Hippolytus

Footnotes

^[39] The chief writers on the early heresies are: Irenæus, of the second century; Hippolytus, his pupil, of the third; Philastrius, Epiphanius, and St. Augustine, of the fourth century. The learned need scarcely be reminded of the comprehensive digest furnished by Ittigius in the preface to his dissertation on the heresies of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. A book more within the reach of the general reader is Dr. Burton’s Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age.

Chapter I.—Thales; His Physics and Theology; Founder of Greek Astronomy.

^[40] [These were: Periander of Corinth, b.c. 585; Pittacus of Mitylene, b.c. 570; Thales of Miletus, b.c. 548: Solon of Athens, b.c. 540; Chilo of Sparta, b.c. 597; Bias of Priene; Cleobulus of Lindus, b.c. 564.]

^[41] Or, “motions of the stars” (Roeper).

^[42] Or, “carried along” (Roeper).

^[43] Or,“ that which is divine.” See Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom., v. pp. 461, 463 (Heinsius and Sylburgius’ ed.). Thales, on being asked, “What is God?” “That,” replied he, “which has neither beginning nor end.”

^[44] Or, “see.”

Chapter II.—Pythagoras; His Cosmogony; Rules of His Sect; Discoverer of Physiognomy; His Philosophy of Numbers; His System of the Transmigration of Souls; Zaratas on Demons; Why Pythagoras Forbade the Eating of Beans; The Mode of Living Adopted by His Disciples.

^[45] Or, “nature.”

^[46] “And arithmetic” (added by Roeper).

^[47] Or, “and he first.”

^[48] Or, “physiognomy.”

^[49] Or, “in conformity with his hypothesis.”

^[50] Or, “the third.”

^[51] Or, “an everlasting nature;” or, “having the roots of an everlasting nature in itself,” the words “as it were” being omitted in some mss.

^[52] Or, “production.”

^[53] It should be probably, “monad, number.” The monad was with Pythagoras, and in imitation of him with Leibnitz, the highest generalization of number, and a conception in abstraction, commensurate with what we call essence, whether of matter or spirit.

^[54] Κοβισθῂ in text must be rendered “multiplied.” The formulary is self-evident: (a²)² = a⁴, (a²)³ = a⁶, (a³)³ = a⁹.

^[55] Or Thallis. Æthalides, a son of Hermes, was herald of the Argonauts, and said never to have forgotten anything. In this way his soul remembered its successive migrations into the bodies of Euphorbus, Hermotimus, Pyrrhus, and Pythagoras. (See Diogenes’ Lives, book viii. chap. i. sec. 4.)

^[56] No name occurs more frequently in the annals of Greek literature than that of Diodorus. One, however, with the title “of Eretria,” as far as the translator knows, is mentioned only by Hippolytus; so that this is likely another Diodorus to be added to the long list already existing. It may be that Diodorus Eretriensis is the same as Diodorus Crotoniates, a Pythagorean philosopher. See Fabricius’ Biblioth. Græc., lib ii. cap. iii., lib. iii. cap. xxxi.; also Meursius’ Annotations, p. 20, on Chalcidius’ Commentary on Plato’s Timæus. The article in Smith’s Dictionary is a transcript of these.

^[57] Aristoxenus is mentioned by Cicero in his Tusculan Questions, book i. chap. xviii., as having broached a theory in psychology, which may have suggested, in modern times, to David Hartley his hypothesis of sensation being the result of nerval vibrations. Cicero says of Aristoxenus, “that he was so charmed with his own harmonies, that he sought to transfer them into investigations concerning our corporeal and spiritual nature.”

^[58] Zaratas is another form of the name Zoroaster.

^[59] Or, “is a nature according to musical harmony” (preceding note); or, “The cosmical system is nature and a musical harmony.”

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