, he stripped him naked of his wings of deception, and
finally, having challenged him to a contest in wonder-working, and
having shown the difference between the divine grace and sorcery,
in the presence of the assembled Romans, caused him to fall
headlong from a great height by his prayers and captured the
eye-witnesses of the wonder for salvation.

This (Simon) gave birth to a legend somewhat as follows. He started
with supposing some Boundless Power; and he called this the
Universal Root.[60] And he said that this was Fire, which had a
twofold energy, the manifested and the concealed. The world
moreover was generable, and had been generated from the manifested
energy of the Fire. And first from it (the manifested energy) were
emanated three pairs, which he also called Roots. And the first
(pair) he called Mind and Thought, and the second, Voice and
Intelligence, and the third, Reason and Reflection. Whereas he
called himself the Boundless Power, and (said) that he had appeared
to the Jews as the Son, and to the Samaritans he had descended as
the Father, and among the rest of the nations he had gone up and
down as the Holy Spirit.

And having made a certain harlot, who was called Helen, live with
him, he pretended that she was his first Thought, and called her
the Universal Mother, (saying) that through her he had made both
the Angels and Archangels; and that the world was fabricated by the
Angels. Then the Angels in envy cast her down among them, for they
did not wish, he says, to be called fabrications. For which cause,
forsooth, they induced her into many female bodies and into that of
the famous Helen, through whom the Trojan War arose.

It was on her account also, he said, that he himself had descended,
to free her from the chains they had laid upon her, and to offer to
men salvation through a system of knowledge peculiar to himself.

And that in his descent he had undergone transformation, so as not
to be known to the Angels that manage the establishment of the
world. And that he had appeared in Judaea as a man, although he was
not a man, and that he had suffered, though not at all suffering,
and that the Prophets were the ministers of the Angels. And he
admonished those that believed on him not to pay attention to them,
and not to