Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.3

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, 254

Οὕτως γοῦν τὸν Στησίχορον διὰ τῶν ἐπῶν λοιδορήσαντα αὐτὴν τὰς ὄψεις τυφλωθῆναι· αὖθις δέ, μεταμεληθέντος αὐτοῦ καὶ γράψαντος τὰς παλινῳδίας, ἐν αἷς ὕμνησεν αὐτήν, ἀναβλέψαι· μετενσωματουμένην δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων καὶ τῶν κάτω ἐξουσιῶν, οἳ καὶ τὸν κόσμον, φησίν, ἐποίησαν, ὕστερον ἐπὶ τέγους ἐν Τύρῳ τῆς Φοινίκης πόλει στῆναι, ἣν κατελθὼν εὗρεν.

English · Claude translation

So, at any rate, Stesichorus, who reviled her in his verses, was blinded; and afterward, when he repented and wrote the palinodes in which he praised her, he regained his sight. And being moved from body to body by the angels and the powers below, who, he says, also made the world, she later stood in a brothel in Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, where he came down and found her.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 254 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Stesichorus (Stesichorus) · allusion, high confidence

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

Stesichorus (6th century BC) wrote a palinode retracting his poem against Helen. τέγος, literally “roof,” here means a brothel.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent in the digital text): αὗθις δέ → αὖθις δέ.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.19.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/19/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.19.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/19/3/).