Refutation of All Heresies 6.27.2

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: “Tie up the bedding-bundle” means to be ready to die at any moment.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 266

Διδάσκει οὖν ὁ Πυθαγόρας τοὺς μαθητὰς λέγων· Τὸν στρωματόδεσμον δῆσον· ἐπεὶ οἱ ὁδοιπορεῖν μέλλοντες εἰς δέρμα δεσμοῦσι τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν πρὸς ἑτοιμασίαν τῆς ὁδοῦ· οὕτως ἑτοίμους εἶναι θέλει τοὺς μαθητάς, ὡς καθʼ ἑκάστην στιγμὴν τοῦ θανάτου ἐφεστηκέναι μέλλοντος, μηδὲν ἔχοντας τῶν μαθητῶν ἐνδεές.

English · Claude translation

Pythagoras, then, teaches his disciples, saying: “Tie up the bedding-bundle”; for those about to travel tie their clothes in a leather bag to prepare for the journey. So he wants his disciples to be ready, as though death were about to come upon them at every moment, so that his disciples may lack nothing.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 266 · 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. 6.27.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/27/2/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.27.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/27/2/).