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Works Hippolytus of Rome (170-235) The Refutation of All Heresies
Book I.

Chapter IV.--Heraclitus; His Universal Dogmatism; His Theory of Flux; Other Systems.

But Heraclitus, a natural philosopher of Ephesus, surrendered himself to universal grief, condemning the ignorance of the entire of life, and of all men; nay, commiserating the (very) existence of mortals, for he asserted that he himself knew everything, whereas the rest of mankind nothing. 1 But he also advanced statements almost in concert with Empedocles, saying that the originating principle of all things is discord and friendship, and that the Deity is a fire endued with intelligence, and that all things are borne one upon another, and never are at a standstill; and just as Empedocles, he affirmed that the entire locality about us is full of evil things, and that these evil things reach as far as the moon, being extended from the quarter situated around the earth, and that they do not advance further, inasmuch as the entire space above the moon is more pure. So also it seemed to Heraclitus.


  1. Proclus, in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, uses almost the same words: "but Heraclitus, in asserting his own universal knowledge, makes out all the rest of mankind ignorant." ↩

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The Refutation of All Heresies
Widerlegung aller Häresien (BKV) Compare

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Faculty of Theology, Patristics and History of the Early Church
Miséricorde, Av. Europe 20, CH 1700 Fribourg

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