Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/505

 ii. 5) refers to the same work as known in his time under the name of the Little Labyrinth and attributed by some to Origen; though Theodoret considers this assumption disproved by the difference of style. Photius (Cod. 48) ascribes to Caius a book called the Labyrinth, which we have identified with the summary of the Elenchus. He does not mention the Little Labyrinth, but adds that it was said that Caius had composed a special treatise against the heresy of Artemon. We have no reason to think that the Labyrinth of Photius and the Little Labyrinth of Theodoret were the same; on the contrary, the latter was probably identical with the treatise against Artemon, which Photius expressly distinguishes from his Labyrinth. Internal evidence, and the fact that we have some external evidence for the authorship of Caius and none for that of Hippolytus, cause us to give our verdict for Caius.

(8) The Work against Bero and Helix.—A certain Anastasius of the 7th cent. is the earliest authority for designating Hippolytus as bp. of Portus. He so calls him in sending to Rome extracts made by him at Constantinople from what purported to be a treatise of Hippolytus, περὶ θεολογίας καὶ σαρκώσεως, against the above-named heretics, his adversaries having hindered Anastasius from getting possession of the entire work. Döllinger (p. 295) has given conclusive reasons for regarding this as no work of Hippolytus, but as a forgery not earlier than the 6th cent. The technical language of these fragments is also that of the controversies of the 5th cent., and quite unlike that of the age of Hippolytus. It was doubtless Anastasius who supplied another passage from the discourse περὶ θεολογίας produced at the Lateran Council in 649.

(9) A Syriac list of the writings of Hippolytus given by Ebed Jesu, a writer of the very beginning of the: 14th cent. (Assemani, Bibl. Or. iii. 1, p. 15), contains a work whose Syriac title is translated by Ecchelensis de Regimine, by Assemani de Dispensatione. Adopting the latter rendering and taking "dispensatio" to be equivalent to οἰκονομία, we should conclude its subject to be our Lord's Incarnation. It may therefore be identical with (8). If the other rendering be adopted, the work would relate to church government, and might be identical with some part of (21).

(10) The Treatise against Marcion.—Mentioned in the catalogues of Eusebius and Jerome, but nothing of it remains.

(11) On the statue is enumerated a work περὶ τἀγαθοῦ καὶ πόθεν τὸ κακόν. This may well have been an anti-Marcionite composition, and possibly that mentioned by Eusebius (10).

(12) Defence of the Gospel and Apocalypse of St. John.—We may probably class among anti-heretical writings the work described on the chair as ὑπὲρ τοῦ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγελίου καὶ ἀποκαλύψεως, and in the list of Ebed Jesu as "a defence of the Apocalypse and Gospel of the apostle and evangelist John." The work on the Apocalypse mentioned by Jerome we take to be different, and we notice it among the exegetical works. Hippolytus in his extant remains constantly employs the Apocalypse, and his regard for it is appealed to by Andrew of Caesarea (Max. Bibl. Patr. v. 590). It has been supposed that was the writer, replied to by Hippolytus, who ascribes the Apocalypse and the Gospel to Cerinthus; but the arguments for supposing that Caius rejected the Apocalypse are inconclusive, and it is highly improbable that he, an orthodox member of the Roman church, rejected the Gospel of St. John.

(13) One argument in support of the view just referred to is that Ebed Jesu (u.s.) enumerates among the works of Hippolytus Chapters (or heads) against Caius, which, it has been conjectured, were identical with (12). But Ebed Jesu reckons the two works as distinct. What other heresy of Caius Hippolytus could have confuted is unknown.

(14) It is hard to draw the line between controversial and dogmatic books. Thus, with regard to the treatise cited by Anastasius Sinaita (Lagarde, No. 9, p. 90), περὶ ἀναστάσεως καὶ ἀφθαρσίας, which may be the same as that described on the statue as περὶ Θεοῦ καὶ σαρκὸς ἀναστάσεως and by Jerome as de Resurrectione, we cannot tell whether it was a simple explanation of Christian doctrine or directed against the errors of heretics or heathens.

(15) A controversial character more clearly belongs to another work on the same subject, a fragment of which is preserved in Syriac (Lagarde, Anal. Syr. p. 87), and contains what Stephen Gobar (Photius, Cod. 232) noted as a peculiarity of Hippolytus, found also in both his treatises against heresy, viz. that he makes Nicolas the deacon himself, and not any misunderstood saying of his, the origin of the errors of the Nicolaitanes. Here he is charged with maintaining that the resurrection has passed already and that Christians are to expect none other than that which took place when they believed and were baptized.

(16) One work at least Hippolytus specially directed to the heathen, and though this is not included in the list of Jerome he probably alludes to it (Ep. ad Magnum, i. 423) where he classes Hippolytus with others who wrote "contra gentes." On the chair we read χρονικῶν πρὸς Ἕλληνας καὶ πρὸς Πλάτωνα ἢ καὶ περὶ τοῦ παντός. We might take πρὸς Ἕλληνας as a distinct work, or with what precedes or with what follows. That the last is the true construction appears both from the title given in one of the MSS., in which a fragment is preserved, ὁ λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας ὁ ἐπιγεγραμμένος κατὰ Πλάτωνα περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς αἰτίας, and from the fact that the same fragment contains addresses to the Greeks. This, then, is evidently the treatise περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς οὐσίας, mentioned at the end of the Elenchus, and of which Photius speaks in a passage already referred to (Cod. 48). He says that the treatise was in two short books, that it shewed that Plato was inconsistent; that the Platonic philosopher Alcinous had spoken falsely and absurdly about the soul, matter, and the resurrection; and that the Jewish nation was much older than the Greek. The theory of the universe embodied in this work made all things consist of the four elements, earth, air, fire, or water. Things formed of more elements than one are subject to death by the dissolution of their component parts, but things formed of one element (e.g. angels,