Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 25

by Anonymous

Chapter XXV.—Simon’s Deceit.

“But Simon is going about in company with Helena, and even till now, as you see, is stirring up the people.  And he says that he has brought down this Helena from the highest heavens to the world; being queen, as the all-bearing being, and wisdom, for whose sake, says he, the Greeks and barbarians fought, having before their eyes but an image of truth;^[1] for she, who really is the truth, was then with the chiefest god.  Moreover, by cunningly explaining certain things of this sort, made up from Grecian myths, he deceives many; especially as he performs many signal marvels, so that if we did not know that he does these things by magic, we ourselves should also have been deceived.  But whereas we were his fellow-labourers at the first, so long as he did such things without doing wrong to the interests of religion; now that he has madly begun to attempt to deceive those who are religious, we have withdrawn from him.

Footnotes

1. We have here an allusion to the tradition that it was only an image of Helen that was taken to Troy, and not the real Helen herself.