Beyond this, there is some little direct evidence of a lecture origin for our text. In his comments on the system of Justinus, which he connects with the Ophites, our author says: “Though I have met with many heresies, O beloved, I have met with none viler in evil than this.” The word “beloved” is here in the plural, and would be the phrase used by a Greek-speaking person in a lecture to a class or group of disciples or catechumens.[55] I do not think there is any instance of its use in a _book_. In another place he says that his “discourse” has proved useful, not only for refuting heretics, but for combating the prevalent belief in astrology;[56] and although the word might be employed by other authors with regard to writings, yet it is not likely to have been used in that sense by Hippolytus, who everywhere possible refers to his former “books.” There is, therefore, a good deal of reason for supposing that some part of this work first saw the light as spoken and not as written words. What this part is may be difficult to define with great exactness; but there are abundant signs that the work as we have it was not written all at one time. In Book I, the author expresses his intention of assigning every heresy to the speculations of some particular philosopher or philosophic school.[57] So far from doing so, however, he only compares Valentinus with Pythagoras and Plato, Basilides with Aristotle, Cerdo and Marcion with Empedocles, Hermogenes with Socrates, and Noetus with Heraclitus, leaving all the Ophite teachers, Satornilus, Carpocrates, Cerinthus and other founders of schools without a single philosopher attached to them. At the end of Book IV, moreover, he draws attention more than once to certain supposed resemblances in the views linked with the name of Pythagoras, to those underlying the nomenclature of the Simonian and Valentinian heresies, and concludes with the words that he must proceed to the doctrines of these last.[58] Before he does so, however, Book V is interposed and is entirely taken up with the Ophites, or worshippers of the Serpent, to whom he does not attempt to assign a philosophic origin. In Book VI he carries out his promise in Book IV by going at length into the doctrines of Simon, Valentinus and the followers of this last, and in Book VII he takes us in like manner through those of Basilides, Menander, Marcion and his successors, Carpocrates, Cerinthus and many others of the less-known heresiarchs. Book VIII deals in the same way with a sect that he calls the Docetæ, Monoimus the Arabian, Tatian, Hermogenes and some others. In the case of the Ophite teachers, Simon, and Basilides, he gives us, as has been said, extracts from documents which are entirely new to us, and were certainly not used by Irenæus, while he adds to the list of heresies described by his predecessor, the sects of the Docetæ, Monoimus and the Quartodecimans. In all the other heresies so far, he follows Irenæus’ account almost word for