People saw Simon causing statues to walk; precipitating himself into the flames without being burnt; metamorphosing his body into that of various animals [lycanthropy]; raising at banquets phantoms and spectres; _causing the furniture in the rooms to move about_, by invisible _spirits_. He gave out that he was escorted by a number of shades to whom he gave the name of “souls of the dead.” Finally, he used to fly in the air ... (Anast., _Patrol. Grecque_, vol. lxxxix., col. 523, quæst. xx.).(215) Suetonius says in his _Nero_, In those days an Icarus fell at his first ascent near Nero’s box and covered it with his blood.(216) This sentence, referring evidently to some unfortunate acrobat who missed his footing and tumbled, is brought forward as a proof that it was Simon who fell.(217) But the latter’s name is surely too famous, if one must credit the Church Fathers, for the historian to have mentioned him simply as “an Icarus.” The writer is quite aware that there exists in Rome a locality named Simonium, near the Church of SS. Cosmas and Daimanus (Via Sacra), and the ruins of the ancient temple of Romulus, where the broken pieces of a stone, on which it is alleged the two knees of the Apostle Peter were impressed in thanksgiving after his supposed victory over Simon, are shown to this day. But what does this exhibition amount to? For the broken fragments of one stone, the Buddhists of Ceylon show a whole rock on Adam’s Peak with another imprint upon it. A crag stands upon its platform, a terrace of which supports a huge boulder, and on the boulder rests for nearly three thousand years the sacred foot‐print, of a foot five feet long. Why not credit the legend of the latter, if we have to accept that of St. Peter? “Prince of Apostles,” or “Prince of Reformers,” or even the “First‐born of Satan,” as Simon is called, all are entitled to legends and fictions. One may be allowed to discriminate, however. That Simon could fly, _i.e._, raise himself in the air for a few minutes, is no impossibility. Modern mediums have performed the same feat supported by a force that Spiritualists persist in calling “spirits.” But if Simon did so, it was with the help of a self‐acquired blind power that heeds little the prayers and commands of rival Adepts, let alone Saints. The fact is that logic is against the supposed fall of Simon at the prayer of Peter. For had he been defeated publicly by the Apostle, his disciples would have abandoned him after such an evident sign of inferiority, and would have become orthodox Christians. But we find even the author of _Philosophumena_, just such a Christian, showing otherwise. Simon had lost so little credit with his pupils and the masses, that he went on daily preaching in the Roman Campania after his supposed fall from the clouds “far above the Capitolium,” in which fall he broke his legs only! Such a lucky fall is in itself sufficiently miraculous, one would say.