The Ecclesiastical History. Eusebius
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are still shown in the suburbs of the city which is now called Ælia.7 But she is said to have been queen of the Adiabeni.8
1 Josephus, Ant. XX. 5. 2. 2 In the times of these procurators, Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Alexander. 3 Josephus had already mentioned this famine in the same book of his Ant., chap. 2, §5. 4 Josephus gives an extensive account of this Helen and of her son Izates in the Ant. XX. 2. Helen was the wife of the king Monabazus of Adiabene, and the mother of Izates, his successor. Both Izates and Helen embraced the Jewish religion, and the latter happening to come to Jerusalem in the time of the famine, did a great deal to relieve the distress, and was seconded in her benefactions by her son. After their death the bones of both mother and son were brought to Jerusalem and buried just outside of the walls, where Helen had erected three pyramids (Jos. Ant. XX. 4. 3). 5 Acts xi. 29, 30. The passage in Acts has Saul instead of Paul. But the change made by Eusebius is a very natural one. 6 “Pausanias (in Arcadicis) speaks of these great monuments of Helen and compares them to the tomb of Mausolus. Jerome, too, testifies that they were standing in his time. Helen had besides a palace in Jerusalem” (Stroth). 7 Ælia was the heathen city built on the site of Jerusalem by Hadrian (see below, Bk. IV. chap. 6). 8 Adiabene was probably a small province lying between the Tigris, Lycus, and the Gordiæan Mountains (see Dion Cassius, LXVIII.), but before the time of Pliny, according to Vaux (in Smith’s Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography), the word was used in a wider sense to indicate Assyria in general (see Pliny, H. N. VI. 12, and Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII. 6). Izates was king of Adiabene in the narrower sense.
Chapter XIII.—Simon Magus.1
1. But faith in our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ having now been diffused among all men,2 the enemy of man’s salvation contrived a plan for seizing the imperial city for himself. He conducted thither the above-mentioned Simon,3 aided him in his deceitful arts, led many of the inhabitants of Rome astray, and thus brought them into his own power.
2. This is stated by Justin,4 one of our distinguished writers who lived not long after the time of the apostles. Concerning him I shall speak in the proper place.5 Take and read the work of this man, who in the first Apology6 which he addressed to Antonine in behalf of our religion writes as follows:7
3. “And after the ascension of the Lord into heaven the demons put forward certain men who said they were gods, and who were not only allowed by you to go unpersecuted, but were even deemed worthy of honors. One of them was Simon, a Samaritan of the village of Gitto,8 who in the reign of Claudius Cæsar9 performed in your imperial city some mighty acts of magic by the art of demons operating in him, and was considered a god, and as a god was honored by you with a statue, which was erected in the river Tiber,10 between the two bridges, and bore this inscription in the Latin tongue, Simoni Deo Sancto, that is, To Simon the Holy God.11
4. And nearly all the Samaritans and a few even of other nations confess and worship him as the first God. And there went around with him at that time a certain Helena12 who had formerly been a prostitute in Tyre of Phœnicia; and her they call the first idea that proceeded from him.”13
5. Justin relates these things, and Irenæus also agrees with him in the first book of his work, Against Heresies, where he gives an account of the man14 and of his profane and impure teaching. It would be superfluous to quote his account here, for it is possible for those who wish to know the origin and the lives and the false doctrines of each of the heresiarchs that have followed him, as well as the customs practiced by them all, to find them treated at length in the above-mentioned work of Irenæus.
6. We have understood that Simon was the author of all heresy.15 From his time down to the present those who have followed his heresy have feigned the sober philosophy of the Christians, which is celebrated among all on account of its purity of life. But they nevertheless have embraced again the superstitions of idols, which they seemed to have renounced; and they fall down before pictures and images of Simon himself and of the above-mentioned Helena who was with him; and they venture to worship them with incense and sacrifices and libations.
7. But those matters which they keep more secret than these, in regard to which they say that one upon first hearing them would be astonished, and, to use one of the written phrases in vogue among them, would be confounded,16 are in truth full of amazing things, and of madness and folly, being of such a sort that it is impossible not only to commit them to writing, but also for modest men even to utter them with the lips on account of their excessive baseness and lewdness.17
8. For whatever could be conceived of, viler than the vilest thing—all that has been outdone by this most abominable sect, which is composed of those who make a sport of those miserable females that are literally overwhelmed with all kinds of vices.18
1 It is justly remarked by Reuterdahl that no chapters of Eusebius’ History are so imperfect and unsatisfactory as those which relate to heresies, but that this is to be ascribed more to the age than to the author. A right understanding of heresies and an appreciation of any truth which they might contain was utterly impossible to men who looked upon heresy as the work of the devil, and all heretics as his chosen tools. Eusebius has been condemned by some, because he gives his information about heretics only from second hand, and quotes none of them directly; but it must be remembered that this method was by no means peculiar to Eusebius, and, moreover, it is highly probable that he did not have access to any of their works. The accounts of the heretics given by Irenæus, Hippolytus, and others would of course be preserved, but the writings of heretics themselves would be piously excluded as completely as possible from all Christian libraries, and the knowledge of them cannot have remained long in the Church. The sources upon which we have to rely at the present day for a knowledge of these heresies furnish an illustration of this. We know them almost solely through their enemies, and Eusebius knew them in the