If a man is an actor or pantomimist, he must be rejected. - Hippolytus

I think that there has been clearly expounded the mind of arithmeticians, who, by means of numbers and of names, suppose that they interpret life. Now I perceive that these, enjoying leisure, and being trained in calculation, have been desirous that, through the art delivered to them from childhood, they, acquiring celebrity, should be styled prophets.

all the numbers that have been derived from the genus are four; but number is the indefinite genus, from which was constituted, according to them, the perfect number, viz. the decade. For one, two, three, four, become ten, if its proper denomination be preserved essentially for each of the numbers. Pythagoras affirmed this to be a sacred quaternion, source of everlasting nature, having, as it were, roots in itself; and that from this number all the numbers receive their originating principle.

Simon then, after inventing these [tenets], not only by evil devices interpreted the writings of Moses in whatever way he wished, but even the [works] of the poets. For also he fastens an allegorical meaning on [the story of] the wooden horse and Helen with the torch, and on very many other [accounts], which he transfers to what relates to himself and to Intelligence, and [thus] furnishes a fictitious explanation of them. He said, however, that this [Helen] was the lost sheep. And she, always abiding among women, confounded the powers in the world by reason of her surpassing beauty.