chains of flesh, and then for many ages being turned about through
a succession of female conditions, she became also that Helen who
proved so fatal to Priam, and after to the eyes of Stesichorus, for
she had caused his blindness on account of the insult of his poem,
and afterwards had removed it because of her pleasure at his
praise. And thus transmigrating from body to body, in the extreme
of dishonour she had stood, ticketed for hire, a Helen viler [than
her predecessor]. She was, therefore, the "lost sheep," to whom the
highest Father, Simon, you know, had descended. And after she was
recovered and brought back, I know not whether on his shoulders or
knees, he afterwards had respect to the salvation of men, as it
were by the liberation of those who had to be freed from these
Angelic Powers, for the purpose of deceiving whom he transformed
himself, and pretended that he was a man to men only, playing the
part of the Son in Judaea, and that of the Father in Samaria.

v. [Hippolytus (?)] _(Philosophumena_, vi. 7-20). Text: _Refutatio
Omnium Haeresium_ (ediderunt Lud. Duncker et F.G. Schneidewin);
Gottingae, 1859.

7. I shall, therefore, set forth the system of Simon of Gittha, a
village of Samaria, and shall show that it is from him that those
who followed[9] him got their inspiration, and that the
speculations they venture upon have been of a like nature, though
their terminology is different.

This Simon was skilled in magic, and deluding many, partly by the
art of Thrasymedes, in the way we have explained above,[10] and
partly corrupting them by means of daemons, he endeavoured to deify
himself--a sorcerer fellow and full of insanity, whom the apostles