Refutation of All Heresies 7.13.2

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 346–348

Αἱ δὲ Σειρῆνες λιγὺ ᾄδουσαι καὶ μουσικὸν ἠπάτων τοὺς παραπλέοντας, πείθουσαι ἡδείᾳ φωνῇ προσάγειν τοὺς ἀκροωμένους. Τοῦτο μαθόντα φασὶ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα κατακηρῶσαι τὰς ἀκοὰς τῶν ἑταίρων, ἑαυτὸν δὲ τῷ ξύλῳ προσδήσαντα παραπλεῦσαι ἀκινδύνως τὰς Σειρῆνας κατακούσαντα τῆς τούτων ᾠδῆς.

English · Claude translation

And the Sirens, singing clearly and musically, deceived those who sailed by, persuading their hearers by their sweet voice to put in to shore. They say that Odysseus, learning this, stopped the ears of his companions with wax, and having bound himself to the mast, sailed past the Sirens without danger while listening to their song.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 346–348 · 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

Homer, Od. 12.39–54 (Homer, Odyssey) · allusion, high confidence

Notes

Translation notes

Homer, Odyssey 12.39–54, 12.158–200. ξύλον, “wood,” is here the mast; Hippolytus plays on it in the next section as the wood of Christ's cross.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.13.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/13/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.13.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/13/2/).