The latter part of the section on Simon in the _Philosophumena_ is not
so important, and is undoubtedly taken from Irenaeus or from the
anti-heretical treatise of Justin, or from the source from which both
these fathers drew. The account of the death of Simon, however, shows
that the author was not Hippolytus from whose lost work Epiphanius and
Philaster are proved by Lipsius to have taken their accounts.

The Simon of Origen gives us no new information, except as to the small
number of the Simonians. But like other data in his controversial
writings against the Gnostic philosopher Celsus we can place little
reliance on his statement, for Eusebius Pamphyli writing in A.D. 324-5,
a century afterwards, speaks of the Simonians as still considerable in
numbers.[81]

The Simon of Epiphanius and Philaster leads us to speak of a remarkable
feat of scholarship performed by R.A. Lipsius,[82] the learned professor
of divinity in the university of Jena. From their accounts he has
reconstructed to some extent a lost work of Hippolytus against heresies
of which a description was given by Photius. This treatise was founded
on certain discourses of Irenaeus. By comparing Philaster, Epiphanius,
and the Pseudo-Tertullian, he recovers Hippolytus, and by comparing his
restored Hippolytus with Irenaeus he infers a common authority, probably
the lost work of Justin Martyr, or, may we suggest, as remarked above,
the work from which Justin got his information.[83]

The Simon of Theodoret differs from that of his predecessor only in one
or two important details of the aeonology, a fact that has presumably
led Matter to suppose that he has introduced some later Gnostic ideas
or confused the teachings of the later Simonians with those of
Simon.[84]