[Footnote 151: διώρθωτο. So that Valentinus was the first to advance the theory which we find later among the Manichæans that this earth of ours, instead of being the centre of the universe, was in fact the lowest and most insignificant of all the worlds, and that salvation only came to it after the greater universe had been reformed--an extraordinary conception on the part of one who must have held, like his contemporaries, geocentric views in astronomy.] [Footnote 152: Ex. vi. 2, 3.] [Footnote 153: κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀκολουθίαν. Here as elsewhere in the text, ἀκολουθία has the meaning of imitation.] [Footnote 154: ἰσόζυγος.] [Footnote 155: ἐπανόρθωσιν, “re-rectification”!] [Footnote 156: What follows is from Plato’s Second Epistle, which is thought to have been written after Plato’s return from his third voyage to Syracuse, and is perhaps rather less suspect than the other Platonic epistles. Yet the chances of interpolation are so great that no stress can be laid on the genuineness of any particular passage.] [Footnote 157: This passage alone is sufficient to make one doubtful as to the Platonic authorship. If Plato really wanted to keep his doctrine secret, the last thing he would have done would be to call the attention of the chance reader to the fact.] [Footnote 158: Burges translates: “But about a second are the secondary things and about a third the third.”] [Footnote 159: Nearly two pages are here omitted from the Epistle.] [Footnote 160: Possibly an allusion to the Platonic theory that all learning is remembrance.] [Footnote 161: Τὰ δὲ νῦν λεγόμενα Σωκράτους. “Said of him” or “said by him”? The passage is quoted by the Emperor Julian and by Aristides.] [Footnote 162: So that Hippolytus’ attempt to show that Valentinus plagiarized from Plato resolves itself into an imaginative interpretation of a purposely obscure passage in an epistle which is only doubtfully assigned to Plato. That Valentinus like every one educated in the Greek learning was influenced by Plato is likely enough, but that there was any conscious borrowing of tenets is against probability.] [Footnote 163: προαρχή τῶν ὅλων Αἰώνων.] [Footnote 164: That Valentinus is said to have written psalms, see Tertullian, _de Carne Christi_, I, c. xvii, xx, t. ii, pp. 453, 457 (Oehl.).]