Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.2

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.

Summary: Geometry begins from the indivisible point, from which all figures are generated.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 124

Γεγόνασιν ἀριθμητικοὶ καὶ γεωμέτραι, οἷς μάλιστα τὰς ἀρχὰς παρεσχηκέναι δοκεῖ πρῶτος Πυθαγόρας· καὶ οὗτοι τῶν ἀριθμῶν εἰς ἄπειρον ἀεὶ προχωρεῖν δυναμένων τῷ πολυπλασιασμῷ καὶ τοῖς σχήμασι τὰς πρώτας ἔλαβον ἀρχὰς οἱονεὶ θεωρητὰς μόνῳ τῷ λόγῳ. Γεωμετρίας γάρ, ὥς ἐστιν ἐνιδεῖν, σημεῖον ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ ἀμερές, ἀπʼ ἐκείνου δὲ τοῦ σημείου τῇ τέχνῃ ἡ τῶν ἀπείρων σχημάτων ἀπὸ τοῦ σημείου γένεσις εὑρίσκεται.

English · Claude translation

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.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 124 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.51.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/51/2/).