Refutation of All Heresies 5.25.3

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: The creature is maiden above and viper below; Heracles lies with her and foretells three famous sons.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 216–218

Ἦν δὲ, φησὶν ὁ Ἡρόδοτος, τὰ ἄνω αὐτῆς μέχρι βουβῶνος παρθένου, πᾶν δὲ τὸ κάτω σῶμα μετὰ βουβῶνα φρικτόν τι θέαμα ἐχίδνης. Σπουδῇ δὲ τῆς περὶ τὸν ἵππον εὑρέσεως ὁ Ἡρακλῆς πείθεται τῷ θηρίῳ· ἔγνω γὰρ αὐτὴν καὶ ἐποίησεν ἐγκύμονα, καὶ προεῖπεν αὐτῇ μετὰ τὴν γνῶσιν, ὅτι ἔχει κατὰ γαστρὸς ἐξ αὐτοῦ τρεῖς ὁμοῦ παῖδας, οἵτινες ἔσονται ἐπιφανεῖς.

English · Claude translation

“Her upper parts,” says Herodotus, “down to the groin were a maiden's, but all the body below the groin was a dreadful sight, a viper's.” Eager to find the horse, Heracles yields to the monster; for he knew her and made her pregnant, and after their union he foretold to her that she had in her womb from him three sons together, who would be illustrious.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 216–218 · 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.

Extrabiblical texts

Herodotus, Hist. 4.9 (Herodotus, Histories) · allusion, high confidence

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.25.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/25/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.25.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/25/3/).