St Helena

(1), said to have been the companion of Srmon Magus. According to Justin Martyr (Apol. i. 26) and Irenaeus (i. 23, p. 99), who possibly makes use of a lost work of Justin's, she was a prostitute whom Simon had purchased from a brothel at Tyre, and whom he led about with him, holding her up to the veneration of his disciples. Giving himself out to be the Supreme Power and the Father above all, he taught, says Irenaeus, that "she was the first couception of his mind, the mother of all things, by whom in the beginning he conceived the thought of making the angels and archangels ; for that this Conception [ENNOEA] proceeded forth from him and, knowing her father's wishes, descended to the lower world, and produced the angels and powers, by whom also he said that this world was made. But after she had produced them, she was detained by them through envy, since they were unwilling to be considered the offspring of any other being ; for he himself was entirely unknown by them; but his Conception was detained by those powers and angels which were put foith from her, and suffered every insult from them that she might not return upward to her father; and this went so far that she was even confined in a human body, and for ages passed into other female bodies, as if from one vessel into another. He said, also, that she was that Helen on account of whom the Trojan war was fought; for reviling of whom by his verses, Stesichorus was struck blind, and afterwards, on account of his penitence and palinode, restored to sight; that after passing from one body to another, and constantly meeting with insult, at last she became a public prostitute, and that she was 'the lost sheep.' On this account he had come that he might first of all reclaim her and free her from her chains, and then give salvation to men through the knowledge of himself." The same story is told by Hippolytus (Ref. vi. 19, p. 174); Tertullian (de Anima, 34); Epiphanius (Haer. 21); Philaster (Haer. 29); Theodoret (Haer, Fab. i. 1). Tertullian evidently knows no more than he read in Irenaeus, but Hippolytus, who himself read the MeydAn *Anopdois, gives some additional particulars, as for instance, that Simon allegorized the story of the wooden horse and of Helen and her torch. The wooden horse must also have been mentioned in the earlier treatise against heresies, used by Epiphanius and Philaster, both of whom state that Simon expounded it as representing the ignorance of the nations. Epiphanius, then, it may be believed, did not inyent some other particulars, in which he differs from or goes beyond Irenaeus. He states that Simon gave to this Ennoea of his, the names Prunicus and Holy Spirit; and he gives a different account, in some respects, of the reasons for her descent into the lower world. According to this account, she was sent in order to rob the Archons, the framers of this world, of their power, by enticing them to desire her beauty, and setting them in hostility to one another,

The honour paid to Helena by the followers 0 Simon was known to Celsus, who tells (v. 62 that certain of the Simonians were also calle Heleniani, from Helena, or else from a teache' Helenus. Weare told, in addition, by Irenaeus anc Hippolytus, that the Simonians had an image o! Simon in the form of Jupiter, and of Helen ir that of Minerva, and that they honoured them. calling the former lord, the latter lady. This adaptation of the myth of Athene springing from the head of Zeus to the alleged relation of Ennoea to the first Father, is of a piece with the appropriation of other Grecian myths by these heretics.

The doctrine attributed to Simon in these representations, has close affinity with that ot other Gnostic systems, more especially with the Ophite system, described at the end of the first book of Irenaeus, except that in the Simonian system, one female personage fills parts which in other systems are distributed among moré than one. But in several systems we have the association with the First Cause of a female principle, his thought or conception; and we have (see, for instance, Pistis SopuHrA) the myth of the descent of a Sophia into the lower material regions, her sufferings from the hostility of the powers who rule there, her struggles with them, and her ultimate redemption. What is peculiar to Simon is his doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and his identification, by means of it, of himself and his female companion with the two principal personages of the Gnostic mythology. The fictions that have