Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily VI/Chapter 12

by Anonymous

Chapter XII.—Epitome of Appion’s Explanation.

And I answered:^[1]  “I shall not at present speak particularly of that living egg, which was conceived by a happy combination out of infinite matter, and from which, when it was broken, the masculo-feminine Phanes leaped forth, as some say.  I say little about all that, up to the point when this broken globe attained coherency, there being left in it some of its marrow-like matter; and I shall briefly run over the description of what took place in it by the agency of this matter, with all that followed.  For from Kronos and Rhea were born, as you say—that is, by time and matter—first Pluto, who represents the sediment which settled down; and then Poseidon, the liquid substance in the middle,^[2] which floated over the heavier body below; and the third child—that is, Zeus—is the æther, and is highest of all.  It was not devoured; but as it is a fiery power, and naturally ascends, it flew up as with a bound to the very highest æther.

Footnotes

1. [Comp. Recognitions, x. 17–19, 29–36, 41, for statements similar to those in chaps. 12–19.—R.]
2. This is Wiesler’s conjecture.