or]. She was, therefore, the "lost sheep," to whom the
highest Father, Simon, you know, had descended. And after she was
recovered and brought back, I know not whether on his shoulders or
knees, he afterwards had respect to the salvation of men, as it
were by the liberation of those who had to be freed from these
Angelic Powers, for the purpose of deceiving whom he transformed
himself, and pretended that he was a man to men only, playing the
part of the Son in Judaea, and that of the Father in Samaria.

v. [Hippolytus (?)] _(Philosophumena_, vi. 7-20). Text: _Refutatio
Omnium Haeresium_ (ediderunt Lud. Duncker et F.G. Schneidewin);
Gottingae, 1859.

7. I shall, therefore, set forth the system of Simon of Gittha, a
village of Samaria, and shall show that it is from him that those
who followed[9] him got their inspiration, and that the
speculations they venture upon have been of a like nature, though
their terminology is different.

This Simon was skilled in magic, and deluding many, partly by the
art of Thrasymedes, in the way we have explained above,[10] and
partly corrupting them by means of daemons, he endeavoured to deify
himself--a sorcerer fellow and full of insanity, whom the apostles
confuted in the _Acts_. Far more prudent and modest was the aim of
Apsethus, the Libyan, who tried to get himself thought a god in
Libya. And as the story of Apsethus is not very dissimilar to the
ambition of the foolish Simon, it will not be unseemly to repeat
it, for it is quite in keeping with Simon's endeavour.

8. Apsethus, the Libyan, wanted to become a god. But in spite of
the greatest exertions he failed to realize his longing, and so he
desired that at any rate people should _think_ that he had become
one; and, indeed, for a considerable time he really did get people
to think that such was the case. For the foolish Libyans sacrificed
to him as to some divine power, thinking that they were placing
their confidence in a voice that came down from heaven.

Well, he collected a large number of parrots and put them all into
a cage. For there are a great many parrots in Libya and they mimic
the human voice very distinctly. So he kept the birds for some time
and taught them to say, "Apsethus is a god." And when, after a long
time, the birds were trained and could spe