Note 3 — BOOKS II AND III

M. Adhémar d’Alès in his work La Théologie de St. Hippolyte, Paris, 1906, argues that the existing text of Book IV contains large fragments of the missing Books II and III. His argument is chiefly founded on the supposed excessive length of Book IV, although as a fact Book V is in Cruice’s pagination some 20 pages longer than this and Book VI, 10. Apart from this, it seems very doubtful if any author would describe the arithmomantic and arithmetical nonsense in Book IV as either μυστικά or δόγματα ἄρρητα, and it is certain that he cannot be alluding, when he speaks of the Βαβυλωνίων ἀλογίστῳ μανίᾳ δι’ ἐν(εργί)ας δαιμόνων καταπλαγείς, to the jugglery in the same book, which he there attributes not to the agency of demons but to the tricks of charlatans.