Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.8

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, 168

Τοιγαροῦν, φησίν, ἐπὰν συνελθὼν ὁ δῆμος ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις εἰσίῃ τις ἠμφιεσμένος στολὴν ἔξαλλον, κιθάραν φέρων καὶ ψάλλων, οὕτως λέγει ᾄδων τὰ μεγάλα μυστήρια οὐκ εἰδὼς ἃ λέγει· Εἴτε Κρόνου γένος, εἴτε Διὸς μάκαρος, εἴτε Ῥέας μεγάλης, χαῖρε, τὸ κατηφὲς ἄκρισμα Ῥέας, Ἄττι· σὲ καλοῦσι μὲν Ἀσσύριοι τριπόθητον Ἄδωνιν, καλεῖ δʼ Αἴγυπτος Ὄσιριν, ἐπουράνιον μηνὸς κέρας Ἕλληνες, σοφίαν, Σαμοθρᾷκες Ἄδαμνα σεβάσμιον, Αἱμόνιοι Κορύβαντα, καὶ οἱ Φρύγες ἄλλοτε μὲν Πάπαν, ποτὲ δὲ νέκυν, ἢ θεόν, ἢ τὸν ἄκαρπον, ἢ αἰπόλον, ἢ χλοερὸν στάχυν ἀμηθέντα, ἢ ὃν πολύκαρπος ἔτικτεν ἀμύγδαλος ἀνέρα συρικτάν.

English · Claude translation

Accordingly, he says, when the people have gathered in the theaters and someone comes in dressed in a strange robe, carrying a lyre and playing, he sings thus, speaking the great mysteries without knowing what he says: "Whether you are the race of Cronus or of blessed Zeus or of great Rhea, hail, Attis, sad mutilation of Rhea. The Assyrians call you thrice-longed-for Adonis; Egypt calls you Osiris; the Greeks the heavenly horn of the moon, wisdom; the Samothracians venerable Adamna; the Haemonians Corybas; and the Phrygians sometimes Papas, sometimes corpse, or god, or the unfruitful, or goatherd, or green ear of grain reaped, or the piper whom the fruitful almond bore as a man."

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 168 · 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.

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

The hymn to Attis is otherwise unknown; its source is unidentified.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misread letter in the digital text (Λ for Α); wrong accent in the digital text): ὅ δῆμος → ὁ δῆμος; Λἱμόνιοι → Αἱμόνιοι.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.9.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/8/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.9.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/9/8/).