτοῦ, “the world was made out of it” (_i. e._ matter).]

[Footnote 107: The body of the cosmos is evidently meant. Cf. Alcinous, c. 12.]

[Footnote 108: _de Legg._, IV, 7.]

[Footnote 109: ἀορίστως.]

[Footnote 110: _Timæus_, c. 16.]

[Footnote 111: _Phædrus_, c. 166.]

[Footnote 112: γενεαλογῇ.]

[Footnote 113: Alcinous, c. 25.]

[Footnote 114: _Phædrus_, cc. 51, 52.]

[Footnote 115: For this see the _Timæus_, c. 17.]

[Footnote 116: This sentence is corrupt throughout, and there are at least three readings which can be given to it. I have taken that which makes the smallest alteration in Cruice’s text.]

[Footnote 117: _Phædo_, c. 43.]

[Footnote 118: I do not think this can be found in any writings of Plato that have come down to us. Hippolytus probably took it from Aristotle, to whom he also attributes it; but I cannot find it in this writer either. A passage in Arist., _Nicomachean Ethics_, Book II, c. 6, is the nearest to it.]

[Footnote 119: So Alcinous, c. 29. The other statements in this sentence seem to be Aristotle’s rather than Plato’s. Cf. Diog. Laert., V, _vit. Arist._, c. 13, where he describes the good things of the soul, the body and of external things respectively.]

[Footnote 120: Alcinous, cc. 28, 29.]

[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, c. 27.]

[Footnote 122: _Ibid._, c. 29.]

[Footnote 123: _Ibid._, c. 26. The passage about the choice [of virtue] is in the _Republic_, X, 617 C. Hippolytus had evidently not read the original, which says that according as a man does or does not choose virtue, so he will have more or less of it.]

[Footnote 124: Alcinous, c. 30.]

[Footnote 125: This passage is not in the _Republic_, but in the _Clitopho_, as to Plato’s authorship of which there are doubts. Cruice quotes the Greek text from Roeper in a note on p. 38 of his text.]

[Footnote 126: Alcinous, c. 30.]

[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, c. 29.]

[Footnote 128: “Substance” (οὐσία) and “accident” (συμβεβηκός) are defined by Aristotle in the _Metaphysica_, Bk. IV, cc. 8, 9 respectively. The definitions in no way bear the interpretation that Hippolytus here puts on them. In the _Categories_, which, whether by Aristotle or not, are not referred to by him in any of his extant works, it is said (c. 4) that “of things in complex enunciated, each signifies _either_ Substance or Quantity, or Quality or Relation, or Where or When, or Position, or Possession, or Action, or Passion.” It is from this that Hippolytus probably took the statement in our text. The illustrations are in part found in _Metaphysica_, c. 4.]

[Footnote 129: The famous “Quintessence.” So Aetius, _De Plac. Phil._, Bk. I, c. 1, § 38. But see Diog. Laert. in next note.]

[Footnote 130: This is practically _verbatim_ from Diog. Laert., V, _vit. Arist._, c. 13.]

[Footnote 131: Hippolytus gives as is usual with him a more detailed account of Aristotle’s doctrines on these points later. (See Book VII, II, pp. 62 ff. _infra_.) He there admits that he cannot say exactly what was Aristotle’s doctrine about the soul. He also refers to books of Aristotle on Providence and the like which, _teste_ Cruice, no longer exist. Cf. Macmahon’s note on same page (p. 272 of Clark’s edition).]

[Footnote 132: ἐπὶ τὸ συλλογιστικώτερον τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ηὔξησαν. _Syllogisticæ artis expolitione philosophiam locupletarunt._]

[Footnote 133: Prof. Arnold in his lucid book on _Roman Stoicism_ (Cambridge, 1911, p. 219, n. 4) quotes this as a genuine Stoic doctrine. But Diog. Laert., VII, _vit. Zeno_, c. 68, represents Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Posidonius as agreeing that principles and elements differ from one another in being respectively indestructible and destroyed, and because elements are bodies while principles have none. For the Stoic idea of God, see _op. cit._, c. 70. So Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_, Bk. I, cc. 8, 18, makes Zeno say that the cosmos is God, but in the _Academics_, II, 41 that Aether is the Supreme God, with which doctrine, he says, nearly all Stoics agree. Perhaps Hippolytus is here quoting Clement of Alexandria, _Stromateis_, VI, 71, who says that the Stoics dare to make the God of all things “a corporeal spirit.” For the Stoic doctrine of Providence, see Diog. Laert., _vit. Zeno_, c. 70.]

[Footnote 134: ποιῶν καὶ τὸ αὐτεξούσιον μετὰ τῆς ἀνάγκης οἷον τῆς εἱμαρμένης. Τὸ αὐτεξούσιον is the recognized expression for free will. Note the difference between ἀνάγκη, “compulsion,” and εἱμαρμένη, “destiny.” For the Stoic doctrine of Fate, see Diog. Laert., _vit. cit._, c. 74.]

[Footnote 135: Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, c. 84.]

[Footnote 136: From ψῦξις, “cooling”--a bad pun.]

[Footnote 137: It is extremely doubtful whether the metempsychosis ever formed part of Stoic doctrine.]

[Footnote 138: Zeno and Cleanthes both accepted the ecpyrosis. See Diog. Laert., _ubi cit._, c. 70. The same author says that Panætius said that the cosmos was imperishable.]

[Footnote 139: σῶμα διὰ σώματος μὲν χωρεῖν, _corpusque per corpus migrare_, Cr. Macmahon inserts a “not” in the sentence, but without authority. The Stoic resurrection assumed that in the new world created out of the ashes of the old, individuals would take the same place as in this last. See Arnold, _op. cit._, p. 193 for authorities.]

[Footnote 140: ἀτόμοι, “that cannot be cut.” The rest of this sentence is taken from Diog. Laert., X, _vit. Epicur._, c. 24, and is quoted there from Epicurus’ treatise on Nature.]

[Footnote 141: With the exception of the Deity’s seat in the intercosmic spaces and the idea that the souls of men consist of blood, all the above opinions of Epicurus are to be found in Diog. Laert., X, _vit. Epic._]

[Footnote 142: οὐ μᾶλλον, “not rather.”]

[Footnote 143: See n. on p. 49 _supra_. The doctrines here given are those of the Sceptics, and are to be found in Diog. Laert., IX, _vit. Pyrrho_, c. 79 ff. and in Sextus Empiricus, _Hyp. Pyrrho_, I, 209 ff. Diog. Laert. quotes from Ascanius of Abdera that Pyrrho introduced the dogma of incomprehensibility, and Hippolytus seems to have copied this without noticing that he has said the same thing about Xenophanes.]

[Footnote 144: Diog. Laert., I, _Prooem._, c. 1, mentions both Gymnosophists and Druids, but if he ever gave any account of their teaching it must be in the part of the book which is lost. Clem. Alex., _Stromateis_, I, c. 15, describes the two classes of Gymnosophists as Sarmanæ and Brachmans. The Sarmanæ or Samanæi (Shamans?) seem the nearer of the two to the Brachmans of our text.]

[Footnote 145: ἀκροδρύοι, hard-shelled fruit such as acorns or chestnuts.]

[Footnote 146: Roeper suggests the Ganges.]

[Footnote 147: Megasthenes, for whom see Strabo V, 712, differs from Hippolytus in making the abstinence of the Gymnosophists endure for thirty-seven years only.]

[Footnote 148: Nothing has yet been said about any bank.]

[Footnote 149: The whole of this sentence is corrupt. Macmahon following Roeper would read: “This discourse whom they name God they affirm to be incorporeal, but enveloped in a body outside himself, just as if one carried a covering of sheepskin to have it seen; but having stripped off the body in which he is enveloped, he no longer appears visibly to the naked eye.”]

[Footnote 150: ἐγείρας τρόπαιον, lit., “raised a trophy.”]

[Footnote 151: θεολογοῦσι. Eusebius, _Præp. Ev._, uses the word in this sense. For the Dandamis and Calanus stories, see Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk. VII, cc. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 152: This is quite unintelligible as it stands. It probably means that the Brachmans worship the light of which the Sun is the garment, and that they think they are united with it when temporarily freed from the body. Is he confusing them on the one hand with the Yogis, whose burial trick is referred to later in connection with Simon Magus, and on the other with some Zoroastrian or fire-worshipping sect of Central Asia?]

[Footnote 153: ὃς ... ἐκεῖ χωρήσας αἴτιος τούτοις ταύτης τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἐγένετο. Does the ἐκεῖ mean Galatia, whose inhabitants were Celts by origin? Hippolytus has probably copied the sentence without understanding it.]

[Footnote 154: Hesiod is treated by Aristotle, _Metaphysica_, Bk. II, c. 15, as one who philosophizes, which perhaps accounts for the introduction of his name here.]

[Footnote 155: διδαχθῆναι, _ut se edocerent_, Cr. So Macmahon. The context, however, plainly requires that it is Hesiod and not the Muse who is to be taught. The rendering of poetry into prose is seldom satisfactory, so I have ventured to give here the version of Elton, which is as close to the original as it is poetic in form.]

[Footnote 156: ὡς στέφανον δάσσαντο.]

[Footnote 157: Αἰθήρ τε καὶ Ἡμέρη. One would prefer to keep the word “Aether,” which is hardly “sunshine.”]

[Footnote 158: ἶσον ἑαυτῇ.]

[Footnote 159: τὰ μυστικὰ. The expression generally used for Mysteries such as those of Eleusis. Either he employs it here to include the tricks of the magicians described in Book IV, or he did not mean to describe these last when the sentence was written, but to go instead straight from the astrologers to the heresies. The last alternative seems the more probable.]

[Footnote 160: ἀδρανῆ, _infirmas_, Cr.]

[Footnote 161: The main question which arises on this First Book of our text is, What were the sources from which Hippolytus drew the opinions he here summarizes? Diels, who has taken much pains over the matter, thinks that his chief source was the epitome that Sotion of Alexandria made from Heraclides. As we have seen, however, Diogenes Laertius is responsible for a fair number of Hippolytus’ statements, especially concerning the opinions of those to whom he gives little space. Certain phrases seem taken directly from Theophrastus or from whatever author it was that Simplicius used in his commentaries on Aristotle, and the likeness between Alcinous’ summary of Plato’s doctrines and those of our author is too close to be accidental. It therefore seems most probable that Hippolytus did not confine himself to any one source, but borrowed from several. This would, after all, be the natural course for a lecturer as distinguished from a writer to adopt, and goes some way therefore towards confirming the theory as to the origin of the book stated in the Introduction.]

BOOKS II AND III

(These are entirely missing, no trace of them having been found attached to any of the four codices of Book I or to the present text of Books IV to X. We know that such books must have once existed, as at the end of Book IV (p. 117 _infra_) the author tells us that all the famous opinions of earthly philosophy have been included by him in the preceding _four_ books, of which as has been said only Books I and IV have come down to us.

Our only ground for conjecture as to the contents of Books II and III is to be found in Hippolytus’ statement at the end of Book I, that he will _first_ make public the mystic rites[1] and then the fancies of certain philosophers as to stars and magnitudes. As the promise in the last words of the sentence seems to be fulfilled in Book IV, where he gives not only the method of the astrologers of his time, but also the calculations of the Greek astronomers as to the relative distances of the heavenly bodies, it may be presumed that this was preceded and not followed by a description of the Mysteries more elaborate and fuller than the casual allusions to them which appear in Book V. So, too, in Chap. 5 of the same Book IV, which he himself describes in the heading as a “Recapitulation” of what has gone before, he refers to certain dogmas of the Persians and the Babylonians as to the nature of God, which have certainly not been mentioned in any other part of the book which has come down to us. So, again, at the beginning of Book X, which purports to be a summary of the whole work, he tells us that having now gone through the “labyrinth of heresies,” it will be shown that the Truth is not derived from “the wisdom (philosophy) of the Greeks, the secret mysteries of the Egyptians,[2] the fallacies of the astrologers, or the demon-inspired ravings of the Babylonians.” The Greek philosophy and astrological fallacies are dealt with at sufficient length in Books I and IV respectively, but nothing of importance is said in these or elsewhere in the work as to the mysteries of the “Egyptians,” by whom he probably means the worshippers of the Alexandrian divinities, and nothing at all as to Babylonian demonolatry or magic. It is quite true that he follows this up immediately by the statement that he has included the tenets of all the wise men among the _Greeks_ in four books, and the doctrines of the heretics in five; but it has been explained in the Introduction (pp. 18 ff. _supra_) that there are reasons why the summarizer’s recollection of the earlier books may not be verbally accurate, nor does he say that the description of the philosophic and heretical teachings exhausted the contents of the first four books. On the whole, therefore, Cruice appears to be justified in his conclusion that the missing books contained an account of the “Egyptian” Mysteries and of “the sacred sciences of the Babylonians.”)[3]

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: τὰ μυστικά.]

[Footnote 2: Αἰγυπτίων δόγματα ... ὡς ἄρρητα διδαχθείς.]

[Footnote 3: M. Adhémar d’Alès in his work _La Théologie de St. Hippolyte_, Paris, 1906, argues that the existing text of Book IV contains large fragments of the missing Books II and III. His argument is chiefly founded on the supposed excessive length of Book IV, although as a fact Book V is in Cruice’s pagination some 20 pages longer than this and Book VI, 10. Apart from this, it seems very doubtful if any author would describe the arithmomantic and arithmetical nonsense in Book IV as either μυστικά or δόγματα ἄρρητα, and it is certain that he cannot be alluding, when he speaks of the Βαβυλωνίων ἀλογίστῳ μανίᾳ δι’ ἐν(εργί)ας δαιμόνων καταπλαγείς, to the jugglery in the same book, which he there attributes not to the agency of demons but to the tricks of charlatans.]