[Footnote 2: Αἰγυπτίων δόγματα ... ὡς ἄρρητα διδαχθείς.]
[Footnote 3: M. Adhémar d’Alès in his work _La Théologie de St. Hippolyte_, Paris, 1906, argues that the existing text of Book IV contains large fragments of the missing Books II and III. His argument is chiefly founded on the supposed excessive length of Book IV, although as a fact Book V is in Cruice’s pagination some 20 pages longer than this and Book VI, 10. Apart from this, it seems very doubtful if any author would describe the arithmomantic and arithmetical nonsense in Book IV as either μυστικά or δόγματα ἄρρητα, and it is certain that he cannot be alluding, when he speaks of the Βαβυλωνίων ἀλογίστῳ μανίᾳ δι’ ἐν(εργί)ας δαιμόνων καταπλαγείς, to the jugglery in the same book, which he there attributes not to the agency of demons but to the tricks of charlatans.]
(The first pages of this book have been torn away from the MS., and we are therefore deprived of the small Table of Contents which the author has prefixed to the other seven. From the headings of the various chapters it may be reproduced in substance thus:--
1. The “Chaldæans” or Astrologers, and the celestial measurements of the Greek astronomers.
2. The Mathematicians or those who profess to divine by the numerical equivalents of the letters in proper names.
3. The Metoposcopists or those who connect the form of the body and the disposition of the mind with the Zodiacal sign rising at birth.
4. The Magicians and the tricks by which they read sealed letters, perform divinations, produce apparitions of gods and demons, and work other wonders.
5. Recapitulation of the ideas of Greek and Barbarian on the nature of God, and the views of the “Egyptians” or neo-Pythagoreans as to the mysteries of number.
6. The star-diviners or those who find religious meaning in the grouping of the constellations as described by Aratus.
7. The Pythagorean doctrine of number and its relation to the heresies of Simon Magus and Valentinus.)
[Sidenote: p. 53.] [1. _About Astrologers_.[1]]
... (And they (_i. e._ the Chaldæans) declare there are “terms”[2] of the stars in each zodiacal sign extending from one given part)[3] to [another given part in which some particular star has most power. About which there is no mere chance difference] among them [as appears from their tables]. But they say that the stars are guarded[4] [when they are midway between two other stars] in zodiacal succession. For instance, if [a certain star should occupy the first part] of a zodiacal sign and another [the last parts, and a third those of the middle, the one in the middle is said to be guarded] by those occupying the parts at the extremities. [And they say that the stars behold one another and are in accord with one another] when they appear triangularly or quadrangularly. Now those form a triangular [Sidenote: p. 54.] figure[5] and behold one another which have an interval of three zodiacal signs between them and a square those which have one of two signs....