teaching like mist and darkness, and showed forth the rays of the
light of truth. But for all that the thrice wretched fellow, in
spite of his public exposure, did not cease from his working
against the truth, until he came to Rome, in the reign of Claudius
Caesar. And he so astonished the Romans with his sorceries that he
was honoured with a brazen pillar. But on the arrival of the divine
Peter, he stripped him naked of his wings of deception, and
finally, having challenged him to a contest in wonder-working, and
having shown the difference between the divine grace and sorcery,
in the presence of the assembled Romans, caused him to fall
headlong from a great height by his prayers and captured the
eye-witnesses of the wonder for salvation.

This (Simon) gave birth to a legend somewhat as follows. He started
with supposing some Boundless Power; and he called this the
Universal Root.[60] And he said that this was Fire, which had a
twofold energy, the manifested and the concealed. The world
moreover was generable, and had been generated from the manifested
energy of the Fire. And first from it (the manifested energy) were
emanated three pairs, which he also called Roots. And the first
(pair) he called Mind and Thought, and the second, Voice and
Intelligence, and the third, Reason and Reflection. Whereas he
called himself the Boundless Power, and (said) that he had appeared
to the Jews as the Son, and to the Samaritans he had descended as
the Father, and among the rest of the nations he had gone up and
down as the Holy Spirit.

And having made a certain harlot, who was called Helen, live with
him, he pretended that she was his first Thought, and called her
the Universal Mother, (saying) that through her he had made both