Refutation of All Heresies 4.31.1

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 94

Αἰγῶν δὲ κἂν ἐπιπλάσῃ τις κηρωτῇ τὰς ἀκοάς, φασὶ θνήσκειν μετʼ ὀλίγον ἀναπνεῖν κωλυομένας· ὁδὸν γὰρ αὐταῖς ταύτην εἶναι λέγουσι τοῦ διʼ ἀναπνοῆς ἑλκομένου πνεύματος. Κριὸν δὲ θνήσκειν φασίν, εἰ κατʼ ἄντικρύς τις ἀνακλάσειεν ἡλίου. Οἶκον δὲ ποιοῦσι καίεσθαι τῶν θαλαττίων τινὸς ἰχῶρι χριόμενον τοῦ καλουμένου δακτύλου.

English · Claude translation

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.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 94 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Notes

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): Αἰγῶν δὲ κἄν → Αἰγῶν δὲ κἂν.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.31.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/31/1/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.31.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/31/1/).