However that may be, the time which, on the shortest computation, Valentinus passed in Rome was quite sufficient for him to set up a school there, and we are not surprised to hear that thereafter there was a body of Valentinians in the West, which was called the “Italic school.” Innovating, as Tertullian said all heretics did, upon the system of their founder, they taught, as before mentioned, that Sige or Silence was a real spouse to the Ineffable Bythos or the Supreme Being and existed side by side with Him from eternity[411]. They further said that the Dodecad or group of twelve aeons, of whom Sophia was the last, emanated not from Logos and Zoe, but from the third syzygy of Anthropos and Ecclesia[412]; and that the body of the historical Jesus was not material but psychic or from the world of the Demiurge[413], which seems to include the view held by other Gnostics that it was a phantasm which only appeared to suffer on the Cross, but did not do so in reality. We know the names of several of the leaders of this Italic school, among whom were Ptolemy, Secundus, and Heracleon. It was the doctrine of the first of these apparently flourishing in Gaul in his time, which spurred on Irenaeus to write against them[414]; while Heracleon was called by Clement of Alexandria the most distinguished of the school of Valentinus and taught in the last-named city[415]. Ptolemy’s doctrine as described by Irenaeus seems to have materially differed from that of his master only in the particulars just given; while Secundus is said by the same heresiologist to have divided the First Ogdoad into two tetrads, a right hand and a left, one of which he called light and the other darkness[416]. Over against this, we hear from Hippolytus of an Eastern school (Διδασκαλία ἀνατολικὴ), which M. Amélineau shows satisfactorily to have most closely represented the teaching of Valentinus himself[417], and which was carried on after his death by Axionicus and Bardesanes[418]. Of these, Axionicus is said to have taught in his native city of Antioch; while Bardesanes was evidently the same as the person called by the Syrians Bar Daisan of Edessa, whose name was still great in the time of Albiruni[419]. Theodotus, whose writings are quoted at some length by Clement of Alexandria, and Alexander, whose arguments as to the body of Jesus are rebutted by Tertullian, probably continued their teaching[420].