Chapter III: Part I: Sources of Information (2)

3. And she it was at that time who was possessed by the Greeks and
Trojans; and that both in the night of time before the world
existed, and after its existence, by the invisible Powers she had
wrought things of a like nature. "And she it is who is now with me,
and on her account have I descended. And she was looking for my
coming. For she is the Thought,[46] called Helen in Homer." And it
was on this account that Homer was compelled to portray her as
standing on a tower, and by means of a torch revealing to the
Greeks the plot of the Phrygians. And by the torch, he delineated,
as I said, the manifestation of the light from above. On which
account also the wooden horse in Homer was devised, which the
Greeks think was made for a distinct purpose, whereas the sorcerer
maintained that this is the ignorance of the Gentiles, and that
like as the Phrygians when they dragged it along in ignorance drew
on their own destruction, so also the Gentiles, that is to say
people who are "without my wisdom," through ignorance, draw ruin on
themselves. Moreover the impostor said that Athena again was
identical with what they called Thought, making use forsooth of the
words of the holy apostle Paul--changing the truth into his own
lie--to wit: "Put on the breastplate of faith and the helmet of
salvation, and the greaves and sword and buckler";[47] and that all
this was in the mimes of Philistion,[48] the rogue!--words uttered
by the apostle with firm reasoning and faith of holy conversation,
and the power of the divine and heavenly word--turning them further
into a joke and nothing more. For what does he say? That he
(Philistion) arranged all these things in a mysterious manner into
types of Athena. Wherefore again, in making known the woman with
him whom he had taken from Tyre and who had the same name as Helen
of old, he spoke as I have told you above, calling her by all those
names, Thought, and Athena, and Helen and the rest. "And on her
account," he says, "I descended. And this is the 'lost sheep'
written of in the Gospel." Moreover, he left to his followers an
image, his own presumably, and they worship it under the form of
Zeus; and he left another in like manner of Helen in the guise of
Athena, and his dupes worship them.

4. And he enjoined mysteries of obscenity and--to set it forth more
seriously--of the sheddings of bodies, _emissionum virorom,
feminarum menstruorum_, and that they should be gathered up for
mysteries in a most filthy collection; that these were the
mysteries of life, and of the most perfect Gnôsis--a practice which
anyone who has understanding from God would most naturally consider
to be most filthy conduct and death rather than life. And he
supposes names for the Dominions and Principalities, and says there
are different heavens, and sets forth Powers for each firmament and
heaven, and tricks them out with barbarous names, and says that no
man can be saved in any other fashion than by learning this
mystagogy, and how to offer such sacrifices to the Universal Father
through these Dominions and Principalities. And he says that this
world (aeon) was constructed defectively by Dominions and
Principalities of evil. And he considers that corruption and
destruction are of the flesh alone, but that there is a
purification of souls and that, only if they are established in
initiation by means of his misleading Gnôsis. This is the beginning
of the so-called Gnostics. And he pretended that the Law was not of
God, but of the left-hand Power, and that the Prophets were not
from the Good God but from this or the other Power. And he lays it
down for each of them as he pleases: the Law was of one, David of
another, Isaiah of another, Ezekiel again of another, and ascribes
each of the Prophets to some one Dominion. And all of them were
from the left-hand Power and outside the Perfection,[49] and every
one that believed in the _Old Testament_ was subject to death.

5. But this doctrine is overturned by the truth itself. For if he
were the Great Power of God, and the harlot with him the Holy
Spirit, as he himself says, let him say what is the name of the
Power or in what word[50] he discovered the epithet for the woman
and nothing for himself at all. And how and at what time is he
found at Rome successively paying back his debt, when in the midst
of the city of the Romans the miserable fellow fell down and died?
And in what scripture did Peter prove to him that he had neither
lot nor share in the heritage of the fear of God? And could the
world not have its existence in the Good God, when all the good
were chosen by him? And how could it be a left-hand Power which
spake in the Law and Prophets, when it has preached the coming of
the Christ, the Good God, and forbids mean things? And how could
there not be one divine nature and the same spirit of the _New_ and
_Old Testament_, when the Lord said: "I am not come to destroy the
Law, but to fulfil it"?[51] And that He might show that the Law was
declared through Him and was given through Moses, and that the
grace of the Gospel has been preached through himself and his
carnal presence, He said to the Jews: "If ye believe Moses, ye
should also believe me; for he wrote about me."[52] There are many
other arguments also to oppose to the contention of the sorcerer.
For how will obscene things give life, if it were not a conception
of daemons? When the Lord himself answers in the Gospel to those
who say unto him: "If such is the case of the man and the woman, it
is not good to marry." But He said unto them: "All do not hold
this; for there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the
sake of the kingdom of the heavens."[53] And He showed that
natural abstinence from union is the gift of the kingdom of the
heavens; and again in another place He says with respect to
righteous marriage--which Simon of his own accord basely corrupting
treats according to his own desires--"Whom God has joined together
let no man put asunder."[54]

6. And how unaware is again the vagabond that he confutes himself
by his own babbling, not knowing what he gives out? For after
saying that the Angels were produced by him through his Thought, he
goes on to say that he changed his form in every heaven, to escape
their notice in his descent. Consequently he avoided them through
fear. And how did the babbler fear the Angels whom he had himself
made? And how will not the dissemination of his error be found by
the intelligent to be instantly refuted by everyone, when the
scripture says: "In the beginning[55] God made the heaven and the
earth"?[56] And in unison with this word, the Lord in the Gospel
says, as though to his own Father: "O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth."[57] If, therefore, the maker of heaven and earth is
naturally God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, all that the
slanderer Simon says is vain; to wit, the defective production of
the world by the Angels, and all the rest he has babbled about in
addition to his world of Daemons, and he has deceived those who
have been led away by him.

ix. Hieronymus (In _Matthaeum_, IV. xxiv. 5). Text: _S. Eusebii Hieronymi Comment._; Migne _Patrol. Grec._, VII. col. 176.

Of whom there is one Simon, a Samaritan, whom we read of in the
_Acts of the Apostles_, who said he was some Great Power. And among
the rest of the things written in his volumes, he proclaimed as
follows:

"I am the Word of God; I am the glorious one, I the Paraclete, the
Almighty, I the whole of God."

x. Theodoretus _(Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium_, I. i.). Text: _Opera Omnia_ (ex recensione Jacobi Simondi, denuo edidit Joann. Ludov. Schulze); Halae, 1769.

Now Simon, the Samaritan magician, was the first minister of his
(the Daemon's)[58] evil practices who arose. Who, making his base
of operations from Gittha, which is a village of Samaria, and
having rushed to the height of sorcery, at first persuaded many,
by the wonder-working he wrought, to attend his school, and call
him some divine Power. But afterwards seeing the apostles
accomplishing wonder-workings that were really true and divine, and
bestowing on those who came to them the grace of the Spirit,
thinking himself also worthy to receive equal power from them, when
great Peter detected his villainous intention, and bade him heal
the incurable wounds of his mind with the drugs of repentance, he
immediately returned to his former evil-doing, and leaving Samaria,
since it had received the seeds of salvation, ran off to those who
had not yet been tilled by the apostles, in order that, having
deceived with his magic arts those who were easy to capture, and
having enslaved them in the bonds of their own legendary lore,[59]
he might make the teachings of the apostles difficult to be
believed.

But the divine grace armed great Peter against the fellow's
madness. For following after him, he dispelled his abominable
teaching like mist and darkness, and showed forth the rays of the
light of truth. But for all that the thrice wretched fellow, in
spite of his public exposure, did not cease from his working
against the truth, until he came to Rome, in the reign of Claudius
Caesar. And he so astonished the Romans with his sorceries that he
was honoured with a brazen pillar. But on the arrival of the divine
Peter, he stripped him naked of his wings of deception, and
finally, having challenged him to a contest in wonder-working, and
having shown the difference between the divine grace and sorcery,
in the presence of the assembled Romans, caused him to fall
headlong from a great height by his prayers and captured the
eye-witnesses of the wonder for salvation.

This (Simon) gave birth to a legend somewhat as follows. He started
with supposing some Boundless Power; and he called this the
Universal Root.[60] And he said that this was Fire, which had a
twofold energy, the manifested and the concealed. The world
moreover was generable, and had been generated from the manifested
energy of the Fire. And first from it (the manifested energy) were
emanated three pairs, which he also called Roots. And the first
(pair) he called Mind and Thought, and the second, Voice and
Intelligence, and the third, Reason and Reflection. Whereas he
called himself the Boundless Power, and (said) that he had appeared
to the Jews as the Son, and to the Samaritans he had descended as
the Father, and among the rest of the nations he had gone up and
down as the Holy Spirit.

And having made a certain harlot, who was called Helen, live with
him, he pretended that she was his first Thought, and called her
the Universal Mother, (saying) that through her he had made both
the Angels and Archangels; and that the world was fabricated by the
Angels. Then the Angels in envy cast her down among them, for they
did not wish, he says, to be called fabrications. For which cause,
forsooth, they induced her into many female bodies and into that of
the famous Helen, through whom the Trojan War arose.

It was on her account also, he said, that he himself had descended,
to free her from the chains they had laid upon her, and to offer to
men salvation through a system of knowledge peculiar to himself.

And that in his descent he had undergone transformation, so as not
to be known to the Angels that manage the establishment of the
world. And that he had appeared in Judaea as a man, although he was
not a man, and that he had suffered, though not at all suffering,
and that the Prophets were the ministers of the Angels. And he
admonished those that believed on him not to pay attention to them,
and not to tremble at the threats of the Law, but, as being free,
to do whatever they would. For it was not by good actions, but by
grace they would gain salvation.

For which cause, indeed, those of his association ventured on every
kind of licentiousness, and practised every kind of magic,
fabricating love philtres and spells, and all the other arts of
sorcery, as though in pursuit of divine mysteries. And having
prepared his (Simon's) statue in the form of Zeus, and Helen's in
the likeness of Athena, they burn incense and pour out libations
before them, and worship them as gods, calling themselves
Simonians.

III.--_The Simon of the Legends_.

The so-called Clementine Literature:

A. _Recognitiones_. Text: Rufino Aquilei Presb. Interprete (curante E.G. Gersdorf); Lipsiae, 1838.

_Homiliae_. Text: _Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta_, Vol. I. (edidit Albertus Schwegler); Tubingensis, Stuttgartiae, 1847.

B. _Constitutiones_. Text: _SS. Patrum qui Temporibus Apostolicis Floruerunt Opera_ (edidit J.B. Cotelerius); Amsteladami, 1724.

A. The priority of the two varying accounts, in the _Homilies_ and _Recognitiones_, of the same story is in much dispute, but this is a question of no importance in the present enquiry. The latest scholarship is of the opinion that "the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites."[61] The Ebionites are described as:

A sect of heretics developed from among the Judaizing Christians of
apostolic times late in the first or early in the second century.
They accepted Christianity only as a reformed Judaism, and believed
in our Blessed Lord only as a mere natural man spiritually
perfected by exact observance of the Mosaic law.[62]

Summary.[63] Clement, the hero of the legendary narrative, arrives at Caesarea Stratonis in Judaea, on the eve of a great controversy between Simon and the apostle Peter, and attaches himself to the latter as his disciple (H. II. xv; R.I. lxxvii). The history of Simon is told to Clement, in the presence of Peter, by Aquila and Nicetas--the adopted sons of a convert--who had associated with Simon.

Simon was the son of Antonius and Rachael, a Samaritan of Gittha, a village six schoeni[64] from the city of Caesarea (H.I. xxii), called a village of the Gettones (R. II. vii). It was at Alexandria that Simon perfected his studies in magic, being an adherent of John, a Hemero-baptist,[65] through whom he came to deal with religious doctrines.

John was the forerunner of Jesus, according to the method of combination or coupling.[66] Whereas Jesus had twelve disciples, as the Sun, John, the Moon, had thirty, the number of days in a lunation, or more correctly twenty-nine and a half, one of his disciples being a woman called Helen, and a woman being reckoned as half a man in the perfect number of the Triacontad, or Plerôma of the Aeons (H.I. xxiii; R. II. viii). In the _Recognitions_ the name of Helen is given as Luna in the Latin translation of Rufinus.[67]

Of all John's disciples, Simon was the favourite, but on the death of his master, he was absent in Alexandria, and so Dositheus,[68] a co-disciple, was chosen head of the school.

Simon, on his return, acquiesced in the choice, but his superior knowledge could not long remain under a bushel. One day Dositheus, becoming enraged, struck at Simon with his staff; but the staff passed through Simon's body like smoke, and Dositheus, struck with amazement, yielded the leadership to Simon and became his disciple, and shortly afterwards died (H.I. xxiv; R. II. xiii).

Aquila and Nicetas then go on to tell how Simon had confessed to them privately his love for Luna (R. II. viii), and narrate the magic achievements possessed by Simon, of which they have had proof with their own eyes. Simon can dig through mountains, pass through rocks as if they were merely clay, cast himself from a lofty mountain and be borne gently to earth, can break his chains when in prison, and cause the doors to open of their own accord, animate statues and make the eye-witness think them men, make trees grow suddenly, pass through fire unhurt, change his face or become double-faced, or turn into a sheep or goat or serpent, make a beard grow upon a boy's chin, fly in the air, become gold, make and unmake kings, have divine worship and honours paid him, order a sickle to go and reap of itself and it reaps ten times as much as an ordinary sickle (R. II. xi).

To this list of wonders the _Homilies_ add making stones into loaves, melting iron, the production of images of all kinds at a banquet; in his own house dishes are brought of themselves to him (H.I. xxxii). He makes spectres appear in the market place; when he walks out statues move, and shadows go before him which he says are souls of the dead (H. IV. iv).

On one occasion Aquila says he was present when Luna was seen looking out of all the windows of a tower on all sides at once (R. II. xi).

The most peculiar incident, however, is the use Simon is said to have made of the soul of a dead boy, by which he did many of his wonders. The incident is found in both accounts, but more fully in the _Homilies_ (I. xxv-xxx) than in the _Recognitions_ (II. xiii-xv), for which reason the text of the former is followed.

Simon did not stop at murder, as he confessed to Nicetas and Aquila "as a friend to friends." In fact he separated the soul of a boy from his body to act as a confederate in his phenomena. And this is the magical _modus operandi_. "He delineates the boy on a statue which he keeps consecrated in the inner part of the house where he sleeps, and he says that after he has fashioned him out of the air by certain divine transmutations, and has sketched his form, he returns him again to the air."

Simon explains the theory of this practice as follows:

"First of all the spirit of the man having been turned into the nature of heat draws in and absorbs, like a cupping-glass, the surrounding air; next he turns the air which comes within the envelope of spirit into water. And the air in it not being able to escape owing to the confining force of the spirit, he changed it into the nature of blood, and the blood solidifying made flesh; and so when the flesh is solidified he exhibited a man made of air and not of earth. And thus having persuaded himself of his ability to make a new man of air, he reversed the transmutations, he said, and returned him to the air."

When the converts thought that this was the soul of the person, Simon laughed and said, that in the phenomena it was not the soul, "but some daemon[69] who pretended to be the soul that took possession of people."

The coming controversy with Simon is then explained by Peter to Clement to rest on certain passages of scripture. Peter admits that there are falsehoods in the scriptures, but says that it would never do to explain this to the people. These falsehoods have been permitted for certain righteous reasons (H. III. v).

"For the scriptures declare all manner of things that no one of those who enquire unthankfully may discover the truth, but (simply) what he wishes to find" (H. III. x).

In the lengthy explanation which follows, however, on the passages Simon is going to bring forward, such as the mention of a plurality of gods, and God's hardening men's hearts, Peter states that in reality all the passages which speak against God are spurious additions, but this is to be guarded as an esoteric secret.

Nevertheless in the public controversy which follows, this secret is made public property, in order to meet Simon's declaration: "I say that there are many gods, but one God of all these gods, incomprehensible and unknown to all" (R. II. xxxviii); and again: "My belief is that there is a Power of immeasurable and ineffable Light, whose greatness is held to be incomprehensible, a power which the maker of the world even does not know, nor does Moses the lawgiver, nor your master Jesus" (R. II. xlix).

A point of interest to be noticed is that Peter challenges Simon to substantiate his statements by quotations either from the scriptures of the Jews, or from some they had not heard of, or from those of the Greeks, or from _his own_ scriptures (R. II. xxxviii).

Simon argues that finding the God of the Law imperfect, he concludes this is not the supreme God. After a wordy harangue of Peter, Simon is said to have been worsted by Peter's threatening to go to Simon's bed-chamber and question the soul of the murdered boy. Simon flies to Tyre (H.) or Tripolis (R.), and Peter determines to pursue him among the Gentiles.

The two accounts here become exceedingly contradictory and confused. According to the _Homilies_, Simon flees from Tyre to Tripolis, and thence further to Syria. The main dispute takes place at Laodicaea on the unity of God (XVI. i). Simon appeals to the _Old Testament_ to show that there are many gods (XVI. iv); shows that the scriptures contradict themselves (XVI. ix); accuses Peter of using magic and teaching doctrines different to those taught by Christ (XVII. ii-iv); asserts that Jesus is not consistent with himself (XVII. v); that the maker of the world is not the highest God (XVIII. i); and declares the Ineffable Deity (XVIII. iv).[70] Peter of course refutes him (XVIII. xii-xiv), and Simon retires.

The last incident of interest takes place at Antioch. Simon stirs up the people against Peter by representing him as an impostor. Friends of Peter set the authorities on Simon's track, and he has to flee. At Laodicaea he meets Faustinianus (R.), or Faustus (H.), the father of Clement, who rebukes him (H. XIX. xxiv); and so he changes the face of Faustinianus into an exact likeness of his own that he may be taken in his place (H. XX. xii; R.X. liii). Peter sends the transformed Faustinianus to Antioch, who, in the guise of Simon, makes a confession of imposture and testifies to the divine mission of Peter. Peter accordingly enters Antioch in triumph.

The story of Simon in the _Apostolic Constitutions_ is short and taken from the _Acts_, and to some extent from the Clementines, finishing up, however, with the mythical death of Simon at Rome, owing to the prayers of Peter. Simon is here said to be conducted by daemons and to have flown ([Greek: hiptato]) upwards. The details of this magical feat are given variously elsewhere.[71]

The only point of real interest is a vague reference to Simonian literature (VI. xvi), in a passage which runs as follows:

For we know that the followers of Simon and Cleobius having
composed poisonous books in the name of Christ and his disciples,
carry them about for the deception of you who have loved Christ and
us his servants.[72]

So end the most important of the legends. To these, however, must be added others of a like nature of which the scene of action is laid at Rome in the time of Nero.[73] I have not thought it worth while to refer to the original texts for these utterly apocryphal and unauthenticated stories, but simply append a very short digest from the excellent summary of Dr. Salmon, the Regius Professor of Divinity in Dublin University, as given in Smith and Wace's _Dictionary of Christian Biography_.[74]

The Greek _Acts of Peter and Paul_ give details of the conflict and represent both apostles as having taken part in it. Simon and Peter are each required to raise a dead body to life. Simon, by his magic, makes the head move, but as soon as he leaves the body it again becomes lifeless. Peter, however, by his prayers effects a real resurrection. Both are challenged to divine what the other is planning. Peter prepares blessed bread, and takes the emperor into the secret. Simon cannot guess what Peter has been doing, and so raises hell-hounds who rush on Peter, but the presentation of the blessed bread causes them to vanish.

In the _Acts of Nereus and Achilleus_,[75] another version of the story is given. Simon had fastened a great dog at his door in order to prevent Peter entering. Peter by making the sign of the cross renders the dog tame towards himself, but so furious against his master Simon that the latter had to leave the city in disgrace.

Simon, however, still retains the emperor's favour by his magic power. He pretends to permit his head to be cut off, and by the power of glamour appears to be decapitated, while the executioner really cuts off the head of a ram.

The last act of the drama is the erection of a wooden tower in the Campus Martius, and Simon is to ascend to heaven in a chariot of fire. But, through the prayers of Peter, the two daemons who were carrying him aloft let go their hold and so Simon perishes miserably.

Dr. Salmon connects this with the story, told by Suetonius[76] and Dio Chrysostom,[77] that Nero caused a wooden theatre to be erected in the Campus, and that a gymnast who tried to play the part of Icarus fell so near the emperor as to bespatter him with blood.

So much for these motley stories; here and there instructive, but mostly absurd. I shall now endeavour to sift out the rubbish from this patristic and legendary heap, and perhaps we shall find more of value than at present appears.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, art. "Acts of the Apostles."]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 3: Lit. powers.]

[Footnote 4: The Romans.]

[Footnote 5: Claudius was the fourth of the Caesars, and reigned from A.D. 41-54.]

[Footnote 6: Lit., stood on a roof; an Eastern metaphor.]

[Footnote 7: The technical term for this transmigration, used by Pythagoreans and others, is [Greek: metangismos], the pouring of water from one vessel ([Greek: angos]) into another.]

[Footnote 8: This famous lyric poet, whose name was Tisias, and honorific title Stesichorus, was born about the middle of the seventh century B.C., in Sicily. The story of his being deprived of sight by Castor and Pollux for defaming their sister Helen is mentioned by many classical writers. The most familiar quotation is the Horatian (_Ep._ xvii. 42-44):

Infamis Helenae Castor offensus vicem
Fraterque magni Castoris victi prece.
Adempta vati redidere lumina.

[Footnote 9: That is to say, the heretics.]

[Footnote 10: In a preceding part of the book against the "Magicians."]

[Footnote 11: _Deuteronomy_, iv. 24.]

[Footnote 12: Heracleitus of Ephesus flourished about the end of the sixth century B.C. He was named the obscure from the difficulty of his writings.]

[Footnote 13: I put the few direct quotations we have from Simon in italics.]

[Footnote 14: _Isaiah_, v. 7.]

[Footnote 15: _I Peter_, i. 24.]

[Footnote 16: Empedocles of Agrigentum, in Sicily, flourished about B.C. 444.]

[Footnote 17: [Greek: phronaesis], consciousness?]

[Footnote 18: Syzygies.]

[Footnote 19: _Isaiah_, i. 2.]

[Footnote 20: _I Corinth._, xi. 32.]

[Footnote 21: [Greek: to maeketi ginomenon.]]

[Footnote 22: See _Jeremiah_, i. 5.]

[Footnote 23: _Genesis_, ii, 10.]

[Footnote 24: Veins and arteries are said not to have been distinguished by ancient physiologists.]

[Footnote 25: A lacuna unfortunately occurs here in the text. The missing words probably identified "that which is commonly called by everyone the navel" with the umbilical cord.]

[Footnote 26: This is omitted by Miller in the first Oxford edition.]

[Footnote 27: _Odyssey_, x. 304, _seqq._]

[Footnote 28: [Greek: logos].]

[Footnote 29: Cf. _Isaiah_, ii. 4.]

[Footnote 30: Cf. _Luke_, iii. 9.]

[Footnote 31: Or adorning.]

[Footnote 32: _Genesis_, iii. 24.]

[Footnote 33: [Greek: logos]; also reason.]

[Footnote 34: [Greek: antistoichountes]; used in Xenophon (_Ana._ v. 4, 12) of two bands of dancers facing each other in rows or pairs.]

[Footnote 35: He who has stood, stands and will stand.]

[Footnote 36: Thought.]

[Footnote 37: The Middle Distance.]

[Footnote 38: There is a lacuna in the text here.]

[Footnote 39: [Greek: dia taes idias epignoseos.]]

[Footnote 40: Undergo the passion.]

[Footnote 41: [Greek: paredrous] C.W. King calls these "Assessors." (_The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 70.)]

[Footnote 42: This is presumably meant for a grim patristic joke.]

[Footnote 43: A medicinal drug used by the ancients, especially as a specific against madness.]

[Footnote 44: The conducting of souls to or from the invisible world.]

[Footnote 45: [Greek: prounikos: prouneikos] is one who bears burdens, a carrier; in a bad sense it means lewd.]

[Footnote 46: Or the conception (of the mind).]

[Footnote 47: Cf. 1 _Thess_., v. 8.]

[Footnote 48: A famous actor and mime writer who flourished in the time of Augustus (circa A.D. 7); there are extant some doubtful fragments of Philistion containing moral sentiments from the comic poets.]

[Footnote 49: [Greek: plaeroma]]

[Footnote 50: Scripture.]

[Footnote 51: _Matth._, v. 17.]

[Footnote 52: _John_, v. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 53: _Matth._, xix. 10-12.]

[Footnote 54: _Matth._, xix. 6.]

[Footnote 55: [Greek _archae_] the same word is translated "dominion" when applied to the aeons of Simon.]

[Footnote 56: _Genesis_, i. 1.]

[Footnote 57: _Matth._, xi. 25.]

[Footnote 58: "The all-evil Daemon, the avenger of men," of the Prologue.]

[Footnote 59: Mythologies.]

[Footnote 60: "Rootage," rather, to coin a word. [Greek: rizoma] must be distinguished from [Greek: riza], a root, the word used a few sentences later.]

[Footnote 61: _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ (Ed. Smith and Wace), art. "Clementine Literature," I. 575.]

[Footnote 62: _Dictionary of Sects, Heresies_, etc. (Ed. Blunt), art. "Ebionites."]

[Footnote 63: The two accounts are combined in the following digest, and in the references H. stands for the _Homiles_ and R. for the _Recognitions_.]

[Footnote 64: Some twenty-three miles.]

[Footnote 65: We have little information of the Hemero-baptists, or Day-baptists. They are said to have been a sect of the Jews and to have been so called for daily performing certain ceremonial ablutions (Epiph., _Contra Haer._, I. 17). It is conjectured that they were a sect of the Pharisees who agreed with the Sadducees in denying the resurrection. _The Apostolic Constitutions_ (VI. vii) tell us of the Hemero-baptists, that "unless they wash themselves every day they do not eat, nor will they use a bed, dish, bowl, cup, or seat, unless they have purified it with water."]

[Footnote 66: [Greek: kata ton taes suzugias logon.]]

[Footnote 67: This has led to the conjecture that the translation was made from the false reading Selene instead of Helene, while Bauer has used it to support his theory that Justin and those who have followed him confused the Phoenician worship of solar and lunar divinities of similar names with the worship of Simon and Helen.]

[Footnote 68: This is not to be confused with the Dositheus of Origen, who claimed to be a Christ, says Matter (_Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme_, Tom. i. p. 218, n. 1st. ed., 1828).]

[Footnote 69: An elemental.]

[Footnote 70: [Greek: pataer en aporraetois].]

[Footnote 71: Hegesippus (_De Bello Judaico_, iii. 2), Abdias (_Hist._, i, towards the end), and Maximus Taurinensis (_Patr. VI. Synodi ad Imp. Constant._, Act. 18), say that Simon flew like Icarus; whereas in Arnobius (_Contra Gentes_, ii) and the Arabic Preface to Council of Nicaea there is talk of a chariot of fire, or a car that he had constructed.]

[Footnote 72: Cotelerius in a note (i. 347, 348) refers the reader to the passages in the _Recognitions_ and in Jerome's _Commentary on Matthew_, which I have already quoted. He also says that the author of the book, _De Divinis Nominibus_ (C. 6), speaks of "the controversial sentences of Simon" ([Greek: Simonos antirraetikoi logoi]). The author is the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and I shall quote later on some of these sentences, though from a very uncertain source. Cotelerius also refers to the Arabic Preface to the Nicaean Council. The text referred to will be found in the Latin translation of Abrahamus Echellensis, given in Labbé's _Concilia (Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Collectio_, edd. Phil. Labbaeus et Gabr. Cossartius, S.J., Florentiae, 1759, Tom. ii, p. 1057, col. 1), and runs as follows:

"Those traitors (the Simonians) fabricated for themselves a gospel,
which they divided into four books, and called it the 'Book of the
Four Angles and Points of the World.' All pursue magic zealously,
and defend it, wearing red and rose-coloured threads round the neck
in sign of a compact and treaty entered into with the devil their
seducer."

As to the books of the followers of Cleobius we have no further information.]

[Footnote 73: A.D. 54-68.]

[Footnote 74: Art. "Simon Magus," Vol. IV. p. 686.]

[Footnote 75: Bolland, _Acta SS._ May iii. 9.]

[Footnote 76: vi. 12.]

[Footnote 77: _Orat._ xxi. 9.]