Refutation of All Heresies 4.28.5

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Summary: Other invisible inks and how they are revealed.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 90

Καὶ γάλακτι δὲ εἰ γράψειέ τις, εἶτα χάρτην καύσας καὶ λειώσας ἐπιπάσας τρίψειεν ἐπὶ τοῖς τῷ γάλακτι γεγραμμένοις γράμμασιν, ἔσται πρόδηλα. Καὶ οὖρον δὲ καὶ γάρον καὶ τιθυμάλου ὀπὸς καὶ συκῆς ποιεῖ τὸ ὅμοιον. Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἔμαθε τὴν ἐρώτησιν οὕτως, τίνα χρὴ τρόπον ἀποκρίνεσθαι προὐνόησε.

English · Claude translation

And if one writes with milk, then burns paper, grinds it, sprinkles it, and rubs it on the letters written in milk, they will be clear. Urine too, and fish sauce, and the juice of spurge and of the fig tree do the same. When he has learned the question in this way, he has thought out beforehand how he ought to answer.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 90 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.28.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/5/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 4.28.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/4/28/5/).